Fragments
Mr. Chang
IRLA 8
Name:______________________________________
Period:______
Fragments
Example: Sandra Cisneros’s “Eleven”
Original
You don’t feel eleven. Not right away. It takes a few days, weeks even, sometimes even months before you say Eleven
when they ask you. And you don’t feel smart eleven, not until you’re almost twelve. That’s the way it is.
Revision
You don’t feel eleven right away. It takes a few days, weeks, even; sometimes even months before you say Eleven when
they ask you. What’s more, you don’t feel smart eleven, not until you’re almost twelve. That’s the way it is.
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What are sentence fragments?
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Why are sentence fragments so problematic?
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How can we use selected sentence fragments in productive ways? When is it appropriate to do so?
Directions:
Below are the excerpts from the works of three different professional authors. Each excerpt contains at least one fragment.
After underlining the fragment(s) in the excerpt, describe the effect(s) that the author creates by using the fragment(s).
Jacqueline Woodson’s From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun
This is Brooklyn. Summer. Hot like that with a breeze coming across this block every once in a while. Not enough air to
cool anybody. Just to let us know we’re still alive. A whole city of us—living and kicking. Walk down any Brooklyn
street and there we are. Here I am. Alive. If nothing else, Mama says, we have our lives. Who knows what she means
by that.
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Sandra Cisneros’s “Eleven”
Maybe because I’m skinny, maybe because she doesn’t like me, that stupid Sylvia Saldivar says, “I think it belongs to
Rachel.” An ugly sweater like that, all raggedy and old, but Mrs. Price believes her. Mrs. Price takes the sweater and puts
it right on my desk, but when I open my mouth nothing comes out.
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James Howe’s “Everything Will Be Okay”
A few minutes later, we are in the back room. The box is empty. Smoky is inside a big old pretzel can with a hose
attached, clawing at the can’s sides as my brother pumps in the gas. He is telling me it is good for me to watch this, it will
toughen me up, help me be more of a man. Then he starts to lecture me about different methods of putting animals out of
their misery, but all I can hear is the scratching. And then silence.
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