hi here is my sentence

I am a good cook. I can cook lots of things like lasagna which can be hard to get right and I can make my own pesto sauce or also some desserts too. I learn how to cook from when I was a child. My mother had five children so she cooked a lot and thats where I learned it from. Lots of people tell me I am good at cooking now and that makes me happy. My mom would be proud.

That’s a great paragraph, Lauren. You brought up different kinds of things that you could cook, and talked about your mom, which could end up being two main ideas in an essay. You might think about a third thing if you ever wanted to turn this into an full essay, but it’s a great start!

I noticed you had a few run-on sentences, so I thought I might talk about that a little.

Run-ons are pretty hard to catch. When we talk, we say a lot of “ands” and “buts” without really pausing sometimes. Our brains don’t think like an essay, they just kinda run and run. Just like run-ons.

“I can cook lots of things like lasagna which can be hard to get right and I can make my own pesto sauce or also some desserts too.”

This sentence can be split up. They best thing to do to split it is to find the verbs and the conjunctions (joining words). I’ll mark the verbs in green and the conjunctions in red.

“I can cook lots of things like lasagna which can be hard to get right and I can make my own pesto sauce or also some desserts too.”

A good rule to follow is to have two verbs at the most in each sentence. Since there’s three verbs in this sentence, it can be cut down to two sentences by removing the and. I would also replace the “or” with “and” because “or” means that you can cook pesto sauce or desserts, not both.

“I can cook lots of things like lasagna which can be hard to get right. I can make my own pesto sauce and also some desserts too.”

It might have been better to list off the foods first to keep things clear, too.

“I can cook lots of things like lasagna, pesto sauce, and some desserts. Lasagna is especially hard to get right.”

Here’s another run-on sentence:

“My mother had five children so she cooked a lot and thats where I learned it from.”

Again, this can be cut down to two sentences.

“My mother had five children, so she cooked a lot. That’s where I learned it from.”

or

“My mother had five children. She cooked a lot, and that’s where I learned it from.”

If you want to read more about run-on sentences, I wrote a post on comma splices a while back.

Here’s the writing topic for today:

What is your favourite room in your home and why?

I just love my kitchen. The walls are spring green, and when the sun comes in, it feels so bright and cheerful. It’s also the place where everyone always comes together. When my boys come to visit, we’re always chatting away in the kitchen, especially in the morning. We’ve leaned against the counters with our mugs of coffee or tea and talked lots of mornings away in my kitchen. It’s also the place where all the best smells come from. Whether I’m cooking up dinner, or boiling homemade potpourri, the smells always fill up the whole house.

Leave a comment with your own answer to the question, or just if you need any help with writing at all.

For more information about the GED test and GED test preparation, visit the GED Academy at http://www.passGED.com.

Sentence: Three of them went to the grocery store, two went home.

Which of the following changes should be made to this sentence?

1)   remove the comma after store

2)   replace to with two

3)   replace to with too

4)   add the word and after the comma

5)   no changes are needed

You might be able to answer this by a process of elimination, but it’s better if you really know the language rule it’s based on. In this case, the sentence is a run-on. It’s really two sentences: “Three of them went to the grocery store” is a complete thought, with a subject (three) and a verb (went). “Two went home” is also a complete thought, with a subject (two) and a verb (went). You can’t join two complete sentences with a comma. If you do, it’s an error known as a comma splice.

There are several ways to fix this comma splice. You could split the sides up into two sentences:

 Three of them went to the grocery store. Two went home.

You could join them with a semicolon:

Three of them went to the grocery store; two went home.

You could change one of them into a subordinate clause, with one of the words I talked about last time:

While three of them went to the grocery store, two went home.

You can see that now, the beginning isn’t a complete sentence. “While three of them went to the grocery store” isn’t a complete though. It leaves you wondering… while that happened, what?

The last way to join two sentences is with a comma and for, and, nor, but, or, so, or yet. You need to choose which word makes sense in the sentence. In this case, you can easily use the word and.

Three of them went to the grocery store, and two went home.

That’s choice 4, to add the word and after the comma. It fixes the comma splice! You can see how identifying sentences can help you on the GED… Good studying!

For more information about the GED test and GED test preparation, visit The GED Academy at http://www.passGED.com.