142 Part III: Teaching Skills Classes
Graduating from words to sentences with
the help of punctuation
In order for students to understand complete sentences on paper, they need
an idea of sentence structure and punctuation.
From beginner stage, point out what apostrophes, commas and other marks
do. Using a slow deliberate change in your intonation as you read often
makes this clear.
Make sure that you know the function of all these punctuation marks and
how they affect a sentence:
✓. Full stop: This mark shows the end of a complete sentence.
✓ : Colon: You use a colon before you introduce a list, example or the
second part of a sentence that gives more detail about the first part.
✓ ; Semi-colon: When two sentences are very closely related the writer can
make them into one sentence separated by this mark.
I love the Caribbean; I’ve lived there for years.
✓ ‘’ Quotation/speech marks: You use these to show the beginning and end
of what someone actually said, in that person’s words.
He said, ‘See you tonight’.
✓ , Comma: This mark indicates a pause, as if you were saying the words
aloud. You sometimes use a comma instead of brackets when giving
extra information and also to separate items on list. So a comma can
replace the words and and or to avoid repeating them.
My favourite dishes, or foreign ones anyway, are curry, lasagne and paella.
✓ ‘Apostrophe: Use an apostrophe to show that some letters are left out or
that something belongs to someone.
She can’t (cannot) drive Paul’s car.
✓ ( ) Brackets/parentheses: Brackets show an interruption in the sentence
for the writer to add additional information.
The house (an ugly place) is still for sale.
✓ - Hyphen: This is used to join two words or parts of words together.
There was a break-in at the home of his ex-wife.
✓? Question mark: This mark shows the end of a question.
Is that statement true?
