Predicate Nom. and Predicate Adj - how to get this concept to stick

[HollyDay]

My dd is having a terrible time remembering PN and Padj. She just cant seem to get this concept! Any suggestions???

[Kimber]

Here is a website that I like. It doesn't use the terms predicate adjective or predicate nominative but it covers linking verbs in a clear way.

http://www.chompchomp.com/terms/linkingverb.htm

[8FillTheHeart]

We use different terminology for the exact same part of speech--subjective complement or adj complement. They are directly linked to the subject.

The daisy is a flower. Subjective complement--the complement renames the subject (or a pn b/c it is a noun)
The flower is pretty. Adj. complement--b/c it describes (or compliments) the subject (or a padj b/c it is an adj

They can be re-written:
THe flower is a daisy.
The pretty flower

Does that help?

[HollyDay]

I dont know if it helps or not. I have taught this concept for a couple years now. BJU introduced it 2 years ago. WInston 1 hit is pretty hard last year. We are doing it Every. Single. Lesson. this year. She is just missing it. If she recognizes the linking verb, she still doesnt catch the adj or pn. AGH

[Kimber]

I don't know if this will help, but you might try developing a list of phrases which include an adjective and a noun. Then have her turn them into sentences with predicate adjectives, sort of like momof7 did in the example above.

The red chair
(The chair is red.)

the blue horse
(The horse is blue.)

the orange cow
(The cow is orange.)

the dirty desk
(The desk is dirty.)

the stinky feet
(The feet are stinky.)

Then try the same with predicate nominatives.
But she'd have to write two nouns for these.


car, vehicle
(The car is a vehicle. or The vehicle is a car.)

tent, home
(The tent is my home. The home is my tent.)

snake, reptile
(The snake is a reptile. The reptile is a snake.)

HTH!

[Karenciavo]

What if she thinks of it as = and ≠

The flower smells beautiful. flower = beautiful
The boy smells the flower. boy ≠ flower

[Alana in Canada]

Just a crazy thought off the top of my head--following on Karen's post--would drawing a venn diagram help at all?

[OhElizabeth]

Holly, here's an idea that is way outside the box that I did years ago with some little kids. I think it would work well for your dd though. Take different colored strips and make boxes (rectangles) for each type of word that can occur in a sentence. I was doing this with another language, but you can do it just fine in english. Or use index cards, since they come already in packs with 5 or 10 colors. For instance pink could be adjectives, blue nouns, green transitive verbs, yellow linking verbs, etc. Then have her use the cards and write each word from the sentence onto the appropriate card. BJU still uses a Q&A approach to find things, doesn't it? Or Shurley does. Does Winston? Then, when each word is onto a card, put the cards in order.

What really might help her is to go do Shurley grammar for a while and do the Q&A flow that they use to find each element in the sentence. I think using questions to find things is about the best it can get, personal opinion.

Alternate ways to go visual with the grammar? You could use a pack of colored highlighters and highlight each type of word in the sentence. Or draw colored boxes around all the adjectives, then underline all the verbs in green, then put red stars on all the articles, etc. Can you tell I'm a visual learner? If your dd is, something like that might help. :)

[8FillTheHeart]

I have been thinking about this. This is precisely why I don't like teaching grammar strictly from a textbook vs within the context of their writing.

We do something similar to what Kimberly suggested all the time.

For example, say I give the poorly written example:

Beethoven is a composer. He wrote the 5th Symphany.

I might tell them to change the subjective complement (composer), turn it into an appositive in the nominative case, and combine the 2 sentences.

Beethoven, a composer, wrote the 5th Symphany.

or

I saw a flower. It was a daisy. It was pretty.

The flower, a daisy, was pretty. (Even though it is still pretty pitiful!)

My kids do this all the time. I make them restructure their sentences and the conversation is grammar based. Or I might create sentences like the ones above and talk about the differences between complements (after a linking verb) and an appositive (renames without a linking verb and normally separated by commas). Then they will re-write like above or maybe even write it several different ways so they can see how it is functioning is determined only within the context of the sentence itself:

Jack, my son, is a professional football player. (subj, appos, lv, subj comp)

The professional football player, Jack, is my son. ( "" )

My son, Jack, is a professional football player. ("")

It might even be helpful to step back and take basic paragraphs (maybe written by you) and search for nouns, action verbs, linking verbs, adjs, etc and focus on identifying them and only then move on to how they are functioning.

HTH

[Kris in Wis]

First, does she understand what the predicate is? That needs to be made clear first.

If she knows basic sentence structure (subject + predicate (or verb, or verb phrase) = complete sentence), you can go from there. It is important for her to learn that the predicate is what comes after the subject. We used the terms predicate and verb phrase interchangeably until the children understood it thoroughly.

She also needs to remember nominative = noun. I taught my kids this by showing how both these words start with "n". (If you've studied Latin, it's easier, since Latin nomen = name, and a noun names a person, place or thing.)

And, of course, she needs to know that an adjective describes a noun.

You can see it's critical to understand the parts of speech and their functions.

Drive home the fact that both predicate nouns and predicate adjectives follow linking or being verbs. (Again, she will need to understand what these are.) I always told my kids to think of it these terms:

The boy is happy. Boy = happy. (PA)

The boy is a sailor. Boy = sailor. (PN)

The dog looks sad. Dog = sad. (PA)

The dog is a beagle. Dog = beagle. (PN)


Does that make sense? Hope it helps some!! :001_smile:

My kids made notecards with each part of speech and examples, and put them on a ring to study. We did the same for lists of linking verbs and other hard-to-remember items. It really helped!

[OhElizabeth]

To supplement what momof7 is saying (or make it seem less daunting), WT2 also covers basic grammar in the context of the writing. You can take the model, any model, any paragraph, and do what I was saying, finding all the nouns and marking them green. When she gets good at that, then add articles to the list. Sometimes it's easier to find them in a paragraph than it is looking through just one sentence. Later you can do more sophisticated things like what momof7 is describing, like what IEW does, like what WT2 does, using the grammar to improve sentence structure.

[Carol in Cal.]

Your issue falls out in that sequence pretty easily. We diagram as we go along, so that it is easy to remember what was said before.

1. What is the verb or verb phrase?
2. What is the subject? (i.e. Who or What verbed?)
3. What kind of verb does this sentence have, action or linking?
4. If it's an action verb, what MIGHT the predicate have? (Answer: a direct object) Does this sentence have one of those? If so, what is it?
5. If it's a linking verb, what MIGHT the predicate have? (Answer: a predicate nominative, or a predicate adjective.) Does this sentence have one of those? If so, what is it?

After that we move on to adjectives, adverbs, and prepositional phrases. Then we cover the extras--apositives, nouns of direct address, conjunctions that we may not have diagrammed yet (although they are usually finished by this point), etc. We have not yet covered how to diagram compound sentences in enough detail to incorporate them into my sequence, but we are getting there. We also have not covered infinitives and gerunds yet.

I find that DD can do this faster and faster as we practice it more and more. The sequence is so logical, and it builds on itself so well, that the logic pattern sometimes carries the day when she has that deer in headlights blankness going on. Some may call it scaffolding. I call it systematizing a body of knowlege.

[Lizzie in Ma]

For example. My mother is a teacher. Mother= teacher PN

[Kim in SouthGa]

FLL 3 describes it as "nominative" sounds like "nominate"...when you nominate someone to an office, you are renaming them. Predicate adjective is just describing the subject. Both come after linking verbs, as opposed to direct object.

[sagira]

I hope I'm not confusing anyone, but the way I remember it is:

The boy is happy (happy is PA because happiness is a variable state)
The boy is a sailor (PN because it's a more constant state a name -- Spanish can help with nom-bre too)

:)

[love2read]

Does she know that it's either a P.A. or a P.N.? or is she completely confused as to what part of speech it may be? A few of mine were totally lost when it came to this too.