grammar question

[mountains27]

I am using KISS grammar for my 8 year old (the second grade level 1) and am stuck on explaining complements! I don't understand it so I can't teach her to understand it :/  Does anyone have any other material on complements they could share that could explain this part of a sentence a little better?

I never learned grammar in school so it is all new to me and proving difficult :/ Maybe KISS is too hard for me!?

 

Thanks in advance :)

[8filltheheart]

Subject complements are nouns or adjs that are connected to the subject by a linking verb.   

 

This is how I explain them to my kids.   If the subject complement is a noun, the linking verb is like an = sign.   The boy is my son.   boy=son   The boy is the same person as the son.  

 

 

The flower is a daisy.

The girl with braids is my daughter.

Those children are my students.

Monet was an artist.

 

When they are adjectives, you can let your child experiment by moving the adjective to before the noun.

 

The flower is pretty.   The pretty flower

The children are hyper.   The hyper children

The painting was breathtaking.   The breathtaking painting

The chocolate was delicious.   The delicious chocolate

 

Does that help at all?

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[GrammarGirl]

Complements *complete* the idea begun by the subject and verb. I always trained my students to ask "who, whom, or what?" after finding the subject and verb to locate the complements.

 

To add to 8's explanation, direct and indirect objects are also complements. They follow transitive (action) verbs. There is also the objective complement that renames or describes the direct object.

[mountains27]

Yes those replies both help me grasp this a little better, thank you for taking the time to help me :) What we are getting stuck on the most is that the exercises in KISS give sentences that sometimes don't have complements according to the answer key and I guess when you are out looking specifically for a complement in a sentence and are still learning what they are your mind is more apt to find them when they aren't there. For example the sentence: "So they both hopped out of their warm house." no complement there but my daughter circled "house" as the complement and it took me some good thinking to see why it was wrong!

[GrammarGirl]

Yes those replies both help me grasp this a little better, thank you for taking the time to help me :) What we are getting stuck on the most is that the exercises in KISS give sentences that sometimes don't have complements according to the answer key and I guess when you are out looking specifically for a complement in a sentence and are still learning what they are your mind is more apt to find them when they aren't there. For example the sentence: "So they both hopped out of their warm house." no complement there but my daughter circled "house" as the complement and it took me some good thinking to see why it was wrong!

This is where using the "who, whom, what?" really helps. The concept is a tough one for an 8 year old. My suggestion would be to cross out the sentences that don't have complements before you have her do the exercise. I taught high school and college grammar classes for years, so trust me: there's plenty of time to master the concept!

[Steven]

When doing KISS Grammar, it is important to do the analysis in the recommended sequence. The author actually recommends training the student to first identify all of the prepositional phrases, since any noun or pronoun that is the object of a preposition cannot be a complement or the subject of the sentence. So in the sentence "So they both hopped out of the house," since house is the object of the preposition "out of," it cannot be a complement. 

 

Once the student has put parentheses around the prepositional phrases, the student should identify the conjugated (finite) verb and the subject. 

 

At this point, many of the nouns and pronouns in the sentence will be eliminated from the possibility of being a complement.

 

To find the complement, ask a what/whom question using the subject of the sentence and the verb.

 

For example: The dog is  big. The dog is what? The dog is whom? If there is an answer to this what/whom question, there is a complement, and now you have additional questions:

 

First, does the verb essentially mean that the subject equals the complement (in such cases the verb will most often be a form of the verb "to be," e.g., is, are, am, was, were.) For example:

 

Example 1: "The dog is big." The dog is what? The dog is big. "Big" is the complement and the verb means that the dog=big. Now you have to ask is "big" and adjective or a noun. Since big is an adjective, this complement is a Predicate Adjective. You can stop here because you have identified the complement. 

 

Example 2: "The dog is a beagle." The dog is what? The dog is a beagle. "Beagle" is the complement and the verb means that the dog=beagle. Now you have to ask is "beagle" an adjective or a noun. It is a noun, so this complement is a predicate noun. 

 

Ask the what/whom question.

Does the subject equal the complement? If the answer is yes, then ask if the complement is an adjective or a noun. If the answer is no, go on the next step.

 

Example 3: "The dog bites the boy." The dog bites what? The dog bites whom? The dog bites the boy. There is an answer to the question so there is a complement. In this case, the subject does not equal the complement (dog does not equal  boy"), so the complement cannot be a predicate adjective or a predicate noun. So it must be a direct object. 

 

But sometimes there may be yet another noun or pronoun that is still unaccounted for, so now ask the question, for whose benefit does the subject do the action: 

 

Example 4: "The boy gave the dog a bone." The boy gave what? The boy gave a bone. The boy is not equal to bone, so Bone is the direct object. But the boy gave the bone for the benefit of the dog, so dog is the indirect object (the last of the four types of complements).

 

Do not be confused by adverbs or prepositional phrases that answer the question how, when, or where. These are not complements. Complements answer the what or whom question. 

 

Going back to your example: So they both hopped out of their warm house. First find the prepositional phrases: Out of there warm house is a prepositional phrase. It answers a where question, not a what question. It is not a complement. 

 

Find the verb and the subject: hopped and they. 

 

Ask the question "They hopped what?" They hopped whom"

 

There is no answer to this question, so there is no complement. 

 

 

 

 

 

[kiwik]

Now I have a headache.