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Topic: Subject

These resources relate to the grammatical function Subject. A Subject is often (but not always!) a noun, pronoun or noun phrase that comes straight before the verb, and is the person/thing that is doing the action or what the clause is about.

Building characters

Analysing the language of characters in a literary text

Goals

  • Understand some of the ways that writers use language to create characters
  • Analyse the use of language in a literary text

Lesson Plan

  • You could start by asking students to think about some of the ways that writers use language to create fictional characters. What makes a convincing character? What are some of their favourite characters from fiction, and why?
  • Next, talk students through the first passage from Jekyll & Hyde.
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Building characters: Activity

This extract is from later in the novel, where Mr. Hyde attacks a stranger in the street. Read it through, and think:

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Sentence slot machine - #MadeAtUCL

Use the interactive whiteboard to generate weird and wonderful sentences.

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Subject-Verb Agreement

In this lesson, students select the correct verb to compose an acceptable sentence.

Goals

  • Practise composing sentences with appropriate Subject-Verb agreement.
  • Identify acceptable patterns in Standard English.

Lesson Plan

The teacher explains that today, we will select the correct verb on the smart board, to construct acceptable sentences.

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Subject-Verb Agreement: 'Be' verbs

Telephones
are
is
am
really weird.

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Agents or non-agents?

In each of these examples the Subject is highlighted. For each one, decide whether or not the Subject identifies an agent (or more than one agent) who carries out an action.

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Identify the Subject

Find the Subject in a range of examples

Identify the Subject in each of the following clauses. Click on the word (or words) that comprise the Subject of each clause to select or deselect them.

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Y6 GPaS Test: Identify the Subjects

Find the Subject in a range of examples

Identify the Subject in each of the following examples. Click on the word (or words) that comprise the Subject to select or deselect them.

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Grammatical functions in the clause

The description of word classes, phrases, and clauses in terms of their structure is part of the study of form. We now turn to the study of grammar from the perspective of function: this notion refers to what words, phrases and clauses do as units of language.

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Subject

The Subject of a sentence is often defined as the phrase identifying the agent that carries out the action denoted by the verb. All the examples below involve actions (fleeing, sniffing, writing) carried out by the individuals referred to by the highlighted phrases, and for this reason we identify these phrases as Subjects.

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Pronouns, Subjects and Objects

In this film Professor Bas Aarts introduces the ideas behind three more grammatical categories: pronouns, Subjects and Objects. 

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