“Break Down the Sentences”

for Better Reading Comprehension

Written by
Zobeida Margarita Sánchez Rodríguez
UASD University
[email protected]
Santo Domingo, República Dominicana
2017

In the academic field, possessing a strong reading skill is of vital

importance in the interest of acquiring new knowledge and becoming
professionally competent. Out of the various reading strategies there are,
twenty-five years of foreign language teaching experience in high schools,
universities, or one on one student classes has proven that “Break Down
the Sentence” is one of the most effective strategies to develop reading
comprehension for novice readers, and language acquisition for new
language learners.

When learning English as a foreign language, a great number of

students take many years of language lessons, but when you elicit the
content or learning of a text, they either focus on any specific idea they
might have possibly understood (a partial understanding of the read
material), or they might not show any comprehension at all.

Reading, as we all know, is to be able to recognize a set of written

symbols in order to decode a specific hidden message in any language.
However, this action takes more than simply reading fluently aloud, being
able to pronounce properly, or guessing the meaning of isolated words.
Reading effectively means showing comprehension of chunk of ideas
expressed by phrases put together in a sentence structure that expresses a
more complete idea.

Therefore, reading for comprehension is mentally reconstructing

meaning from written material which demands the application of specific
techniques to squeeze the message the author wants the readers to
receive. These techniques are the ones academically called Reading
Strategies.

Reading Strategies are ways, tricks or tools effective readers use

depending on the style, format and content of the text, apart from
considering the reading purpose readers might have, which could be
decoding, comprehending and analyzing information for further
constructing opinion. Here it is easy to notice the perfect correspondence
the different types of Reading Strategies have with the Taxonomy Dr.
Benjamin Bloom created to explain how the learning Process occurs
(Knowledge, Organizing, Integrating, Evaluating, Analysis and
Generating). Meaning that it is very effective to decode and organize the
information we need to learn before any analysis leads to generating new
knowledge. That is how we should read and learn.

A brief listing of some of the most common Reading Strategies could

give you an overview of the available variety we could draw from:
DECODING COMPREHENSION CRITICAL CONSTRUCTING
VOCABULARY ANALYSIS MEANING
Word parts Preview and activate prior Distinguish Important Draw Conclusions
knowledge Information
Inflected forms Break down the Sentence Evaluate Author’s Summarize
Purpose
Context clues Question & clarify Distinguish Fact & Paraphrase
Opinion
Denotation Identify Main Ideas Evaluate Evidence Form Generalizations
& Supporting details
Connotation Make Inferences Evaluate Point of Make Judgments
View
Multiple meaning Classify/categorize Evaluate Sources of
Information
Compare & Contrast
Follow Sequence of
Events
Recognize Cause & Effect
Identify Problems &
Solutions
Interpret Figurative Etc.
Language
 However, as above expressed, “breaking down the sentences” has
proven to be a double useful strategy, which opens the way to
comprehension for no very expert readers and helps new language
learners internalize the target language syntax faster.

This strategy consists on indentifying the main elements of a

sentence (Subject, Verb, Object / Complement) and the function of the
different parts of speech (Nouns, Adjectives, Articles, Pronouns, Verbs,
Adverbs, Prepositions, Conjunctions, Interjections) in the same
sentence.

When sentences in a text are too challenging for the readers,

Literature Timeless Voices, Timeless Themes, Selection Support: Skills
Development Workbook, Pearson Prentice Hall, (2002, p.3) recommends,
“You can break down a sentence by reading it in meaningful sections
rather than word by word. Doing so will help you to identify exactly
where the meaning is unclear”. This reading strategy helps with a deep,
thorough, accurate and quick text understanding.

A day to day, teaching classes with numerous amount of students,

rendered to adapting an strategy intended for native speakers into a less
complicated application of the same to just -circling all the verbs you find
which automatically reveals the other two elements of a sentence or
clause, (subject and object or complement), and -underlining all the
connectors or linking words, (prepositions, conjunctions and relative
pronouns); of course with a provided list of the most common connectors,
and a general explanation of the conjugation system, verbal modes,
tenses, voices, forms of the verbs and all the auxiliary and modal verbs.

Prentice Hall in its “The British Tradition Literature Textbook”, (2002,

p.73), reconfirms that “when reading students should identify the part
expressing the main action or actions. Then, identify details that
answer who, what, when, or why about these actions to interpret long
and complicated sentences.” This means the student should identify the
verb element in the sentence and the interrogative pronouns would guide
them to the subject and object/complement.
 It is easy to guess that some sentences native speakers may
consider very easy, could be a real challenge for foreign language learners
depending on their learning level. Yet this strategy allows any reader to
handle a great amount of information as they break it in small chunks for
easier comprehension.

The following example of an exercise provides a better explanation:

I- In the following text for each sentence:

A- Circle the verb or verb phrases

Subject Verb Object

Subject Verb Object/Complement
The girl is Beautiful.
The beautiful girl is my friend.
Mary is a good teacher.
She is here.

Mary writes an email.

She wrote
The girl will write
is not writing
was writing
will not be writing
has not written
had written
can write
should not write
could have written

An email might be written by Mary.

must be written
may have been written
etc.

Notice how both other sentence elements (subject and object) reveal
themselves automatically.
B- Underline each connector (preposition, conjunction
or relative pronoun)

1-
Mary / writes / an email / for her mother / in her room/ every day

because she misses / her / a lot.

2-

If / you study / the development / of music, you / will learn

that music has been / heavily influencedd / by society.

3-

Thus speaking, / Fortunato possessed / himself / of my arm;

and /putting / on a mask / of black silk / and /drawing / a roquelaure

/about my person, I suffered him to hurry

/ me / to my palazzo.

Notice the chunks of ideas that readers should pause on!

As you can notice, the action of underlining the connectors breaks the
sentences beyond even smaller sections of ideas either at the subject or
object level. When readers realize that each idea is most likely contained in
grouped words (a phrase) they stop struggling for word by word meaning or
a sudden miraculous full sentence comprehension. Being this the most
common usage given to this strategy.

Yet, surprisingly enough, beginners’ groups, first day of classes, have

also benefited with a very effective language syntax acquisition using this
same strategy (originally thought to improve reading comprehension), but
now in the inversed way.
 This second usage consists on having students play with the parts of
speech, written in small cut pieces of paper. They are asked to bring nine
envelops to place a determined given amount of vocabulary for each parts
of speech. The teacher also guides them to take out a ( Noun), (Article + Noun)
or (Article + Adjective + Noun) to place them in the subject position. Then they
are asked to take a verb word from the verbs envelop and place it after the
subject they just formed, to then continue building the object phrase to
eventually have a complete sentence (Subject + Verb +
Object/Complement). This activity could be repeated as many times as
the facilitator consider. Daily practice shows language learners seems to
internalize grammar structure faster and more accurately.

Even though this technique is still waiting for scientific validation, the
Web Tool, FoxType Applications, (2017) https://lifehacker.com supports
this belief when it advertises “If you want to improve your grammar, you
may find it helpful to analyze how sentences are structured. FoxType does
the work for you, visually breaking down your sentences so you can see
how each word functions”. We could say that this very modern style of a
computer application to basically help students better their grammar
breaking and putting the pieces of a language together is based on the
same practice.

Then, to summarize, possessing excellent reading comprehension

opens the way to critical analysis to empower students to express their
opinion, giving as a result a professional with the right skills to comprehend
and objectively solve any problem. Breaking down the sentences can lead
you to better comprehension, but if you are new at learning a language you
can also use this strategy backwards to help you quickly internalize
grammar structures.