Names?
(Sentence_combining2.doc)
Sentence combining: Exercise 2
The following passage was taken from David Malakoff’s “Global Warming.”1
A decade ago a small crowd of politicians and environmentalists gathered on a steamy
summer day outside the alabaster dome of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., and peered
into a hole in the ground. The earthen cavity was cool and soothing, but the people were hot
and bothered. The sapling they were supposed to plunk into the hollow to commemorate a
new clean-air law was stuck on a truck in traffic. Turning to a bystander, one sweaty
lawmaker compared the delay to the trouble he was having convincing colleagues to take
seriously another emerging environmental threat. “At the rate we’re going,” he quipped, “That
little tree will be a redwood by the time we do anything about the greenhouse effect.”
Little did that observer, the late Representative George Brown, a feisty California
Democrat, know how right he might be. In 1988, just a few years before the tree planting, a
prominent NASA climate scientist named James Hansen had appeared before Congress
during a record heat wave and sparked a political firestorm by announcing that the science
was conclusive: People were warming the earth by pumping carbon dioxide (CO2) from
tailpipes and smokestacks into the atmosphere, where the gases trapped heat like the glass
in a greenhouse. Television newscasts and newspapers led with the story, moving an issue
that had drifted in political backwaters squarely into the mainstream.
For each compound, complex, or compound-complex sentence, first identify the main
clause; then, identify the simple sentences that have been combined or embedded (as
reduced clauses) into the sentence. I’ve provided one example and several hints. Use
Exercise response style for your responses.
1. A decade ago a small crowd of politicians and environmentalists gathered on a
steamy summer day outside the alabaster dome of the U.S. Capitol in Washington,
D.C., and peered into a hole in the ground.
Simple sentence
2. The earthen cavity was cool and soothing, but the people were hot and bothered.
The earthen cavity was cool and soothing.
The people were hot and bothered.
3. The sapling they were supposed to plunk into the hollow to commemorate a new
clean-air law was stuck on a truck in traffic.
The sapling was stuck on a truck in traffic.
1
Audubon, (December 2003), 44-48. I’ve chosen the opening paragraphs from pages 45 and 46.
Your Names?
Sentence combining: Exercise 2
July 28, 2016
Page 2
4. Turning to a bystander, one sweaty lawmaker compared the delay to the trouble he
was having convincing colleagues to take seriously another emerging environmental
threat.
5. “At the rate we’re going,” he quipped, “That little tree will be a redwood by the time
we do anything about the greenhouse effect.”
He quipped something.
6. Little did that observer, the late Representative George Brown, a feisty California
Democrat, know how right he might be.
Little did that observer know something.
That observer was the late Representative George Brown.
7. In 1988, just a few years before the tree planting, a prominent NASA climate scientist
named James Hansen had appeared before Congress during a record heat wave and
sparked a political firestorm by announcing that the science was conclusive:
8. People were warming the earth by pumping carbon dioxide (CO2) from tailpipes and
smokestacks into the atmosphere, where the gases trapped heat like the glass in a
greenhouse.
9. Television newscasts and newspapers led with the story, moving an issue that had
drifted in political backwaters squarely into the mainstream.