The reason why we're doing the hierarchy of word units first is because of the basic building blocks of English in the olden days, a time of history I refer to often. And I don't really mean to do that just as a weird kind of oddball thing, what I'm what I'm talking about, and you have to really either go behind my back and check or take my word for it. But when you look at the old books, they're just, they're just way more complicated. Even the children's books. Do me a favor, hit pause on this, and go take a look at some of the children's books from the old days, even something like the Beatrix Potter series. The Beatrix Potter series has words in it that would make a graduate school student confused.

In 2019, the tale of there's a tale where they have these little rabbits. right this is a Peter Rabbit and the you know how it begins? It says the the the effect of lettuces are soporific. They say the effects of lettuces are soporific. But I'm not a rabbit. So I wouldn't know.

That's all it's almost verbatim what they say well, soporific means sleepy. That's an essay t word. I made good money. In the old days. We're talking 20 years ago, back when the LSAT had vocabulary and while back when they had vocabulary and you know, antonyms and things like that sentence completions and what have you, but analogies they had, right the that stuff was a workout. That was a vocabulary test.

No doubt. But soporific was one of the words that We would use in LSAT prep for high school students. And soporific is a word that is used in Beatrix Potter, the tale of the Flopsy bunnies. So I'm not doing this so that I'm trying to, you know, convince you of some kind of weird thing or I've got some obsession with the old days, not at all. But what I'm telling you is back then they studied the trivium. grammar, logic and rhetoric are the first three steps of the trivium.

And they're vital. Knowing words, and what they mean. Well, that's the building block of the whole thing, isn't it? You need a base that's strong and you need units to support everything else. That metaphor works for practically everything. You're going to crawl before you walk.

You're going to be able to walk and dribble before you shoot a basketball. All of these You're going to need to get used to water and not sink before you can learn how to swim. I mean, this is one of those things that really goes without saying and why people get mysterious and weirded out by this kind of thing when it comes to academics, or it comes to literacy is a mystery that will never be solved. So I have a hierarchy of word units here for a reason, because I want you to be able to see and we'll go down, there's more, you're going to create some of your own things. But word units are the basic, this is kind of the trivium. But I've, I have to thank a site called grammar monster for this because this is the way that I teach.

And so the basic unit, of course, is the word. The word is the smallest meaningful unit in the sentence. phrase, this is what we are going to focus on on this lesson. But if you'll notice a phrase and here's the definition that you need to know if they give you an example of a phrase seven foot Tiger Shark because the word that they gave you is shark. That's a word. A phrase is simply simply a single piece of information made up of more than one word.

It's literally that simple. It doesn't have a subject, it doesn't have a verb. It's really a bunch of words in a logical order. That's your trivium. That's your grammar logic, right? The second part of that is logic, and then rhetoric, but that's the third part.

We'll get to that way later. But the phrase is a group of words. And that's it in an order that makes sense. Nothing more, nothing less a seven foot tiger shark. Alright, so the phrase part is where we're going to focus but take a look how it gets into things that you will then now sort of understand this hierarchy of word unit stuff and this this will be available Of course, for you to print. Right up, keep us notes, whatever you wish to do with it.

You have after phrase just basic. Now a little bit more complicated we have a clause when a seven foot Tiger Shark arrived. Oh, now that's a little bit different. A clause and it says it here a single piece of information made up of more than one word which contains a subject and verb. So now we have a seven foot tiger shark. And it's just bland phrase claws is more complicated when a seven foot Tiger Shark arrived.

There's your verb arrived right here. And you have shark as your subject. Now you have a sentence. A seven foot Tiger Shark arrived, period, subject shark, verb arrived. A shark arrived is your sentence and then it here says they said it's complete conveys a complete idea. It must contain at least one clause and then we've talked about this In basic grammar, a clause that stands alone as a sentence is known as an independent clause, a sentence has to be an independent clause.

So, and those are the three things that I talked about as well, right? I talked about a sentence having a subject, a verb and a complete thought. Those are my words. That's what I always say, because that's the thing where we have a sentence. So they say it that way. I've told you before that sentence has a subject of verb and a complete thought a seven foot Tiger Shark arrived is a complete sentence.

It has everything you need. It's an independent clause. Notice the clause up above when a seven foot Tiger Shark arrived. There's a missing piece. There's no the complete thought is missing. So that's not necessarily grammar thing when it you have the subject and the verb, but the complete thought isn't there.

That's why this doesn't qualify, this would be a dependent clause. Here's an independent clause as a sentence. complex sentence. So, it gets more complicated as we move up the hierarchy when a seven foot Tiger Shark arrived, comma, the crew stopped fishing. So now you have a complex sentence here. And this is an independent clause supported by at least one other clause.

So interestingly enough, the independent clauses the second one after the comma, the crew stopped fishing. That's a sentence. That's your sentence. That's actually the main sentence the subject is crew and they stopped fishing is your verb. So here you have when a seven foot Tiger Shark arrived, comma, the crew stop fishing so you have a dependent clause. And an independent clause and that is a complex sentence.

So now you have By the way, you can have a comma here because you have an dependent clause and an independent clause. Those of you who've done other classes with me know, if you have two independent clauses, you can't put a comma there. And that's a test thing that we've talked about before. compound sentence. These can get very long, they didn't give you a very long one here, but you have a seven foot Tiger Shark arrived, comma and have the crew stopped fishing. And now you have what we were talking about before two independent clauses.

A seven foot Tiger Shark arrived is an independent clause. This can be its own sentence. The crew stop fishing is also an independent clause. So you have two sentences and they've been combined with a comma And you have to have that they could have put a semi colon. But it wouldn't flow as well. You want to write in a smooth manner a seven foot Tiger Shark arrived semi colon, the crew stop fishing.

But you know, we're people and we want writing to sound smooth and we want it to be enjoyable and or informative or educational. We want it to be having a use. And so you are going to eventually be doing this and you're going to write with intent to teach or intent to fulfill a task like a report or some kind of document that you need to do for work or for school. Right? There's going to be a purpose for it. It's got to be done well.

So here you have a compound sentence with the division here done the right way. And the Cousteau right so seven foot Tiger Shark arrived, comma and the crew stop fishing. This is your top of the hierarchy and it's at least note it says at least two independent clauses. It could be more Look at the first page of Herman Melville's Moby Dick. You'll find a sentence there that, gosh, it's gotta be easily a long paragraph. And it is a single sentence.

There are clauses divided up and split and set up at a certain way. And it's a long, complex compound sentence. And it's written correctly. It's a long sentence, it has everything you need. And the complete thought is a really complicated, complete thought where he's talking about his wish to go back to the sea. And it's correct.

It's long, it's complicated. The Elite want to sound like a conspiracy theorist, the elite read Moby Dick. How come it's not in your curriculum? Why was it taken out? Go find it. You can go to Gutenberg and find it.

Read it, and you'll see exactly what I'm talking about. And so now it's your turn to operate at their level. The fact that they've watered down your schooling doesn't mean that you have to play the same game. You can go put on, you know all the cheat codes and understand all the complicated things that they do. So that's our conspiracy theory. rant of the day.

So here what you would do is create your own complex sentence, begin with a word and work your way out. So you're starting in the middle and working right out both before and after. So we can change this we have the dog now we can have the barking dog. Okay, ah, the barking dog. What did the barking dog do? Let's put a verb ran down the street.

Okay, since I learned how to type Everything will be fine. Do we put something before it? Alright, so um, let's see tongue hanging out. The barking dog ran down the street. All right, so that's a complex sentence. Let's see if we wanted to make it even more complex or maybe compound sentence.

Let's see the tongue hanging out the barking dog down the street in a panic All right, so we have a complex sentence, you could make a compound sentence if you wanted to put a independent clause here. But notice what I started off with, I started off with the dog. I try wanted to make that bold, but you see what I'm doing here, right? So here you have all of these things, starting off with a single word, and we're making it more complicated. That's how you're going to practice, you're going to have something that you need to do something you need to write, and you're going to have complicated thoughts about it. And then you're going to take those complicated thoughts, and you're going to put them on paper, you're going to put them on digital paper in word or you're going to write them down, whatever you're going to do.

You're going to do that in writing. You're going to start simple. Start with short, terse sentences, and then work your way out if you need to tomorrow. complicated, complex compound thoughts and explain yourself in writing. You can do the same things in spoken word, start short, start small, go to small, easy, digestible chunks. And then you're going to add as your thought complexity increases as your intellectual defense and your internet and then eventually your intellectual offense comes into play, you can create and explain in a way that most people can't.

And then basically, you'll be able to either change minds or make more money, or being a person of note of some sort, you'll be able to do all of those things. And look, it'll be to your benefit. So that's our introduction to the hierarchy of words. It's great thing to take a look at. I will have it available for you. And let's go on now to phrases because that's the focus of this section of our literacy boot camp.