Texas 8th Grade ELA Standards in Oral and Written Conventions

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8 Oral and Written Conventions

• 19 Students understand the function of and use the conventions of academic language when speaking and writing. Students will continue to apply earlier standards with greater complexity.
  • A use and understand the function of the following parts of speech in the context of reading, writing, and speaking:
    • i verbs (perfect and progressive tenses) and participles;
    • ii appositive phrases;
    • iii adverbial and adjectival phrases and clauses;
    • iv relative pronouns (e.g., whose, that, which); and
    • v subordinating conjunctions (e.g., because, since);
  • B write complex sentences and differentiate between main versus subordinate clauses; and
  • C use a variety of complete sentences (e.g., simple, compound, complex) that include properly placed modifiers, correctly identified antecedents, parallel structures, and consistent tenses.
• 20 Students write legibly and use appropriate capitalization and punctuation conventions in their compositions. Students will continue to apply earlier standards with greater complexity.
  • A use conventions of capitalization; and
  • B use correct punctuation marks, including:
    • i commas after introductory structures and dependent adverbial clauses, and correct punctuation of complex sentences; and
    • ii semicolons, colons, hyphens, parentheses, brackets, and ellipses.
• 21 Students spell correctly. Students are expected to spell correctly, including using various resources to determine and check correct spellings.