practice / IELTS Writing Task 2 / Grammatical Range & Accuracy
#GR7
Sentence fragment
A sentence fragment is a piece of a sentence — a dependent clause, a phrase, or a verb with no subject — punctuated as if it were complete on its own. It leaves the reader waiting for the rest. Our mainframes flag this as #GR7, and in IELTS Writing Task 2 it counts against Grammatical Range & Accuracy every single time.
Each item shows a fragment cut off from the sentence it belongs to. Retype it as one correctly joined sentence — capitalisation and the final punctuation mark don't need to match exactly, but every word and its position does.
Exam result
Step 1 Find the fragment — the piece that can't stand alone (starts with because/although, -ing/-ed, a preposition, such as/like, or a bare and/but/so).
Step 2 Find the sentence right next to it that it actually belongs to.
Step 3 Join them with a comma if needed, and read the result aloud to check it's one complete thought.
In your next essay, check every period — does the piece before it have its own subject and verb, and can it truly stand alone? If not, it's a fragment, not a sentence.