Compound Sentences, Take 2

From our first experience with compound sentences, I see that many of you still don't have it down. So we're going to try again, and I'll explain it a bit differently.

As we get more mature and adult in our lives, we also want to be more mature and adult in our writing. So something like this...

I like to ride my bike. I hate skating.

sounds babyish. So what we want to do is combine the two ideas into one compound sentence by joining the two sentences with a comma and a conjunction, like this:

I like to ride my bike, but I hate skating.

See? More sophisticated, right? You still have a complete sentence on both sides of the comma/conjunction, but the writing is more grown-up.

Now, there are situations where you want to join two thoughts, but you don't need two complete sentences in one compound sentence. This happens when your two separate sentences have the same subject (who the sentence is about) or the same verb (the action of the sentence). Let me show you.

I like baseball. I watch it on TV.

Both of these sentences have the same subject (I), so you don't need a compound sentence. You can combine them so that you have one subject and the two verbs (like and watch), like this:

I like baseball and watch it on TV.

Even though there is the conjunction joining the two ideas, it's not a compound sentence because only what's on the first side of the conjunction (and) can stand alone as its own sentence.

Here's another example with a shared verb.

Debbie rides bikes. I ride bikes.

If it were a compound sentence, it would sound a little babyish: Debbie rides bikes, and I ride bikes. So we want to combine these two ideas two have two subjects (Debbie and I) that share one verb (ride), like this:

Debbie and I ride bikes.

Starting to make more sense?

So for the homework this week, please create three sentences in which you combine two sentences into a compound sentence. Then, create three sentences in which you combine two sentences into one sentence with a shared subject or shared verb.