The Secret To Writing Perfect Sentences.

As an Advanced Level English teacher, one of the most common mistakes I find with many students is their inability to write sentences correctly. Today, English classes are based upon standardized English books where everything that is taught is reduced into small teachable chunks on a subject-based page rather than as a complete lesson that addresses everything thoroughly and correctly.

As a consequence of this, three things happen:
(a) All students are taught in the same way regardless of their learning style.
(b) Important aspects of the language such as sentence structure are taught quickly to meet the needs of a schedule rather than meeting the standards of quality education.
(c) Consequently, students' knowledge of the language is often basic rather than complete.

In this article, we will address part of this issue, that is specifically related to how to write sentences correctly.

All of the parts of speech in English are used to make sentences. All sentences include two parts: the subject and the verb (this is also known as the predicate). The subject is the person or thing that does something or that is described in the sentence. The verb is the action the person or thing takes or the description of the person or thing. If a sentence doesn’t have a subject and a verb, it is not a complete sentence (e.g., In the sentence “Went to school,” we don’t know who went to school).

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Here’s your quick introduction to the basic English sentence structure.

Simple, compound, and complex sentence structures

There are three types of sentences: simple, compound, and complex. The type of sentence is determined by how many clauses, or subject-verb groups, are included in the sentence.

A simple sentence structure has one independent clause: “I rode my horse.”

A compound sentence has at least two independent clauses: “I got in my car, and I drove into town.” In that sentence, both clauses can stand on their own as complete sentences.

A complex sentence includes an independent clause and one or more dependent clauses: “I got in my car and then went to town.” In that sentence, “I got in my car” works as a complete sentence but “then went to town” does not.

Most sentences in English are constructed using one of the following five patterns:

Subject–Verb

Subject–Verb–Object

Subject-Verb–Adjective

Subject-Verb–Adverb

Subject-Verb–Noun

The subject is the person or thing taking an action or being described in the sentence. The verb is the action the subject takes.

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Subject–Verb

This type of sentence begins with a core sentence such as “David talks.” Here, “David” is the subject, and “talks” is the verb. Different parts of speech can be added to expand the sentence.

You can add an adverb to make the sentence “David talks quickly,” or you can add an expression of time to tell when he talks, e.g., “David talks all morning.”

Subject–Verb–Object

These sentences begin with a core sentence such as “She is playing a piano.” In this sentence, “She” is the subject, “is playing” is the verb, and “a piano” is the object.

You can add elements to expand the sentence, such as an adjective (e.g., “She is playing a small piano”) or an adverb (e.g., “She is playing the piano beautifully”).

Subject-Verb–Adjective

This type of sentence begins with a core sentence like “He is handsome.” Here, “he” is the subject, “is” is the verb, and “handsome” is the adjective.

Like the other types of sentences, you can expand on the sentence by adding other parts of speech, such as “He is very handsome,” where “very” serves as an adverb.

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Subject-Verb–Adverb

These sentences begin with a core sentence such as “The girl walked away.” In this sentence, “the girl” is the subject, “walked” is the verb, and “away” is the adverb.

You can add elements to this type of sentence, such as “The girl slowly walked away,” where “slowly” is an adjective describing how the girl walked.

Subject-Verb–Noun

Sentences of this type begin with a core sentence such as “The professor is a woman.” Here, “the professor” is the subject, “is” is the verb, and “a woman” is the noun. As with the other sentence types, you can add words or phrases to expand on the sentence. For example, you can add the adjective “intelligent” and the adverbial phrase “at the university” to say “The professor at the university is an intelligent woman” to describe the professor more and tell where she works.

Well, I hope that this simple, yet complete description of sentence structure helps you to improve your English and to continue your learning journey to achieving an Advanced level of English.

Good luck and good studying.