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Studying Sentence Patterns to
Improve Your Writing: Part One |
Many English learners have spent a lot of time studying
the parts of speech: adjectives, nouns and verbs, for
example. But sometimes studying the English sentence
from a larger perspective is useful.
One way to get a bigger view of English is to study
common sentence patterns.
The English language has many patterns. In the book
Rhetorical Grammar, author Martha Kolln describes seven
common sentence patterns. In other writings, she says
that 95% of sentences in English fit into basic
patterns.
Understanding and mastering common patterns will not
only help you do better on grammar tests, but improve
your writing skills, too.
For example, here is a passage written by Ernest
Hemingway, a famous American author. It comes from the
short story “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place.” The story is
one of the most famous ones that Hemingway wrote.
"This is a clean and pleasant café. It is well lighted.
The light is very
good and also, now, there are shadows of the leaves.”
Do you notice patterns in these sentences? If you do not
recognize them, you will by the end of this report! In
this installment of Everyday Grammar, we are focusing on
two of the most common patterns in English.
Pattern #1: Subject + BE +
Subject Complement*
Consider a line from the song “Beautiful,” by Christina
Aguiliera:
“I am beautiful.”
The line shows the foundation of most sentences in
English:
Sentence = Subject (noun phrase) + predicate (verb
phrase)
A phrase is a group of words that act as a unit. A noun
phrase has an important noun, the headword noun, along
with words and phrases that give more information about
it. The subject of a sentence is the whole noun phrase –
not just the noun!
The predicate is a verb phrase with a main verb and the
words and phrases that give more information about it.
If you take the sentence from the Aguilera song, you can
analyze it like this:
Subject Predicate
I am beautiful
In this sentence, the adjective beautiful acts as the
subject complement. It describes “I,” the subject.
So, the song lyric is the first important sentence
pattern in English.
Pattern #1
Subject + BE + Subject Complement
The subject complement can be either an adjective or a
noun phrase.
For example, consider this line from the music group
Queen.
“We are the champions.
We are the champions.”
In that line, the subject is “we.”
The predicate, “are the champions,” contains the BE verb
along with a subject complement, “the champions.” This
noun phrase is describing the subject, “we.”
You might find sentences that appear more complicated
but use the same basic structure.
Consider this song by the Beatles:
Baby, you're a rich man
Baby, you're a rich man
Baby, you're a rich man
At first, the sentence appears complicated, but the
basic structure of the sentence remains the same:
Subject + BE + Subject complement.
The difference is that the sentence has added
information, a noun that is the same as the subject of
the sentence.
Baby, you're a rich man.
Noun, SUB + BE + Subject Complement
Pattern #2: Subject + BE +
Adverbial
The Subject + BE + Subject Complement pattern is not the
only pattern you will find with the verb BE.
Consider these two sentences:
1) My friends are at the concert.
2) The test was yesterday.
In these examples, the subject and the BE verb are
followed by adverbials, which are, in this case, words
or phrases that tell where or when.
In the first sentence, the adverbial structure is the
prepositional phrase “at the concert.”
In the second sentence, the adverbial structure is the
adverb “yesterday.”
These examples show another common BE structure: Subject
+ BE + Adverbial.
What does this have to do with
Hemingway?
Think back to the Hemingway passage from the beginning
of this story.
"This is a clean and pleasant café. It is well-lighted.
The light is very
good and also, now, there are shadows of the leaves.”
The second sentence clearly uses a Pattern #1 sentence:
Subject BE Subject Complement
It is well-lighted
But if you look closely, you will see every sentence in
the passage uses Pattern #1. Two of the sentences use
conjunctions, but they still depend on the same basic
pattern.
"This is a clean and pleasant café. It is well-lighted.
The light is very
SUB.+ BE +SUB COMP SUB.+BE+SUB COMP SUB. + BE
good and also, now, there are shadows of the leaves.”
+SUB COMP.
Hemingway was famous for his short, declarative style.
However, he did not write using basic pattern 1 and 2
sentences only! Good writers know how to make their
sentences come to life. They do not write the same
sentences over and over again!
What can you do?
To help you start recognizing these patterns, I am going
to give you four more sentences written by Ernest
Hemingway.
Your homework is to identify which of the two basic
patterns he is using. Please remember that sometimes
Hemingway uses additional words. Just focus on finding
the basic structure – pattern 1 or pattern 2. We will
give you the answers next week in the comments section
and on our Facebook page.
Here are the sentences:
1. "He is a good lion, isn't he?"
- from “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber”
2. "He must be eighty years old."
– from “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”
3. "He was only in a hurry.“
– also from A Clean, Well-Lighted Place
4. "The treatment is for tomorrow."
– from “Great News from the Mainland"
I'm Jonathan Evans.
I'm Jill Robbins.
And I'm John Russell.
John Russell wrote this story for Learning English.
Kelly Jean Kelly was the editor.
*To learn more about these patterns, read Martha Kolln's
Rhetorical Grammar: Grammatical Choices, Rhetorical
Effects. |
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