Academic Writing: Common Sentence Patterns, Part Three

2025 · VOA Learning English

This speaker is a general-american model. Each line below can be recorded and scored against it.

Transcript

1. From VOA Learning English, this is Everyday Grammar. English has many patterns

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2. Basic grammatical patterns can explain the structure of around 95 percent of sentences in English, says Martha Kolln, a grammar expert.

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3. Learning and mastering these patterns can help you improve your writing and speaking skills. We have discussed three common patterns in previous Everyday Grammar stories.

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4. Today we will explore another common pattern: the intransitive verb pattern. To start you thinking about intransitive verbs consider this passage.

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5. It is from the poem "The human family" by famous writer and poet Maya Angelou.

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6. We love and lose in China, we weep on England's moors and laugh and moan in Guinea, and thrive on Spanish shores.

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7. By the end of this story, you will be able to recognize and understand the intransitive verb pattern that Angelou uses many times in the stanza

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8. verbs go, come, walk, cry, or laugh, for example. In these verbs, the subject's action is not applied to an object.

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9. In other words, most intransitive verbs can end sentences; they do not need nouns or adjectives to their right.* The lines from the classic American song

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10. "Just Friends" give an example of the intransitive verb pattern in its most basic form: We loved, we laughed, we cried However,

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11. sentences with just the subject and intransitive verb are not very common in writing or speaking.

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12. Usually, the sentence has more information: an adverbial structure.

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13. Adverbials: Adverbials are words or phrases that give information about time, place, manner, or reason. Adverbials answer questions like How often?

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14. Where? Why? When? The two most common adverbial structures you will find are adverbs and prepositional phrases.

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15. Adverbs, such as suddenly, quickly, here, soon, or sometimes, modify a verb.

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16. Prepositional phrases are groups of words that begin with a preposition and are followed by an object, usually a noun phrase.

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17. Common prepositions include in, on, at, between, above, and below.

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18. Adverbs and prepositional phrases often follow intransitive verbs. Think back to the basic intransitive verb pattern.

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19. Subject Intransitive verb It is grammatically correct to say a simple sentence like this: We laughed

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20. Subject Intransitive Verb You can put more information into the sentence by adding an adverb: We laughed loudly

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21. Subject Intransitive Verb Adverb Or you could give even more information by adding a prepositional phrase: We laughed at the man's

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22. Subject Intransitive Verb Prepositional Phrase In intransitive verb patterns, adverbs or prepositional phrases are often

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23. referred to as "optional." In other words, a sentence is still grammatical without them.

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24. You, as the speaker or writer, choose how much information you want to include in the sentence.

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25. Now, think back to the part of Maya Angelou's poem: We love and lose in China, we weep on England's moors, and laugh and moan in Guinea,

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26. and thrive on Spanish shores. You can see that every single line uses an intransitive verb paired with a prepositional phrase.

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27. Consider the first line: We love and lose in China.

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28. The subject is 'we' and two intransitive verbs 'love' and 'lose'** are paired with the prepositional phrase, in China.

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29. The two verbs are joined by a conjunction, and

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30. The second line follows the basic intransitive verb pattern, but it has an optional

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31. prepositional phrase: The second two lines follow the same patterns as the first two lines.

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32. This series of patterns is an example of parallelism, which you can read about in an earlier Everyday Grammar story.

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33. To practice using the intransitive verb pattern, try writing four lines of poetry in the style of Angelou's poem.

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34. Post your writing in the comments section of this story, or on our Facebook page.

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35. Just put your own words into the pattern we discussed today.

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36. Learning this pattern, and other patterns discussed in previous grammar stories, will not only help you study the writing of great authors.

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37. These patterns will help you write and speak in your own clear, concise sentences, too.

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