Studying Sentence Patterns to Improve Your Writing, Part One

2025 · VOA Learning English

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

Transcript

1. Many English learners have spent a lot of time studying the parts of speech: adjectives nouns and verbs, for example.

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2. 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.

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3. The English language has many patterns. In the book Rhetorical Grammar, author Martha Kolln describes seven common sentence patterns.

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4. Understanding and mastering common patterns will not only help you do better on grammar tests, but improve your writing skills, too.

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5. 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.”

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6. The story is one of the most famous ones that Hemingway wrote. "This is a clean and pleasant café.

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7. It is well lighted. The light is very good and also, now, there are shadows of the leaves.”

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8. Do you notice patterns in these sentences? If you do not recognize them, you will by the end of this report!

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9. In this installment of Everyday Grammar, we are focusing on two of the most common patterns in English.

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10. ​The line shows the foundation of most sentences in English: A sentence equals a subject, or a noun phrase, plus a predicate

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11. or a verb phrase. A phrase is a group of words that act as a unit.

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12. A noun phrase has an important noun, the headword noun, along with words and phrases that give more information about it.

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13. The subject of a sentence is the whole noun phrase not just the noun!

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14. The predicate is a verb phrase with a main verb and the words and phrases that give more information about it.

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15. If you take the sentence from the Aguilera song, you can analyze it like this: The subject is "I," and the predicate is "am

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16. beautiful." In this sentence, the adjective beautiful acts as the subject complement

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17. It describes “I,” the subject. So, the song lyric is the first important sentence pattern in English.

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18. Pattern number one is: subject plus "be," plus subject complement. The subject complement can be either an adjective or a noun phrase.

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19. For example, consider this line from the music group Queen. “We are the champions.

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20. We are the champions.” In that line, the subject is “we.”

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21. The predicate, “are the champions,” contains the "be" verb along with a subject complement, “the champions.”

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22. This noun phrase is describing the subject, “we.” You might find sentences that appear more complicated but use the same basic structure.

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23. 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

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24. structure of the sentence remains the same: subject plus "be," plus subject complement.

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25. 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.

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26. Or noun, subject, plus "be," plus subject complement.

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27. 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.

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28. In the first sentence, the adverbial structure is the prepositional phrase “at the concert.”

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29. In the second sentence, the adverbial structure is the adverb “yesterday.”

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30. These examples show another common "be" structure: subject plus "be," plus adverbial.

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31. Think back to the Hemingway passage from the beginning of this story. "This is a clean and pleasant café.

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32. It is well-lighted. The light is very good and also, now, there are shadows of the leaves.”

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33. well-lighted. The sentence is: It is well-lighted.

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34. But if you look closely, you will see every sentence in the passage uses pattern number one.

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35. Two of the sentences use conjunctions, but they still depend on the same basic pattern. Hemingway was famous for his short, declarative style.

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36. However, he did not write using basic pattern one and two sentences only! Good writers know how to make their sentences come to life.

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37. They do not write the same sentences over and over again!

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38. To help you start recognizing these patterns, I am going to give you four more sentences written by Ernest Hemingway.

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39. Your homework is to identify which of the two basic patterns he is using. Please remember that sometimes Hemingway uses additional words.

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40. Just focus on finding the basic structure pattern one or pattern two. We will give you the answers next week in the comments section and on our Facebook page.

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41. from A Clean, Well-Lighted Place 3. "He was only in a hurry."

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42. "The treatment is for tomorrow." from Great News from the Mainland I'm Jonathan Evans.

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