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

Colm 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.

Consider a line from the song Beautiful by Christina Aguilera.

I am beautiful. The line shows the foundation of most sentences in English. A sentence equals

a subject, or a noun phrase, plus a predicate, or a verb phrase. A phrase is a group of words

that act as a unit. A noun phrase has an important noun, the head word 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 a sentence and a verb

phrase from the Aguilera song, you can analyze it like this.

The subject is I and the predicate is 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 number one is subject plus be plus subject complement.

The subject complement can be either an adjective or a noun phrase. For example, consider the

line from the music group Queen. We are the champions, we are the champions.

In that line, the subject is we. The predicate, or 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 plus be plus 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. Or, noun, subject plus be plus subject complement.

The subject plus be plus subject complement pattern is not the only pattern you will find

with the verb be. Consider these two sentences. My friends are at the concert. 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 plus be plus adverbial.

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

one structure. The subject is it. The be verb is is. The

subject complement is well lighted. The sentence is it is well lighted.

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

one. Two of the sentences use conjunctions, but they still depend on the same basic pattern.

Hemingway was famous for his short, declarative style. However, he did not write using basic

pattern one and two sentences only. Good writers know how to make their sentences come to life.

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

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 one or pattern two. We will give you the answers

next week in the comments section and on our Facebook page. Here are the sentences. Thank you.