Lesson Transcript
Instructor Bethany Calderwood Show bio
Bethany is a certified Special Education and Elementary teacher with 11 years experience teaching Special Education from grades PK through 5. She has a Bachelor's degree in Special Education, Elementary Education, and English from Gordon College and a Master's degree in Special Education from Salem State University.
Before you can start and write a good paper, letter, job application, or business report, you need to be able to write a correct and interesting sentence. In this lesson, you will learn the parts of a sentence and how to organize sentences effectively. Updated: 11/26/2022
Table of Contents
- Ingredients of a Sentence
- The Subject & the Verb
- Choosing Words
- Complements & Normal Word Order
- Examples
- Lesson Summary
A baker will tell you that fresh, quality ingredients make a better cake. A builder will tell you that solid, quality materials make a better building. As writers, we need quality materials for good writing. If you want to be a better writer, the first step is to learn how to start and write an excellent sentence.
A sentence has four basic parts:
- Capitalization: A sentence begins with a capital letter.
- Punctuation: A sentence ends with one of three punctuation marks: a period ( . ), a question mark ( ? ), or an exclamation point ( ! ).
- Subject: The subject is a word that tells who or what the sentence is about.
- Verb: The verb is a word that tells the action or condition of the subject.
Capitalization and punctuation are fairly simple to understand (although people often ignore them in casual writing and texting). Therefore, we will only examine the subject and verb more closely.
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- 0:04 Ingredients of a Sentence
- 1:03 The Subject & the Verb
- 1:52 Choosing Words
- 3:23 Complements & Normal…
- 4:11 Examples
- 4:51 Lesson Summary
The subject of the sentence is usually a noun, which is a word that names a person, place, thing, or idea; or a pronoun, which replaces a noun.
Here are some examples of subjects:
- Nouns: Mom, Lucas, teacher, cat
- Pronouns: I, you, he, she, it, we, they
The verb can be an action verb, which is a word that shows action, or it can also be a linking verb, which connects the subject with a word that describes or renames it.
Here are some examples of verbs:
- Action verbs: eat, sleep, run, swim
- Linking verbs: be, seem, appear, become
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Now that we know the four basic sentence ingredients, we can build a sentence. First, let's choose a subject and a verb. How about ''cat'' for the subject? Now think about something the cat might do. Let's use the action verb ''hide.''
Once we choose a verb, we also need to choose a tense. The tense tells when the action happens: in the past, in the present, or in the future. For example, yesterday the cat ''hid,'' today the cat ''hides,'' and tomorrow the cat ''will hide.''
Finally, the verb must agree with the subject in number. This means that the words make sense whether you have a single subject or multiple. One cat ''hides,'' but two cats ''hide.''
Our sentence has one cat and is past tense, so our verb is ''hid.''
So far, our sentence has two words: ''cat'' and ''hid.'' You don't often see a two-word sentence, and it isn't very interesting. To add information, there are a few options.
- Modifiers are words that describe. The words ''a,'' ''an,'' and ''the'' are modifiers called articles.
- Adjectives describe nouns and pronouns.
- Adverbs describe verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs.
Let's add these modifiers to our sentence: the, yellow, yesterday.
Objects are words that receive the action of the action verb. We can ask what the cat hid. Maybe it was ''keys.'' We can add a modifier to make it ''my'' keys.
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When the verb is a linking verb, there needs to be a subject complement. A complement is a word that comes after a linking verb. It's either an adjective that describes the subject, or it's a noun that renames the subject.
To practice using complements, we will make a second sentence. We will keep the subject ''cat,'' and add a linking verb ''was.'' Now we can choose a complement. We will use the adjective ''sneaky.''
Let's note one more point before assembling our sentence. In English, most sentences follow what's called normal word order. Normal word order is:
subject + action verb + object
or
subject + linking verb + complement
Each modifier should be placed close to the word it modifies in order to avoid confusion.
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Sentence One:
- Subject: cat
- Action verb: hid
- Modifiers: the, yellow, yesterday, my
- Object: keys
The yellow cat hid my keys yesterday.
Sentence Two:
- Subject: cat
- Linking verb: was
- Modifier: the
- Complement: sneaky
The cat was sneaky.
We have two complete sentences. Notice both sentences begin with a capital letter and end with a period. There are other rules to writing sentences, but these basics will have to do until you read other lessons.
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A sentence begins with a capital letter, has a subject and verb, and ends with a punctuation mark. The four parts of a sentence are capitalization, punctuation, subject, and verb. Let's review some of the kinds of words that can go into a sentence.
- Noun: Names a person, place, thing, or idea
- Pronoun: Replaces a noun
- Action verb: Shows action
- Linking verb: Connects the subject with a word that describes or renames it
- Adjective: Describes nouns and pronouns
- Adverb: Describes verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs
- Modifier: Description words
- Object: Receives the action of the action verb
- Complement: An adjective or noun that comes after a linking verb
The tense tells when the action happens: in the past, in the present, or in the future. Remember your agreement, making sure the verb agrees with the subject in number. When putting your sentence together, attend to normal word order, which is: subject + action verb + object, or subject + linking verb + complement.
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