noun

There are many types of nouns that can be used in the English language. Children are usually taught that nouns are people, places, things or abstract ideas. There are no fewer than eight ways in which to classify a noun and it is important that homeschooled students and parents understand each of them.

Eight Types of Nouns

1. Proper Nouns: These are nouns that refer to very specific people, places or things. The rule of thumb is that these nouns should be capitalized. This type of noun applies to places such as Illinois, names of people such as Jessica and the names of places or institutions like Queen's University.
2. Common Nouns: These nouns are general in nature and are not capitalized. Take for example the proper noun St. Brice's Church; because of its reference to a specific church, it is a proper noun. But the word "church" used on its own is a common noun. This is a because it does not make reference to a specific church.

3. Countable Nouns: These nouns can be either singular or plural in nature and they are usually used in conjunction with words that reference quantity, such as most or many. Take for example the word table; it can be used as a singular noun "a table" or a plural noun "many tables".
4. Collective Nouns: These nouns, as their title implies, refer to a group. Collective nouns often reference a specific group. Take for example a "brigade of firemen" or a "grove of trees."
5. Abstract Nouns: Abstract nouns can be a little tricky to master because they refer to concepts, ideas and philosophies instead of physical things. For example abstract nouns can be things like courage, fear, hate and generosity.
6. Uncountable Nouns: These nouns cannot be counted they are often referred to as mass nouns. For example when saying, "The pool was full of water." The uncountable noun in this sentence is water. These nouns cannot be used in a plural form.

Read on 

• Understanding Nouns: Proper Nouns, Common Nouns and Pronouns
• The Seven Different Types of Pronouns
• Learning English as a Second Language

7. Concrete Nouns: These are nouns such as desk, water, Kevin, and cotton. These nouns can all be touched, smelt, tasted or seen. In order to be a concrete noun, it must be perceived by using one of the five senses.
8. Pronouns: These nouns can take the place of a noun when referring to people places or things. In English the personal pronouns are I, you, he, she, it and they. Depending on their function within a sentence these nouns can take on their possessive forms or their objective case. For example in the sentence, "She danced around the room," she is a singular personal pronoun. In the sentence "Allana danced around her room," her is a possessive form of the personal pronoun.

English morphology 2

ENGLISH MORPHOLOGY
Morphology is the field of linguistics that studies the internal structure of words. (Words as units in
the lexicon are the subject matter of lexicology.) While words are generally accepted as being the
smallest units of syntax, it is clear that in most (if not all) languages, words can be related to other
words by rules. For example, English speakers recognize that the words dog, dogs, and dog catcher
are closely related. English speakers recognize these relations from their tacit knowledge of the
rules of word formation in English. They infer intuitively that dog is to dogs as cat is to cats;
similarly, dog is to dog catcher as dish is to dishwasher. The rules understood by the speaker reflect
specific patterns (or regularities) in the way words are formed from smaller units and how those
smaller units interact in speech. In this way, morphology is the branch of linguistics that studies
patterns of word formation within and across languages, and attempts to formulate rules that model
the knowledge of the speakers of those languages.
A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit. In a word, the morpheme that carries the core
meaning of the word itself is called lexical morpheme or lexeme.
1. MORPHOLOGICAL TYPOLOGY
In the 19th century, philologists devised a now classic classification of languages according to their
morphology. According to this typology, some languages are isolating, and have little to no
morphology; others are agglutinative, and their words tend to have lots of easily separable
morphemes; while others yet are inflectional or fusional, because their inflectional morphemes are
"fused" together. This leads to one bound morpheme conveying multiple pieces of information. The
classic example of an isolating language is Chinese; the classic example of an agglutinative
language is Turkish; both Latin and Greek are classic examples of fusional languages. Italian is as
well.
English used to be a fusional language but is tending towards becoming isolating, just like Chinese.
This classification refers to inflectional morphology, not derivational morphology, which does not
vary so much across languages and is very rarely fusional.
2. TWO MORPHOLOGIES
Given the notion of a lexeme, it is possible to distinguish two kinds of morphological rules. Some
morphological rules relate to different forms of the same lexeme; while other rules relate to
different lexemes. Rules of the first kind are called inflectional rules, while those of the second
kind are called word formation. The English plural, as illustrated by dog and dogs, is an
inflectional rule; compounds like dog catcher or dishwasher provide an example of a word
formation rule. Informally, word formation rules form "new words" (that is, new lexemes), while
inflection rules yield variant forms of the "same" word (lexeme).
There is a further distinction between two kinds of word formation: derivation and compounding.
Compounding is a process of word formation that involves combining complete word forms into a
single compound form; dog catcher is therefore a compound, because both dog and catcher are
complete word forms in their own right before the compounding process has been applied, and are
subsequently treated as one form. Derivation involves affixing bound (non-independent) forms to
existing lexemes, whereby the addition of the affix derives a new lexeme. One example of
derivation is clear in this case: the word independent is derived from the word dependent by
prefixing it with the derivational prefix in-, while dependent itself is derived from the verb depend.
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3. CLOSED CLASS ITEMS VS. OPEN CLASS ITEMS
Words come in two varieties: functional words, and lexical words. The difference has to do with
their meaning (purely grammatical vs. lexical and referential), and with what you cam do out of
them: you can invent a new lexical word, but you have no power on functional words. Functional
words usually evolve from lexical words through a process called grammaticalization.
Ex. Will.
4. THERE IS NO LONGEST WORD IN ENGLISH
What is the longest word of the English language? Some have mentioned the following:
(1) a. antidisestablishmentarianism (28 letters)
b. floccinaucinihilipilification (29 letters)
c. pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanokoniosis (45 letters)
As it turns out, there is no longest word in English. To see this, consider simply the following two
series, each of
which can be continued without limit to create a potentially infinite number of new words:
(2) a. great-grandmother
b. great-great-grandmother
c. great-great-great-grandmother
...
(3) a. sensation
b. sensational
c. sensationalize
d. sensationalization
e. sensationalizational
f. sensationalizationalize
…….
5. COMPOUNDING
The simplest way to form new words out of old elements is by compounding.
Compounding in English normally has the following properties:
(i) Compounds have a head, which gives them their main semantic and syntactic properties.
Example:
-syntactically, the expression blackboard is a noun, as is its head board
-semantically, the expression blackboard refers to things that are kinds of boards, as the noun
board.
(ii) The head comes last
(iii) The stress comes first
(iv) The meaning of the whole is not entirely predictable on the basis of the meaning of the parts.
In the following examples, the syllable with the main stress is indicated in bold. In each pair, a. is
not a compound because (a) it has its main stress on the final element, and (b) the meaning of the
whole is entirely predictable from the meaning of the parts (e.g. a black board is simply a board
that is black). By contrast, b. is a compound: the main stress is on the first element, and the meaning
of the whole is not entirely predictable from the meaning of the parts (a blackboard may not be
black, but for instance green, as is the case in many classrooms).
(4) a. a black board:
a board that is black
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b. a blackboard:
a board for writing on with chalk in front of a class. It may or may not be black.
(5) a. a dark room: a room that is dark
b. a darkroom: a room from which daylight is excluded so that photographs can be processed.
There are sometimes instances of structural ambiguity in morphology. Thus a California history
teacher may be someone that teaches California history, or it may be a history teacher from
California. The first meaning is obtained by making California history a morphological constituent.
The second meaning is obtained by the morphological tree found on the right.
(6) California history teacher
a. N b. N
N N N N
teacher California
N N N N
California history history teacher
Types of compounds: how they are written
Since English is a mostly analytic language, unlike most other Germanic languages, it creates
compounds by concatenating words without case markers. As in other Germanic languages, the
compounds may be arbitrarily long. However, this is obscured by the fact that the written
representation of long compounds always contains blanks. Short compounds may be written in
three different ways, which do not correspond to different pronunciations, however:
1. The ‘solid’ or ‘closed’ forms in which two usually moderately short words appear together as
one. Solid compounds most likely consist of short (monosyllabic) units that often have been
established in the language for a long time. Examples are housewife, lawsuit, wallpaper, etc.
2. The hyphenated form in which two or more words are connected by a hyphen. Compounds that
contain affixes, such as house-build(er) and single-mind(ed)(ness), as well as adjective-adjective
compounds and verb-verb compounds, such as blue-green and freeze-dry, are often hyphenated.
Compounds that contain articles, such as mother-of-pearl and salt-and-pepper, are also often
hyphenated.
3. The ‘open’ or ‘spaced’ form consisting of newer combinations of usually longer words, such as
distance learning, player piano, lawn tennis, etc.
Usage in the US and in the UK differs and often depends on the individual choice of the writer
rather than on a hard-and-fast rule; therefore, open, hyphenated, and closed forms may be
encountered for the same compound noun, such as the triplets container ship/containership/
containership and particle board/particle-board/particleboard
Types of compounds: how they are interpreted
In general, the meaning of a compound is a specialization of the meaning of its head. The modifier
limits the meaning of the head. This is most obvious in descriptive compounds, in which the
modifier is used in an attributive or appositional manner. A blackboard is a particular kind of board,
which is (generally) black, for instance.
In determinative compounds, however, the relationship is not attributive. For example, a footstool is
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not a particular type of stool that is like a foot. Rather, it is a stool for one's foot or feet. (It can be
used for sitting on, but that is not its primary purpose.) In a similar manner, the office manager is
the manager of an office, an armchair is a chair with arms, and a raincoat is a coat against the rain.
These relationships, which are expressed by prepositions in English, would be expressed by
grammatical case in other languages. Both of the above types of compounds are called endocentric
compounds because the semantic head is contained within the compound itself -- a blackboard is a
type of board, for example, and a footstool is a type of stool.
However, in another common type of compound, the exocentric compound, the semantic head is
not explicitly expressed. A redhead, for example, is not a kind of head, but is a person with red
hair. Similarly, a blockhead is also not a head, but a person with a head that is as hard and
unreceptive as a block (i.e. stupid). And, outside of veterinary surgery, a lionheart is not a type of
heart, but a person with a heart like a lion (in its bravery, courage, fearlessness, etc.).
Note in general the way to tell the two apart:
1. Can you paraphrase the meaning of the compound "[X . Y]" to A person/thing that is a Y, or ...
that does Y, if Y is a verb (with X having some unspecified connection)? This is an endocentric
compound.
2. Can you paraphrase the meaning if the compound "[X . Y]" to A person/thing that is with Y, with
X having some unspecified connection? This is an exocentric compound.
Exocentric compounds occur more often in adjectives than nouns.
These types account for most compound nouns, but there are other, rarer types as well.
Coordinative, copulative or dvandva compounds combine elements with a similar meaning, and
the compound meaning may be a generalization instead of a specialization. Bosnia-Herzegovina,
for example, is the combined area of Bosnia and Herzegovina, but a fighter-bomber is an aircraft
that is both a fighter and a bomber. Iterative or amredita compounds repeat a single element, to
express repetition or as an emphasis. Day-by-day and go-go-go are examples of this type of
compound, which has more than one head.
In the case of verb+noun compounds, the noun may be either the subject or the object of the verb.
In playboy, for example, the noun is the subject of the verb (the boy plays), whereas it is the object
in callgirl (someone calls the girl).
Types of compounds: nouns, adjectives, verbs
Compound Nouns
• Boyfriend, hatchback
• Cut-throat, breakfast
• Sunshine, birth control
• Software, fast food
• In-crowd, overkill
• Drop-out, put-on
• Noun + Noun
• Verb + Noun
• Noun + Verb
• Adjective + Noun
• Particle + Noun
• Verb + Particle
Compound Verbs
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• Carbon-copy, sky-dive
• Fine-tune
• Overbook
• Bad-mouth
• Noun + Verb
• Adjective + Verb
• Particle + Verb
• Adjective + Noun
Compound Adjectives
• Capital-intensive
• Deaf-mute
• Coffee-table
• Roll-neck
• White-collar
• Before-tax
• Go-go
• Noun + Adjective
• Adjective + Adjective
• Noun + Noun
• Verb + Noun
• Adjective + Noun
• Particle + Noun
• Verb-verb
Phrasal verbs
English syntax distinguishes between phrasal verbs and prepositional verbs. Consider the following:
I held up my hand.
I held up a bank.
I held my hand up.
*I held a bank up.
The first three sentences are possible in English; the last one is unlikely. When to hold up means to
raise, it is a prepositional verb; the preposition up can be detached from the verb and has its own
individual meaning "from lower to a higher position". As a prepositional verb, it has a literal
meaning. However, when to hold up means to rob, it is a phrasal verb. A phrasal verb is used in an
idiomatic, figurative or even metaphorical context. The preposition is inextricably linked to the
verb; the meaning of each word cannot be determined independently but is in fact part of the idiom.
The Oxford English Grammar distinguishes seven types of prepositional or phrasal verbs in
English:
1. intransitive phrasal verbs (e.g. give in)
2. transitive phrasal verbs (e.g. find out [discover])
3. monotransitive prepositional verbs (e.g. look after [care for])
4. doubly transitive prepositional verbs (e.g. blame [something] on [someone])
5. copular prepositional verbs. (e.g. serve as)
6. monotransitive phrasal-prepositional verbs (e.g. look up to [respect])
7. doubly transitive phrasal-prepositional verbs (e.g. put [something] down to [someone]
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[attribute to])
Blendings
Definition: Similar to compounds, but parts of the words are deleted.
• Examples:
Motor + hotel  Motel
Breakfast + lunch  Brunch (1896)
Wireless + Fidelity  Wi-fi
Sheep + goat  Shoat
Tanganyika + Zanzibar  Tanzania (1964)
Spanish + English  Spanglish
Oxford + Cambridge  Oxbridge
Eletric + execute  electrocute
Black + exploitation  Blaxploitation (film genre)
Bill + Hillary  Billary (referring to the two Clintons)
Tom + Katie  Tomkat (referring to Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes)
Many blends have been created in recent years as names for new forms of exercise regimes, many
of them trade names: Aquarobics, Callanetics (the first name of Callan Pinckney blended with
athletics), Jazzercise (jazz + exercise), aquacise, dancercise, sexercise, and slimnastics. Among
sports we have terms like parascending (parachute + ascending) and surfari, and nonce adjectives
such as sportsational or swimsational which blend words with the last element of sensational.
The media, advertising and show business have been responsible for an especially large crop:
advertorial (an advertisement written as though it were an editorial); docutainment (a documentary
written as entertainment, with variable felicity concerning actual events), which is also known as a
dramadoc, from dramatised documentary, though this is a clipped compound, not a blend); an
infomercial is a television commercial in the form of an information announcement; infotainment
is a blend, in reality as well as etymology, of information and entertainment; a magalogue is a cross
between a magazine and a catalogue; a televangelist is a television evangelist. From the
entertainment field we have animatronics (a blend of animated and electronics), camcorder
(camera + recorder), rockumentary (a rock documentary) and, for a while in Britain, squarial (a
square aerial, used to receive satellite television signals).
Politics and the economy have a fair representation in the list. We have Clintonomics,
Reaganomics, and Rogernomics which all combine the name of a political figure with the word
economics. In similar vein are stagflation, a near-disastrous combination of stagnation and
inflation, and slumpflation (slump + inflation). The US has punning blends like Californicate.
Science and technology has been responsible for large numbers of new blends. Some wellestablished
ones are transistor (transfer + resistor), Chunnel (Channel + tunnel), smog (smoke +
fog); nucleonics (nucleon + electronics), and transputer (transistor + computer). However, there is
a set of new scientific words which fall somewhere in the same territory as blends but which also
could also be said to look like extended abbreviations or acronyms. An excellent example is
amphetamine, which comes from its full chemical name of alpha methyl phenyl ethyl amine. Such
creative mangling of names is now common when making up the vast number of trade and generic
names needed for new drugs: zidovudine, the generic name of the AIDS drug AZT, is formed from
azidodeoxythymidine with the letters vu inserted for no obvious reason; ranitidine, used to treat
stomach ulcers and better known by its trade name Zantac, is furan + nitro + –itidine.

English morphology

Discussion

Morphology is the subdivision of grammar that deals with the internal structure of words. Many words can be subdivided into smaller meaningful units called morphemes.

1. pen-s
   pre-judge-s
   walk-ed
   lock-ed
Many morphemes have more than one phonetic realisation. The variant phonetic manifestations of a morpheme are called allomorphs. Usually the selection of allomorph depends on the phonetic context in which it occurs in a particular word. For instance, the regular past tense ending spelled -ed is represented by /-d/ following a voiced sound as in 2a) and as/-t/ after a voiceless consonant as in 2b).
2. 
   

   2a.	allomorph /-d/	2b.	allomorph /-t/
   	tied		roped
   	buzzed		missed
   	logged		locked

Dividing words into morphemes can be problematic. While locked is segmentable into the root lock and the past tense ending -ed, a similar analysis cannot be applied to sang where internal vowel change is used to indicate past tense. Another awkward situation is where a grammatical function normally signalled by affixing is not overtly marked. For instance, while past tense is typically marked by -ed (or occasionally by internal vowel change as in sang), some monosyllabic verbs such as let, hit and put lack overt making of past tense. Instead, past tense is said to be marked by a zero morph. This analysis is controversial since morphs are supposed be actual phonetic forms. Even more intractable problems arise where isolating what appears to be the same morpheme leaves behind a residue of uncertain status. For example, dis- is identifiable as a negative morpheme in distrust and discontent. But what of dis- in distraught and disgruntled? Recognising it as a morpheme entails recognising also the implausible, non-recurring and semantically dubious morphemes -traught, and -gruntled . Morphology has two main subdivisions, namely inflection and derivation. Inflection deals with patterns of word structure that are determined by the role of words in sentences. For example, a pronoun like he has the forms he, him and his depending on whether it is subject, object or possessive in a given sentence. Derivation created new words with different meanings, e.g. maltreat from treat, or with different syntactic properties, e.g. the adverb quickly from the adjective quick. Compounding, the combination of nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs or prepositions to form complex words is also widely used.
3. 
   

   Noun	Adjective	Verb
   godparent	red-hot	lipread
   Noun + Noun	Adj. + Adj.	Noun + verb
   blueprint	underweight	fastforward
   Adj.+ Noun	Prep. + Noun	Adv. + verb

Compounds can be used to form bigger compounds:
4. ( hot-air) balloon
   (Adj.+ Noun) + Noun
Usually, but not always (cf. underweight) the right-hand element determines the syntactic class of the entire compound. Hence, it is the head of the compound. Conversion is also common. A word may change its class with no accompanying change in form if it is used in a particular syntactic context. Conversion is subject to idiosyncratic exceptions.
5. 
   

   Noun	Verb	Noun	Verb
   floor	to floor	ceiling	* to ceiling
   chair	to chair	settee	* to settee

How to write an essay

An essay (or composition) is a formal piece of writing about a particular topic, containing an introduction, a body and a conclusion. The title of an essay is often a controversial statement to which you have to respond. In the body of this kind of essay you have to discuss arguments for and against the statement, and then in the conclusion you should make it clear which arguments you think are strongest. As an example, consider the statement: Students at FIS should be required to wear school uniform. In the body of your essay you should discuss the arguments for and against. One way to do this is to follow each separate argument with a counter-argument as below:

• argument < > counter-argument
• argument < > counter-argument
• argument < > counter-argument
• argument < > counter-argument

Alternatively, you could discuss all the arguments in favour of the statement together in one block, followed by all the arguments against, as below:

• argument 1
• argument 2
• argument 3
  
  
• counter-argument 1
• counter-argument 2
• counter-argument 3

The first way is probably best if each argument for is balanced by an argument against, otherwise the second way is preferred. In both cases, however, it is best if your personal opinion is contained in the counter-arguments (i.e. the arguments that are listed second.)
As a further example, let's look at the title statement: Abortion is a crime. An outline response from someone who disagreed with the statement could look like this:

Introduction

• what is abortion
• short history
• very controversial issue
• some murders of doctors

Arguments for statement

• foetus is living thing
• foetuses will become humans
• we do not kill animals, babies after birth or retarded children
• many childless people, baby can be adopted

Counter-arguments

• abortions within few weeks, not a human - collection of cells
• if not aborted, terrible life
• what about if mother in danger?
• what about pregnant through rape?
• woman has right to choose what to do with own body

Conclusion

• personal choice

---

Below is an example of a complete essay entitled: Is it acceptable to cause the extinction of a butterfly in order to build a factory in a poor area?

Introduction

Palaeontologists believe there have been many periods in earth's history when large numbers of animals have suddenly become extinct. For example, the entire class of dinosaurs was wiped out over 60 million years ago. Another mass extinction happened at the time of the last ice age. Scientists believe, however, that the extinction we are experiencing now at the beginning of the 20th century is on an even larger scale and at a vastly more rapid speed. It is said that 3 to 4 species of plants or animals are becoming extinct every hour. One of the main reasons for the current extinction rate is the spread of industrialization all over the world. The building of a factory in a previously unspoilt habitat can lead to the destruction of another 3 or 4 species. Is this an acceptable price to pay for providing poor people with jobs?

Arguments against

There are many strong reasons to leave the habitat untouched and thus spare the butterfly from extinction. Butterflies are creatures of this earth just as humans are, and have the same rights to existence. Imagine what we humans would feel if a superior alien race informed us that they needed to use our planet as a massive factory to build their supersonic spaceships. Surely it is the duty of humans to protect more vulnerable species, not to destroy them.
Another powerful argument for leaving the butterfly in peace is that all creatures are part of a great linked chain. If one link is destroyed, then other parts of the chain are destroyed too. farmers know this only too well. If they drive away all the birds from their fields that are eating their seed, then there is no protection from an invasion of insects. Furthermore, very many important medicines have been developed from the parts of plants or animals. If we destroy the butterfly, we may also be destroying to chance of a cure for cancer or AidS.
There is a further argument against building the factory. A factory would not only destroy the immediate habitat but would also bring pollution to the whole area. This would affect the health of the people who worked in the factory and their children. The possibility of making money from tourists who come to a beautiful area to see a rare species would be gone.

Arguments for

There are also many powerful arguments for building the factory. As stated above, many species are lost every day so one more is not going to make a big difference. There are thousands of butterfly species still in existence, and it may even be possible to transfer the endangered colony to another habitat. This has been done successfully with other animals. Even is this is not possible, lepidopterists could collect samples of the butterflies before they disappear, and exhibit them in museums for anyone who wanted to see them.
A more powerful argument is to consider what would happen if the factory was not built. Without work, the poor people of the region would not have enough food to live a healthy life. We have seen the results of this in many deprived parts of the world. The people cut down the forests to provide wood for housing and heating. They also poach the animals to sell as trophies, pets or to make medicines, or simply to eat them. Alternatively, they may try to migrate and find work in Europe or North America. We can see the results every day on television as hundreds of illegal immigrants are stopped at the borders, or suffocate in container ships bringing them across the sea.
It is easy for someone who is rich, with a good job and a comfortable home, to plead for the protection of a an animal species in a habitat far away from where he lives. It would be a different matter if he was poor and unemployed, and could not feed his children. When the poor people of the region have attained a reasonable standard of living, they are much more likely to start considering how they can protect the environment in which they live.

Conclusion

Although there are powerful arguments for saving the butterfly, I believe that the factory should be built. Whatever anyone says, humans are a higher form of life than insects and have greater rights. Of course, we must do everything we can to protect our fellow creatures, but this does not mean that we should return to a way of life like 300 years ago before industrialization.

Syntax - English sentence structure

Introduction: This page contains some basic information about sentence structure (syntax) and sentence types. It also includes examples of common sentence problems in written English. ESL students who understand the information on this page and follow the advice have a better chance of writing well. [Note to teachers/advanced students] Definition: Linguists have problems in agreeing how to define the word sentence. For this web page, sentence will be taken to mean: 'a sequence of words whose first word starts with a capital letter and whose last word is followed by an end punctuation mark (period/full stop or question mark or exclamamtion mark)'. On the basis of this definition, some of the sentences written by ESL students (indeed by all writers) will be correct, and other sentences will be problematic. Good readers (English teachers, for example!) can quickly see the difference between a correct and a problematic sentence.

Subject/predicate: All sentences are about something or someone. The something or someone that the sentence is about is called the subject of the sentence. In the following sentences the subjects are shown in red. Note how the subject is often, but not always, the first thing in the sentence. John often comes late to class. My friend and I both have a dog named Spot. Many parts of the Asian coastline were destroyed by a tsunami in 2004. The old hotel at the end of the street is going to be knocked down to make way for a new supermarket. Sitting in a tree at the bottom of the garden was a huge black bird with long blue tail feathers. The grade 7 Korean boy who has just started at FIS speaks excellent English. On Saturdays I never get up before 9 o'clock. Before giving a test the teacher should make sure that the students are well-prepared. Lying on the sofa watching old films is my favourite hobby.

The predicate contains information about the someone or something that is the subject. The example sentences above are shown again, this time with the predicate marked in green. John often comes late to class. My friend and I both have a dog named Spot. Many parts of the Asian coastline were destroyed by a tsunami in 2004. The old hotel at the end of the street is going to be knocked down to make way for a new supermarket. Sitting in a tree at the bottom of the garden was a huge black bird with long blue tail feathers. The grade 7 Korean boy who has just started at FIS speaks excellent English. On Saturdays I never get up before 9 o'clock. Before giving a test the teacher should make sure that the students are well-prepared. Lying on the sofa watching old films is my favourite hobby. Do a quiz on the subject and predicate.

Simple subject/predicate: As you can see from the example sentences above both the subject and the predicate can consist of many words. The simple subject is the main word in the subject, and the simple predicate is the main word in the predicate. The simple subject is always a noun/pronoun and the simple predicate is always a verb. In the following sentences the simple subject is shown in red and the simple predicate is shown in green. My ESL teacher speaks a little Russian. The young girl with the long black hair fell from her bike yesterday in heavy rain. At the back of the line in the cafeteria yesterday was a large brown dog with a yellow collar around its neck! My friend and I are going on holiday together this year. Your mother or your father must come to the meeting. Sitting in a tree at the bottom of the garden was a huge black bird with long blue tail feathers. From the last three examples sentences above you will notice that the simple subjects and simple predicates can be more than one word.

Advice: To write strong, clear sentences you must know who or what you are writing about (subject) and what you want to say about them or it (predicate). Your writing will be more interesting if the subject is not the first thing in every sentence you write. Do a quiz to identify simple subjects and predicates.

Sentence types: One way to categorize sentences is by the clauses they contain. (A clause is a part of a sentence containing a subject and a predicate.) Here are the 4 sentence types: Simple: Contains a single, independent clause. I don't like dogs. Our school basketball team lost their last game of the season 75-68. The old hotel opposite the bus station in the center of the town is probably going to be knocked down at the end of next year.

Compound: Contains two independent clauses that are joined by a coordinating conjunction. The most common coordinating conjunctions are: and, or, but, so.) I don't like dogs, and my sister doesn't like cats. You can write on paper, or you can use a computer. A tree fell onto the school roof in a storm, but none of the students was injured.

Complex: Contains an independent clause plus one dependent clause. (A dependent clause starts with a subordinating conjunction. Examples: that, because, although, where, which, since.) I don't like dogs that bark at me when I go past. You can write on paper, although a computer is better. None of the students were injured when the tree fell through the school roof. Note: A dependent clause standing alone without an independent clause is called a fragment sentence - see below.

Compound-complex: Contains 3 or more clauses (of which at least two are independent and one is dependent). I don't like dogs, and my sister doesn't like cats because they make her sneeze. You can write on paper, but using a computer is better as you can easily correct your mistakes. A tree fell onto the school roof in a storm, but none of the students was injured although many of them were in classrooms at the top of the building.

Advice: Writing that contains mostly short, simple sentences can be uninteresting or even irritating to read. Writing that consists of mostly long, complex sentences is usually difficult to read. Good writers, therefore, use a variety of sentence types. They also occasionally start complex (or compound-complex) sentences with the dependent clause and not the independent clause. In the following examples the dependent clause is shown in red: Although it was raining, we decided to go fishing. If it doesn't rain soon, the river will dry out. Because the road was icy and the driver was going too fast, he was unable to brake in time when a fox ran into the road in front of him. Note: Sentences can also be categorized according to their function. [More] Note: Independent clauses are also called main clauses. Dependent clauses are also called subordinate clauses. Do a quiz to identify clause types.   Do a quiz to identify sentence types.

Problematic 'sentences': To write a correct sentence, you need to have a good understanding of what a sentence is. Students who don't have this understanding, or don't take care, often include problem sentences in their writing. Native English speakers are just as likely to write problem sentences as ESL students. There are three main types of problem sentence: Run-on sentences: These are two sentences that the writer has not separated with an end punctuation mark, or has not joined with a conjunction. (Click the following run-ons to see where they should be separated into two sentences.) I went to Paris in the vacation it is the most beautiful place I have ever visited. It's never too late to learn to swim you never know when you may fall from a boat. If you're going to the shops can you buy me some eggs and flour I want to make a cake. I like our new math teacher, she always explains the work very clearly. He was late to school again, his bus got caught in heavy traffic. Advice: It is helpful to read your written work aloud. When you speak, you will make natural pauses to mark the end of your sentences or clauses. If there is no corresponding end punctuation mark in your writing, you can be almost certain that you have written a run-on sentence.

Sentence fragments: Fragment sentences are unfinished sentences, i.e. they don't contain a complete idea. A common fragment sentence in student writing is a dependent clause standing alone without an independent clause. In the each of the following examples the fragment is the second 'sentence', shown in red: I don't think I'm going to get a good grade. Because I didn't study. She got angry and shouted at the teacher. Which wasn't a very good idea. He watched TV for an hour and then went to bed. After falling asleep on the sofa. She got up and ran out of the library. Slamming the door behind her. I have to write a report on Albert Einstein. The famous scientist who left Europe to live in the USA. After riding my bike without problems for over a year, the chain broke. 40 kilometers from my house! Advice: If your 'sentence' is a dependent clause, or it doesn't contain both a subject and a predicate, then it is not a proper sentence. You can often detect fragments if you read your writing backwards sentence by sentence, i.e. from the last sentence to the first one. You can usually correct a fragment by connecting it to the sentence before or after it. Good writers, who have a full understanding of the sentence, occasionally choose to write a sentence fragment. So you may see sentence fragments in the fiction or even some of the non-fiction you read. As an ESL student, however, you should avoid fragments (except when writing your own creative stories).

Rambling sentences: A rambling sentence is a sentence made up of many clauses, often connected by a coordinating conjunction such as and, or, so. John usually gets up before 7 o'clock, but yesterday his alarm clock did not ring, so he was still asleep when his boss called him at 10.30 to ask where he was and tell him that he would lose his job if he was late again. Although the blue whale has been protected for over 30 years and its numbers are increasing, especially in the North Pacific, where whale hunting has been banned, it is still at risk of extinction as its habitat is being polluted by waste from oil tankers and its main food, the plankton, is being killed off by harmful rays from the sun, which can penetrate the earth's atmosphere because there is a huge hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica. Advice: A rambling sentence is quite easy to spot. You have almost certainly written one if your sentence contains more than 3 or 4 conjunctions. If you read the sentence aloud and run out of breath before reaching the end of it, you have written a rambling sentence. If your sentence stretches over many lines of writing, you have certainly written a rambling sentence and most probably a run-on sentence too. Unlike run-ons or fragments, rambling sentences are not wrong, but they are tiresome for the reader and one of the signs of a poor writer. You should avoid them. Do a quiz to identify problematic sentences.

General advice: If you are not sure whether you have written a good, correct sentence, ask your teacher! And remember: The more you read in English, the better a writer you will become. This is because reading good writing provides you with models of English sentence structure that will have a positive influence on your own written work. Note: Good writing consists not only of a string of varied, correctly-structured sentences. The sentences must also lead from one to the next so that the text is cohesive and the writer's ideas are coherent. For information on these two important concepts, go to the Language words for non-language teachers page and click on Cohesion.