120 hr. TEFL Course Module 4-Writing (Pt.2 Sentence Structure)

Module 4: Writing

4.1 Sentence structure

In your studies of reading and comprehension, your students have developed some basic skills in understanding the language as they come across it. Now that they have a basic understanding of English sounds and words, it is time to help them learn how to put those sounds and words together to create sentences that convey meaning. We will start at the beginning and look at how sentences are structured in the English language.

4.1.1 Basic sentence patterns

There are five basic patterns for sentence structure in English, and they differ in the elements that are present within the sentence. Any two sentences, however, no matter how different they are, contain two things: a subject and a verb. For a sentence to work, there needs to be a person or thing that is doing or being something (subject) and an action or state of being that they are committing or portraying (verb). Here are the five basic sentence patterns that your students will encounter in the English language:

• Subject-verb (S-V): This is the simplest sentence pattern in the English language, only containing the information that needsto be there. Here are a few examples of sentences that follow the subject-verb pattern:
  • Mark ran.
  • Maria slept.
  • The dog plays.
  • Jimmy fell.

• Subject-verb-object (S-V-O): Sentences that follow this pattern are very similar to S-V sentences except that an object has been added to the sentence. In an English sentence, the object is what is being acted upon by the subject. In other words, the noun (subject) is acting (verb) upon another noun (object). Here are a few examples of sentences that follow the subject-verb-object pattern: 
  • Mark ran to the store
  • Maria slept in bed.
  • The dog plays outside.
  • Jimmy fell to the floor.