Topic 23

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INTRODUCTION
This topic is fully integrated in the decree 112/2007 of the Valencian Comunity
since it establishes the importance of enhancing writing skills of our students
Ìn order to understand the topic in a better way and due to the huge amount of
information we can find about it, Ì have decided to organize it in the following
way:
In the first section we are going to deal with the definition, the general
characteristics and the types of sentences we can find. SecondIy, we will
explain which are the parts that form it and their concord. After that, we will see
the word order in positive, negative, interrogative, directive and exclamatory
sentences. FinaIIy, a conclusion about the topic will be drawn.
Ìt is of crucial importance that students know the grammar of a language, in this
case English, in order to fully understand it and be capable of communicate. We
find written instructions, guidelines, research reports, news. and a list of
countless things which cannot be misunderstood. The sentence pervades
everything we do, in all parts of our life. We imagine in sentences, we speak in
sentences and we teach our students to write in them. However, sentences are
not easy to define. This matter is of special importance in the case of our
students, which are foreign language speakers, because sometimes they not
know how to deal with sentences. Consequently, our task as teachers is to
explain them in great detail which are the parts that constitute them and which
are the types they can find. This way they will be able to use them correctly and
as a last resort, they will be able to communicate with efficiency.

1. DEFINITION, CHARACTERISTICS AND TYPES OF SENTENCES
Ìf one has a look to the old definition of sentence: "a complete expression of a
single thought¨, rapidly discovers that this is very far from what we understand
as sentence nowadays. Our students need an updated one which makes them
clearly see what really a sentence is.
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We can find a complete and present definition in the Collins Dictionary, which
says that a sentence is "a sequence of words capable of standing alone to
make an assertion, ask a question or give a command, usually consisting of a
subject and a predicate containing a finite verb¨.
However, there are some other characteristics which need to be taken into
account and that apply to any English sentence:
- First, we have to bear in mind that sentences are constructed according
to a system of rules, known by the entire adult mother ÷ tongue speakers
of the language.
- We also have to take into account that the sentence is the larger
construction to which rules of grammar apply. The formation of larger
units such as paragraphs and texts is studied by other disciplines.
- And finally, we have to underline that sentences may contain punctuation
marks which will help us to find out what type of construction we are
dealing with.
Before going deeply in the explanation of the parts of the sentence, it is
necessary to end this section by making a brief description of the different
types we can find. This will be essential for our students as they will discover
that sometimes, sentences are not grouped the same way as in Spanish. We
must teach them that sentences in English can be grouped into two main types,
on the basis of whether they are constructed in a regular or irregular way.
Regular sentences are often referred to as major irregular sentences as minor.
- sentences are almost the vast majority we can find in any text.
They are split into simple sentences and multiple sentences. The simple
ones are those which only contain one clause, for example: A black dog
has bitten Jane. The multiple ones are those which contain more than
one clause, for example: A black dog has bitten Jane and a white dog
has bitten Peter. Within the multiple sentences we have compound ones
where the clauses are linked by coordination as in: Charles went by bus
and Mary by train and complex sentences where the clauses are linked
by subordination as in: Sue answered the door when Mike rang the bell.

Major
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- sentences, as said above, are those which are not constructed
in a regular way. They use abnormal patterns which cannot be clearly
analysed into a sequence of clause elements. That's the reason why
later, we are going to see the parts of major sentences only. There are
only a few minor sentence types, but instances of each type are
frequently used in everyday conversation, notices, headlines, labels or
advertisements. Examples of them are proverbs such as ike father, like
son, interjections such as Shhh!, instructions like Mix well, notices like
For Sale or words and phrases used as exclamations: Nice day!,
questions: Taxi? or commands: All aboard!.

. PARTS OF THE SENTENCE
ow it is moment to focus on the parts which constitute a sentence. They must
be clearly explained to our students because as it happens with the types, there
are some differences regarding the rules that apply to the Spanish language.
Simple sentences consist of two interrelated parts: The Subject and the
Predicate. The subject is what or whom the sentence is about, while the
predicate tells something about the subject. Ìn the sentence Joe is washing his
car, Joe is the subject and washing his car is the predicate.


Regarding to the subject of a sentence, several criteria combine to identify it. Ìt
usually appears before the verb in statements as in Mary fell, and after the first
verb in questions as in Are you going far? The subject controls whether the verb
is singular or plural in the third person of the present tense as in She watches
T.V. The subject also controls the form of certain objects and complements as
in I shaved myself and He shaved himself. Our Spanish students have
problems with this part of the sentence because they tend to forget that in
English, the subject can't be omitted, except in directive statements, for
example: Ìn Spanish we can say Comí demasiado, but in English we cannot
say: Ate too much, we need to put the subject before the verb: I ate too much.
Minor
The Subject
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But, what can be a subject? We have the following elements:
O Noun phrases like The lovely girl
O A noun like Bob
O A pronoun like She
O A gerund like dancing and a infinitive like to sleep


On the other hand, the predicate is usually preceded by the subject and there is
concord between them both as regards number and person.
As it happens with the subject, the predicate is constituted by different
elements. But all these may not always be present in a given sentence. Ìn the
example The horse jumped the fence rapidly, we have apart from the verb an
object: the fence and an adverbial: rapidly. However we can skip these two
elements and the sentence has still sense: The horse jumped.
O The ;erb eIement (V) expresses a wide range of meanings, such as
actions, sensations, or states of being. Ìt plays a central role in sentence
structure. Ìt is the most obligatory of all the elements, as it can't be
omitted. We can say The old farmer drinks beer in the pub, but the
sentence The old farmer beer in the pub is not correct.
The choice of the verb actually determines, to a large extent, what other
elements can be used in the sentence. Once we have 'picked' our verb,
certain other things are likely to happen. Ìf we pick the verb go, we can
stop the sentence without fear of being ungrammatical: That farmer's
going. Verbs of this type, which can be used without an object, are called
intransiti;e verbs. Ìf we pick enjoy, another element has to follow. We
cannot say That farmer's enjoying. Ìt has to be That farmer's enjoying his
drink, with the object present. Verbs which require an object are
traditionally known as transiti;e ;erbs. Ìn other occasions some verbs
can be followed by two objects: The farmer gave Sue a drink. These are
called ditransiti;e.
The Predicate
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O Object eIements (O) identify who or what has been directly affected by
the actions of the verb. They usually follow the subject and the verb in a
sentence. An object can be: noun phrases, including single nouns as in I
saw Fred. Ìt also can be a pronoun as in Fred saw me and finally it can
be a subordinated clause like She said I had been foolish. Two types of
object can be distinguished: direct and indirect.
The direct object (O
d
) typically refers to some person or thing directly
affected by the action expressed by the verb, as in the sentence The little
boy smashed a window, where the direct object window is the thing that
is smashed. The indirect object (O
i
) typically refers to an animate being
that is the recipient of the action. Ìn these cases, a direct object is usually
present in the sentence as well as in She gave the dog a stroke where
the direct object is a stroke and the recipient of the verb is the dog, it is,
the indirect object.
O The compIement eIement (C) gives further information about another
element. Complements can be: noun phrases as in Susan is journalist,
adjective phrases as in Arthur is very happy, pronouns as in This is him
and some subordinate clauses as in That's what I replied.
A subject compIement (C
s
) usually follows the subject and verb. The
verb is most often a form of be, but it may also be one of several other
verbs. Ìn the sentence He is a doctor, the subject complement is a
doctor. An object compIement (C
O
) usually follows the direct object,
and its meaning relates to that element. Ìn the sentence They elected
him president, the word president is the object complement.
O The ad;erbiaI eIement (A) can be: adverb phrases as in They ran very
quickly, prepositional phrases as in We strolled in the garden, some
nouns and noun phrases as in That girl phoned me this morning and
some subordinated clauses as in The children roared when they saw the
clown.
Adverbials can be used in several possible positions within the sentence
(though most commonly at the end), we can say: He asked me twice or
Twice he asked me. Furthermore, they can express a wide range of
meanings, such as manner as in Jim stayed quietly, space as in Jim
stayed in bed and time as in Jim stayed all day.
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After revising the elements which form the subject and the predicate, it is time
now to explain how these units have a certain feature in common, the way they
agree, this is referred to as concord, and we can find three types of it:
O rammaticaI concord occurs when elements formally agree with each
other. The most important within this group is concord of number,
singular subjects take singular verbs and plural subjects take plural
verbs. As example we can take the following sentences: My cat has a
meal in the evening and My cats have a meal in the evening.
Grammatical concord is also seen in nouns as complements, which
agree with their corresponding subjects or objects in number: That is an
apple, Those are apples.
O NotionaI concord occurs when the verb agrees with the singular or
plural meaning of the subject, regardless of any grammatical marker. Ìn
the sentence Two miles is a long way, the verb is singular because two
miles is viewed as a single entity.
O Concord of proximity occurs when the verb agrees with the number of
a nearby noun, rather than with the real subject, as in No one except his
friends agree with him.

. WORD ORDER IN THE SENTECE
Once the elements that constitute sentences have been explained, it is time
now to see how they combine and which is the result of this process. We must
highlight to our students that the combination we make of the elements, jointly
with the intonation and the punctuation marks, will be determinant when
expressing our feelings. They need to be aware of the fact that if they do not
combine the elements correctly they will be misunderstood and therefore, the
message conveyed will completely change.
The elements combine into a very small number of patterns. Ìn fact, most
sentences can be analysed into one of only seven basic clause types. The
basic combination is that of Subject + Verb: Mary sang. Then, elements are
Concord
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increasingly added to the Subject until we can form a sentence with a Subject +
Verb + Object + Adverbial like Mary put the lamp on the desk.
However, the sentence elements are sometimes combined in a different
sequence. This specially happens with negative statements, questions,
directives and exclamations, although there are some cases in positive
statements, too.
O Positi;e statements
A statement is a sentence whose purpose is primarily to convey
information. Two criteria usually apply: the sentence contains a subject
and this precedes the predicate where the verb is found.
Ìn positive statements the information conveyed is affirmative and the
patterns follow the seven clause types explained above. However, some
exceptions are observed as it is the case of inversion, where the
predicate or part of it comes in front of the subject. otice, for example,
how emphatic the following sentence becomes when an element which
normally occurs towards the end is placed at the beginning: lisabeth
Clark her name is!

O Negati;e statements
The purpose of negative statements is the same as the positive ones and
the criteria which apply for them also applies for negative however the
information conveyed here is not positive but negative. The elements are
also combined in a different way as we have to introduce "not¨ between
them.
Ìf the sentence contains the verbs To Be or To have, "not¨ is placed
immediately after them as in They are not playing or They have not
arrived. Ìf the sentence doesn't contain them but one of the rest, "not¨ is
placed between the auxiliary and the verb as in He does not like her.

O "uestions
"uestions are sentences that seek information. They do not follow the
basic clause patterns as we need to introduce other elements so they
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can be considered as such. They fall into three main types, depending on
the kind of reply they expect, and on how they are constructed.
- Yes - no questions allow an affirmative or negative reply, often just
"yes¨ or "no¨. The turning point is that the auxiliary verb is placed before
the subject and we give the sentence a rising intonation as in o you
agree?
- Wh- questions allow a reply from a wide range of possibilities. They
include a question word, such as what, why, where or how, which as a
rule come first in the sentence Where do you live?
- AIternati;e questions require a reply which relates to the options given
in the sentence. They always contain the connecting word or as in Will
you travel by train or by car?
- Tag questions also expect the reply "yes¨ or "no¨ and they are found at
the end of the sentence. They consist of an auxiliary + a pronoun as in
ou don't like milk, do you?

O Directi;es
Directives are sentences which instruct someone to do something. They
are often called commands, but this term is somewhat misleading.
Commanding is just one of the many uses of directive sentences. Other
uses are inviting as in Have a drink with me tonight, warning as in Mind
your head on the beam or advising as in Take an aspirin. They don't
follow either the basic clause patterns as there is usually no subject
element present and the verb is in its basic form as in Sit down
immediately!

O ExcIamations
Exclamations are sentences whose main role is to express the extent to
which speakers are impressed or aroused by something. They often take
the form of a single word or short phrase such as osh! Or Oh dear! ,
but, exclamations can also have the following structure: the first element
begins with What or How, and is followed by a subject and a verb, in that
order as in What a lovely day it is! or How I used to hate grammar! So, as
you can see they don't follow either the basic clause patterns.
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. CONCLUSION
As a conclusion, Ì would like to mention again the importance of grammar in our
student's life. At first sight the word order in English sentences does not seem
to be a difficult obstacle to overcome for our Spanish speakers. However, as
foreign language teachers we are all aware of the problems that this difference
causes to some of our students who still produce wrong sentences. So, what
can be done to improve our students' awareness of word order in sentences?
There are some practicaI acti;ities that deal with it, we can use for example
an activity based on a domino game. We choose an appropriate conversation to
the level of our students and we convert it into a domino. We prepare a set of
traditional dominoes, each one with two halves and we put one sentence in
each half. The key is that both halves have the same information but different
element organization. For example: Hello. My name is Leslie / Hello. Ìs my
name Leslie?. The students will have to construct the conversation by playing
domino, that is, choosing the appropriate sentence with the correct order.
Learning about the structure of sentences helps them to control their own
writing and speaking. This is very much related with the can -do concept as
only through the use of different sentence types they will be able to produce
varied and interesting written and spoken examples.
As said before, all these formal aspects of the language are essential for
students to achieve a real linguistic competence because jointly with a
pragmatic one will develop their own communicative competence. Ìn other
words, and as the Common European Framework for languages states, our
students will be able to effectively communicate in English language in any
given context.





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ILIORAPHY
- Crystal, D. (2004) #ediscover rammar. Longman
- Hewings, M. (2005) Advanced rammar in Use. Cambridge University
Press
- Leech, G. Svartvik, J. (1975) A communicative grammar of nglish.
Pearson Education