Do you know what structures are considered sophisticated?
There are some grammatical structures that native writers have in their writing but are missing in an ESL student’s writing. Unfortunately, students don’t have these structures in their writing but they also don’t know what structures to add. They don’t know what structures are sophisticated. When I have asked students, they say items like verb tense.
In this lesson, we are going to introduce briefly our two goals, identify the structures that are considered sophisticated and look at the first one of those structures: sentence structure.
Two goals: For grammar, we have two goals: add sophisticated grammatical structures to the grammar of your writing and to identify the individual problems you have in your writing and learn how to fix those structures. These two goals will make the grammar of your writing look like a native writer.
Sophisticated structures: So what are the structures that are considered sophisticated? Here is a brief list:
Sentence structure and variety
Clauses
Reducing
Phrases
Inverted order
So those are most of the structures that we consider sophisticated. As we go through, we will add more and discuss those structures I just listed in more detail.
Sentence Types. Let’s start off with sentence structure and variety by talking about sentence types. Do you know how many sentence types there are in English?
If you guessed four, you’re right.
Now, before we look at each one, let’s talk a little bit about why you should care about sentence types. Why do you need to know the sentence types?
Well, here are a couple of reasons:
1) If you create a sentence that is not one of these 4, you know your grammar has serious problems, 2) if you don’t create all the different sentence types, you know you don’t have variety and therefore, sophistication in the grammar of your writing and
3) knowing these basic sentence types will give you a foundation for understanding grammar and help you prevent some of the most common individual grammar problems in your own writing.
1.The first type is the simple sentence. To be a sentence in English, you need a subject and a verb. For example, women like to shop. A simple sentence could contain 1 subject + 1 verb. Some women like to shop. A simple sentence could also contain 2 subjects + 1 verb. Some women and men like to shop. A simple sentence could contain 1 subject + 2 verbs. Some women like to shop and like to talk a lot.
Here is what a simple sentence would like in simple chart form:
1.Simple sentence
1S + 1V
2S + 1V
1S + 2V
Please note that later we will talk about fragments and fragments occur because a lack of understanding of what a simple sentence is.
2. The second sentence type is the compound sentence. A compound sentence is two sentences. In between those two sentences, you can have what many call fanboys. Fanboys is not a word in English. It is just a simple way to remember the words that connect two sentences; those words are called coordinating conjunctions.
a. SV , fanboys SV
Let’s look at fanboys more. Please remember that fanboys is 3 letters or less. Don’t get confused. Because is not fanboys because it is more than 3 letters.
F = for. For means reason and we don’t use it in speaking much at all but we do use it in formal writing. Many women shop for they want to buy things for themselves and for others.
A = and. We use this conjunction for additional ideas, for further description of the first idea and sometimes for an additional time. Many women love to shop and they love to talk.
N = nor. This conjunction means that there are two negatives. Some women don’t like to shop nor do they love to talk a lot.
B = but. It means the opposite and is similar to yet. Some women love to shop but they don’t love to talk a lot.
O = or. It means choice. Some women go to expensive shops or they go to less expensive shops.
Y = yet and means opposite. Some women love to shop yet they don’t love to talk a lot.
S = so. It means result. Many want to buy things for themselves and for others so they shop.
If the first sentence is long, we need to put a comma before the fanboys. What would we consider long? Typically, if the sentence goes to the second line when typed, we would consider that long and put a comma. If the first sentence doesn’t go to the second line, we don’t have to put a comma.
b. In between two sentences, we can also use a semicolon (;). A semicolon means that the two sentences are closely related. However, we don’t like to use semicolons because they prevent us from doing more sophisticated grammar. As a general rule, use only 1 semicolon per page at the most.
You can also use a transition with a semicolon. A transition logically connects 2 sentences but doesn’t grammatically connect the sentences.
Ex: My dog is thin; she weighs fewer than 10 pounds.
Ex: My dog is cute; however, my dog is crazy. Notice that you need ; transition,
SV ; SV
SV; transition, SV
c. If the sentences aren’t closely related, we can use a semicolon but a transition to connect them. The transition helps logically connect them and the semicolon grammatically connects them. You cannot put just a transition between two sentences.
This example is wrong. For example, men like to watch sports however women don’t like to watch sports. You need a semicolon after the first sentence. For example, men like to watch sports; however, women don’t like to watch sports. After transitions, we always need a comma and that is why there is a comma after however.
Here is the chart for compound sentences
SV , fanboys SV
SV ; SV
SV; transition, SV
Please note that later we will talk about run-ons and comma splices and these occur because students don’t know what should go in between two sentences.
3. The third sentence type is the complex sentence. A complex sentence is a simple sentence plus at least one clause. There are three types of clauses in English: adverb clause, adjective clause and noun clause.
Women love to go to the mall because they like to shop. The sentence is women love to go to the mall and the clause is because they like to shop.
Students typically have 1 of 3 problems with complex sentences:
1) Students will use complex sentences but they will only put 1 clause in the sentence. We can use 3 to 5 clauses in just one complex sentence.
2) Students overuse the same type of clause and/or the same position of the clause.
3) Students will create fragments when they make more complex sentences.
We will talk in more detail after each we talk about the different clauses.
Here is a chart for complex.
SV + at least one clause
4. The fourth type of sentence is the compound-complex sentence. A compound sentence is two sentences and the complex is at least one clause.
So, a compound-complex sentence contains two sentences + at least one clause.
For example, this sentence is a compound-complex sentence.
Women love to go to the mall and they like to talk about the clothes that they bought after they go shopping.
The two sentences are “Women love to go to the mall and they like to talk about the clothes” and there are also two clauses: that they bought after they go shopping.
We will talk in more detail after each type of clause in later chapters so right now don’t worry about identifying clauses. For compound-complex, I have found two basic problems: some students don’t create them and a couple of students only use compound-complex sentences.
Here is a summary for compound-complex:
Two sentences + at least one clause
Now, let’s look at a summary for all 4 sentence types.
Sentence types. There are four sentence types: Simple, compound, complex and compound- complex.
1. Simple 3. Complex
1S + 1V 1 simple sentence + at least one clause (adjective, adverb or noun)
2S + 1V
1S + 2V
2.Compound 4. Compound-complex.
SV(,fanboys)SV one compound + at least one clause
SV ; SV
SV; transition, SV
One compound = two sentences
The two sentences can be joined in one of three ways:
With , fanboys
With a semicolon - ;
With a ; transition,
So we looked at our two goals, identified the sophisticated structures and looked at the first structure, sentence types. We said there are 4 sentence types in English.
We said that the second type, the compound sentence, can be combined using fanboys. Do you remember the words that stand for fanboys? Remember they are all 3 letters each. Here is a quick quiz to test your knowledge: