Five Basic Sentence Patterns – (Sentence Construction)

There Are Six Basic Sentence Patterns In English

FIVE BASIC – In English lessons, writing sentences follow certain patterns where each component has a significant relation with other components.

five basic
Photo taken from Freepik

Each component in the sentence serves an important function. There are eight parts of speech that are commonly used in constructing sensible sentences: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, articles, conjunctions, pronouns, and prepositions.

In writing sentences, it is vital that we do not only check on our spelling and grammar, but also the proper usage of certain words and observe their proper placements. 

Before learning about the sentence patterns, it is also important to first learn about nouns, verbs and sentence parts.

For the patterns, there are five basic sentence patterns:

  • Subject/Predicate – Action Verb
    The simplest pattern that is only composed of a subject and an action word.

    Example: The boy sang. (The boy is the subject followed by an action word ‘sang’)
  • Subject/Predicate – Transitive Verb – Direct Object
    This sentence pattern includes a direct object. A direct object is an object in the sentence that receives the action of the verb in the sentence.

    Example: The boy sang a song. (The direct object in this sentence is the word ‘song’)
  • Subject/Predicate – Intransitive Verb – Subject Compliment
    This pattern includes a linking verb, a verb that ‘links’ the subject to another word in the sentence that modifies it.

    Example: The boy is exhausted. (The word ‘is’ functions as linking verb in this sentence.
  • Subject/Predicate – Transitive Verb – Indirect Object – Direct Object
    An indirect object is featured in this sentence. The indirect object is the word in the sentence that is set as the target of the direct object.

    Example: The boy gave her a gift. (The word ‘her’ functions as the indirect object)
  • Subject/Predicate – Transitive Verb – Direct Object – Object Compliment

    Example: The boy sang the song he liked. (The phrase ‘he liked’ compliments the direct object in this sentence which is ‘song’)

These are based on an article from Englishmistakeswelcome.com.

Did you find this article helpful? Let us know!

Leave a Comment