English Sentence Structure - English Grammar Lesson

by DuoCards
Hi, I’m Olivier.
Welcome to Oxford Online English!
In this lesson, you can learn about sentence structure in English.
You’ll learn how to construct all kinds of sentences in English, from the simplest
possible sentences, to long, complex sentences which contain many different ideas.
To begin, a question:
What’s the simplest sentence you can make in English?
What does every sentence in English need?
Every sentence needs a verb.
The simplest sentence is an imperative, which means when you tell someone to do something.
For example:
Run!
Leave!
Work!
These are the simplest complete sentences you can make in English; they’re just one
word long!
Of course, most sentences are longer than this.
Most sentences that are longer than one word also need a noun before the verb.
This noun is the subject.
With a subject plus a verb, you can make simple sentences like:
He runs.
She left.
They’re working.
You can see that the verb can be in different forms: past or present, simple or continuous.
The verb form doesn’t change the structure of the sentence.
These are all the same: subject plus verb.
Of course, these sentences aren’t very interesting.
You can’t say much with short sentences like these.
Let’s add a little more information.
Take the sentence he runs.
What could you add after runs to make it longer?
You could add an adverb of place:
He runs around the park.
You could add an adverb of time:
He runs every morning.
You could add both:
He runs around the park every morning.
You could add an adverb of manner:
He runs slowly.