How to Make Your Own

English Sentences
By
R. Yeni Dewi Cahyani,S.S., M.Pd.
Part of Speech
Understanding Parts of Speech
Sentences are made up of words. More specifically, they are made up of parts of
speech. A part of speech defines what a word does in a sentence.
The parts of speech are:
• Noun: A person, place or thing. Examples: Cat, table, king.
• Pronoun: A word used in place of a noun. Examples: He, she, they.
• Verb: An action word. Examples: Swim, is, write.
• Adjective: A word that modifies (changes) or describes a noun or another
adjective. Examples: Beautiful, white, shiny.
• Adverb: A word that modifies or describes a verb. (It shows how something is
done.) Examples: Quickly, carefully, brightly.
• Preposition: A word that describes the relationship to a noun. Examples: From,
under, until.
• Conjunction: A connecting word. Examples: And, but, although.
PARTS OF SENTENCE
Subject
• Subject: NOUN: A person, animal, place, thing, or concept that
does an action.
• Determine the subject in a sentence by asking the question:
“Who or what?”

• Example:
• I like spaghetti.→ who like spaghetti? I → so “I” is the subject
• He reads many books.
Predicate
• Verb: Expresses what the person, animal, place, thing, or
concept does.
• Determine the verb in a sentence by asking the question:
“What was the action or what happened?”

Example:
• I like spaghetti.
• He reads many books.
• The movie is good.
Object
• Object: NOUN: person, animal, place, thing, or concept that
receives the action.
• Determine the object in a sentence by asking the question:
“The subject did what?” or “To whom?/For whom?”

Example:
• I like spaghetti.
• He reads many books.
Prepositional Phrase
• Prepositional Phrase: A phrase that begins with a preposition
(i.e., in, at for, behind, until, after, of, during) and modifies a
word in the sentence.
• A prepositional phrase answers one of many questions. Here
are a few examples: “Where? When? In what way?”

Example:
• I like spaghetti for dinner.
• He reads many books in the library.
Basic English sentence structure
• All the parts of speech in English are used to make sentences.
• All sentences include two parts: the subject and the verb (this is
also known as the predicate).
• The subject is the person or thing that does something or that is
described in the sentence.
• The verb is the action the person or thing takes or the
description of the person or thing.
• If a sentence doesn’t have a subject and a verb, it is not a
complete sentence (e.g., In the sentence “Went to bed,” we don’t
know who went to bed).
Here’s your quick introduction to the basic English sentence
structure.
• There are three types of sentences: simple, compound, and complex.
• A simple sentence structure has one independent clause:
“I rode my bike.”

• A compound sentence has at least two independent clauses:

“I got in my car, and I drove into town.”
In that sentence, both clauses can stand on their own as complete sentences.

• A complex sentence includes an independent clause and one or more

dependent clauses:
“I got in my car and then went to town.”
In that sentence, “I got in my car” works as a complete sentence but “then
went to town” does not.
Most sentences in English are constructed using one of the
following five patterns:

Subject–Verb
Subject–Verb–Object
Subject–Verb–Adjective
Subject–Verb–Adverb
Subject–Verb–Noun

The subject is the person or thing taking an action or being described in the sentence.
The verb is the action the subject takes.
The object of a sentence is the person or thing that receives the action of the verb. It is the
who or what that the subject does something to.
Subject–Verb

This type of sentence begins with a core sentence such as

“Jane walks.”
Here, “Jane” is the subject and “walks” is the verb. Different parts
of speech can be added to expand the sentence.
You can add an adverb to make the sentence
“Jane walks quickly.”
or you can add an expression of time to tell when she walks,
e.g., “Jane walks all morning.”
Subject–Verb–Object
• These sentences begin with a core sentence such as
“She is playing a piano.”
In this sentence, “She” is the subject, “is playing” is the verb, and
“a piano” is the object.
• You can add elements to expand the sentence, such as an
adjective
“She is playing a small piano
or an adverb
(e.g., “She is playing the piano beautifully”).
Subject–Verb–Adjective

• This type of sentence begins with a core sentence like

“He is handsome.”
Here, “he” is the subject, “is” is the verb, and “handsome” is the
adjective.

• Like the other types of sentences, you can expand on the

sentence by adding other parts of speech, such as
“He is very handsome,” where “very” serves as an adverb.
Subject–Verb–Adverb
• These sentences begin with a core sentence such as
“The girl walked away.”
In this sentence, “the girl” is the subject, “walked” is the verb, and
“away” is the adverb.

• You can add elements to this type of sentence, such as

“The girl slowly walked away,” where “slowly” is an
adjective describing how the girl walked.
Subject–Verb–Noun
Sentences of this type begin with a core sentence such as
“The professor is a woman.”
Here, “the professor” is the subject, “is” is the verb, and “a woman” is
the noun.

As with the other sentence types, you can add words or phrases to
expand on the sentence. For example, you can add the adjective
“intelligent” and the adverbial phrase “at the university” to say
“The professor at the university is an intelligent woman”
to describe the professor more and tell where she works.
EXERCISE
Build this simple sentence into longer sentence.
Example:
- I eat
- I eat hamburger
- I eat delicious hamburger
- I and my friend eat delicious hamburger
- I and my friend eat hamburger deliciously at the restaurant
Do As Example
Do these exercises
1. (Noun Verb)
2. (Noun conjunction Subject Verb)
3. (Noun Verb Adjective Noun)
4. (Noun Verb Prepositional phrase )
5. (Noun Verb Adverb)
6. (Noun Verb Adjective Noun Adverb)
7. (Noun Verb Adjective Noun conjunction Subject Verb adverb Adjective)
8. (Noun Verb conjunction Verb adverb Prepositional phrase)
9. (Conjuction Noun Verb Adjective, Subject Verb Adjective Prepositional phrase)
10. (Noun Verb Adverb Conjunction Subject Verb Adjective Noun)