University:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Course:
21G.213 | High-Intermediate Academic Communication
Academic year:

2022
Views:

52

Pages:

2
Author:

Shyanne Johnson

Structures of Sentences All sentences contain the same basic elements: a subject and a verb The subject is who or what the sentence is about; the verb describes the subjects’s action or condition. However, these elements, subjects and verbs, can be combined in di erent ways. These are di erent types of sentence structures: 1. A simple sentence expresses a complete thought and consists of one subject and verb combination: The children ate pizza. The subject is children. The verb is ate. The children and their parents ate pizza. The children ate pizza and watched a movie. All of these are still simple sentences. Despite having either compound subjects or compound verbs, each sentence still has only one subject and verb combination. 2. Compound Sentences- combine two or more simple sentences to form one sentence that has multiple subject-verb ff ff combinations: The children ate pizza, and their parents watched a movie. I called my mom, but she didn’t answer the phone. The weather was stormy, so we cancelled our trip to the beach. Compound sentences join two di erent subject-verb combinations using a comma and a coordinating conjunction. 3. Complex Sentence- consists of an independent clause and one or more dependent clauses. Dependent clauses join a sentence using subordinating conjunctions. Some examples of subordinating conjunctions are although, unless, as soon as, since, while, when, because, if and before. I missed class yesterday because my mother was ill. Before traveling to a new country, you need to exchange your money to local currency. 4. Compound-Complex Sentence- can be created by joining two or more independent clauses with at least one dependent clause: After the earthquake struck, thousands of homes were ff destroyed, and many families were left without a place to live.