VOA · Everyday Grammar
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Everyday Grammar digs into one grammar topic per episode — verb tenses, prepositions, sentence patterns — with plenty of spoken examples. Because you are listening to language about language, it doubles as grammar review while you train your ears.
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01Many English learners have spent a lot of time studying the parts of speech, adjectives, nouns, and verbs, for example.
02But sometimes studying the English sentence from a larger perspective is useful.
03One way to get a bigger view of English is to study common sentence patterns.
04The English language has many patterns.
05In the book, Rhetorical Grammar, author Martha Kohl describes seven common sentence patterns.
06In other writings, she says that 95% of sentences in English fit into basic patterns.
07Understanding and mastering common patterns will not only help you do better on grammar tests, but improve your writing skills, too.
08For example, here is a passage written by Ernest Hemingway, a famous American author.
09It comes from the short story, A Clean, Well-Lighted Place.
10The story is one of the most famous ones that Hemingway wrote.
11This is a clean and pleasant café.
12It is well lighted.
13The light is very good, and also, now, there are shadows of the leaves.
14Do you notice patterns in these sentences?
15If you do not recognize them, you will by the end of this report.
16In this installment of Everyday Grammar, we are focusing on two of the most common patterns in English.
17Consider a line from the song Beautiful by Christina Aguilera.
18I am beautiful.
19The line shows the foundation of most sentences in English.
20A sentence equals a subject or a noun phrase plus a predicate or a verb phrase.
21A phrase is a group of words that act as a unit.
22A noun phrase has an important noun, the headword noun, along with words and phrases that give more information about it.
23If you take the sentence from the Aguilera song, you can analyze it like this.
24The subject is I, and the predicate is am beautiful.
25In this sentence, the adjective beautiful acts as the subject complement.
26It describes I, the subject.
27So, the song lyric is the first important sentence pattern in English.
28Pattern number one is subject plus be plus subject complement.
29The subject complement can be either an adjective or a noun phrase.
30For example, consider this line from the music group Queen.
31We are the champions.
32We are the champions.
33We are the champions.
34In that line, the subject is we.
35The predicate, are the champions, contains the be verb along with a subject complement, the champions.
36This noun phrase is describing the subject we.
37You might find sentences that appear more complicated, but use the same basic structure.
38Consider this song by the Beatles.
39Baby, you're a rich man.
40Baby, you're a rich man.
41Baby, you're a rich man.
42At first, the sentence appears complicated, but the basic structure of the sentence remains the same.
43Subject plus be plus subject complement.
44The difference is that the sentence has added information, a noun that is the same as the subject of the sentence.
45Baby, you're a rich man.
46Or, noun, subject plus be plus subject complement.
47The subject plus be plus subject complement pattern is not the only pattern you will find with the verb be.
48Consider these two sentences.
49My friends are at the concert.
50The test was yesterday.
51In these examples, the subject and the be verb are followed by adverbials, which are, in this case, words or phrases that tell where or when.
52In the first sentence, the adverbial structure is the prepositional phrase at the concert.
53In the second sentence, the adverbial structure is the adverb yesterday.
54These examples show another common be structure.
55Subject plus be plus adverbial.
56Think back to the Hemingway passage from the beginning of this story.
57This is a clean and pleasant café.
58It is well lighted.
59The light is very good, and also, now, there are shadows of the leaves.
60The second sentence clearly uses a pattern one structure.
61The subject is it.
62The beef verb is is.
63The subject complement is well lighted.
64The sentence is, it is well lighted.
65But, if you look closely, you will see every sentence in the passage uses pattern number one.
66Two of the sentences use conjunctions, but they still depend on the same basic pattern.
67Hemingway was famous for his short, declarative style.
68However, he did not write using basic pattern one and two sentences only.
69Good writers know how to make their sentences come to life.
70They do not write the same sentences over and over again.
71To help you start recognizing these patterns, I am going to give you four more sentences written by Ernest Hemingway.
72Your homework is to identify which of the two basic patterns he is using.
73Please remember that sometimes Hemingway uses additional words.
74Just focus on finding the basic structure.
75Pattern one or pattern two.
76We will give you the answers next week in the comment section and on our Facebook page.
77Here are the sentences.
78The treatment is for tomorrow.
79From great news from the mainland.
80I'm Jonathan Evans.
81I'm Jill Robbins.
82And I'm John Russell.
// transcribed with Whisper AI — reading it is easy; catching it by ear is the skill
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