Sentence Structures in English

Find out about sentence combining--a friendly (and generally more effective) alternative to traditional grammar instruction. Then begin developing your sentence-combining skills here at About.com Grammar & Composition.

One of the keys to good writing is understanding the countless ways in which basic sentence structures can be combined and arranged. Let's begin, then, by identifying those basic sentence structures and considering how to use them effectively.

This exercise, based on the opening sentences in Raymond Chandler's novel "The Big Sleep," will give you practice in recognizing nouns in English.

Here you will learn how to identify and use subjects, verbs, and objects--which together form the basic sentence unit.

This exercise, based on 12 sentences in E.L. Doctorow's novel "World's Fair," will give you practice in recognizing adjectives in English.

In these exercises you'll practice adding adjectives and adverbs to the basic sentence unit.

Many adverbs are formed by adding "-ly" to an adjective. In this exercise, you will practice turning adjectives into adverbs.

This exercise will give you practice in using the prepositions "in," "into," "on," and "at."

This exercise will give you practice in identifying direct objects in sentences.

This exercise will give you practice in identifying the prepositional phrases in 20 famous movie quotations.

This exercise, adapted from a paragraph by novelist John Steinbeck, will give you practice in recognizing prepositional phrases.

This exercise will give you practice in adding and arranging prepositional phrases in sentences.

Acting like adjectives and adverbs, prepositional phrases add meaning to the nouns and verbs in a sentence.

Here we'll consider how to arrange prepositional phrases effectively--and, at times, how to condense or even eliminate them to cut the clutter.

In this exercise you will continue to apply the basic strategies outlined in Introduction to Sentence Combining.

In this exercise you will apply the strategies introduced in "Coordinating Words, Phrases, and Clauses."

A common way to connect related words, phrases, and even entire clauses is to coordinate them--that is, connect them with a conjunction such as "and" or "but."

To show that one idea in a sentence is more important than another, we rely on subordination--that is, treating one word group as secondary (or subordinate) to another. One common form of subordination is the adjective clause--a word group that modifies a noun.

Here we'll focus on the five relative pronouns that are used in adjective clauses.

Test your understanding of the five relative pronouns by completing this short exercise.

In this exercise, we'll learn to distinguish between the two main types of adjective clauses: restrictive and nonrestrictive.

This exercise will give you practice in building and expanding sentences with adjective clauses.

This exercise will give you practice in identifying the adjective clauses in ten sentences adapted from a paragraph in Richard Rodriguez's memoir "Hunger of Memory."

Now we're ready to practice building and combining sentences with adjective clauses.

These exercises offer practice in distinguishing appositives from adjective clauses.

An appositive is a word or group of words that identifies or renames another word in a sentence. Appositive constructions offer concise ways of describing or defining a person, place, or thing.

Additional practice in building and combining sentences with appositives.

This exercise will give you practice in building and expanding sentences with appositives--noun phrases that identify or rename other noun phrases.

This exercise will give you practice in identifying the adverb clauses in ten proverbial sayings.

Here we will practice building sentences with adverb clauses. Like an adjective clause, an adverb clause is always dependent on (or subordinate to) an independent clause.

Here we'll consider ways of arranging and revising sentences with adverb clauses.

Here we'll practice building and combining sentences with adverb clauses.

This exercise will give you practice in expanding sentences with adverb clauses.

Participles can add vigor to our writing as they add information to our sentences. Here we will practice creating and arranging participial phrases.

These sentence-building exercises will give you a chance to apply the principles introduced in "Creating and Arranging Participial Phrases."

Among the modifiers that add information to sentences, the absolute phrase may be the least common but one of the most useful.

This exercise will give you practice in expanding sentences with participial phrases and absolutes.

These exercises offer practice in revising sentences with absolute phrases, which are especially useful, compact, and flexible constructions.

Guest writer Darryl Bishop suggests ways to "make the connection between grammar and art."