Learn sentence in a short way in 2022
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| Learn sentence in a short way in 2022 |
Sentence:
An introduction:
Read the following letter written by a student to a friend.
Dhaka
20 October 2016
Dear Mahjabin,
I hope you are fine. Our school is going to be closed from 25 November for three weeks. Each year, we have the winter vacation at this time. Do you have the vacation at the same time?
This year, I am going to visit my grandparent’s place in Netrokona. What are you doing during this vacation? I'd like to invite you to my grandparent’s village. I am sure you will love the village. How fantastic it will be to spend the vacation together!
I hope you will agree to join us. Give me details about your vacation plan.
Please reply as soon as possible.
Yours ever
Mita
A sentence is a set of oral or written words in a proper order that express a complete thought. These words are commonly named parts of speech. These parts of speech are placed according to the work they do in a sentence. The first word of a sentence is capitalized and the sentence ends with a full stop., question mark, or exclamation!
A sentence contains a subject and a predicate. Sometimes, the subject is not mentioned explicitly in some sentence. It is only understood. Examples of such sentences can be found in the letter above: (you) give me details about your vacation plan. Here the subject ‘you’ is not mentioned by the letter writter but we understand that Daila was asking her friend Mahjabin to give her the details of her vacation plan.
Affirmative and Negative Sentence:
Read the sentences in column A and B of the following table. In parirs, discuss the differences between the sentences given in column A and B.
Column A | Column B |
I will eat chocolate | I will not eat chocolate today |
There is some left in the fridge. | There is no meat left in the fridge. |
The driver has found some gold. | The driver has not found some gold. |
Are there any children here? | Aren’t there are any children here. |
Affirmative Sentences: One of the commonly used structures in English is subject-verb-object. E.g., the rabbit eats carrots.
The rabbit is the subject, eats is the main verb, and carrots is the object.
Negative Sentence: The negative form of this sentence is a little different.
The rabbit doesn’t eat fish.
Interrogative Sentence: Read the short text on a popular sport star.
Stephanie Rice is renowned as one of Australia’s golden girls. She is an Olympic Gold Medalist and world record-breaking swimmer. Stephanie knew she wanted to be an Olympic swimmer from the young age of four. The talented swimmer first caught Australia’s attention in 2006. Then at 17 years of age, she won gold at the Melbourne Commonwealth Games. She then went on to win more medals at international levels. She showed her best at the 2008 Beijing Olympic swimming when she won three Gold Medals and set new world records.
Imagine that you have a chance to meet Stefanie Rice who offers advice to young athletes. You will be allowed to ask her questions only. Now write the five questions that you would like to ask her.
Interrogative sentences are used to ask questions: they are also easy to spot because they end in a question mark.
‘Yes’ ‘no’ interrogative:
Example: Is it raining?
Notice that the interrogative above is a simple ‘yes’ ‘no’ question. The response may be given by ‘yes’ or ‘no’.
Alternative interrogatives offer two or more alternative response: example
Should I telephone you or send an email? Do you want tea or coffee?
Yes/no interrogatives and alternative interrogative are introduced by an auxiliary verb.
Wh-interrogatives are introduced by a wh-word, and the response is open-ended. Example:
What happened?
Where do you work?
Where do you live?
Questions are sometimes tagged at the end of a statement.
Example:
Sumon plays the piano, doesn’t he?
We’ve forgotten the milk, haven’t we?
It's hot today, isn’t it?
These are known as tag question. They consist of a min verb or auxiliary verb followed by a pronoun or introductory there.
Transformation of assertive sentence to interrogative:
Read the following rules to remember while transforming assertive sentences to interrogative.
You cannot change the meaning of sentences
If the assertive sentence is in affirmative or negative, you have to use negative expression in interrogative and if it is in negative, you will use the affirmative or positive expression in interrogative.
An interrogative sentence may start with either a wh word or an auxiliary verb.
Here are some examples with explanations.
Example-1:
Assertive: He is a famous player of this country.
Interrogative: Is he not famous player of this country? (To show positive sense)
Assertive: We don’t play in the sun.
Interrogative: Do we play in the sun? (To show negative sense)
Explanation: Here, you only have to place the auxiliary verb at first and then the subject. And, the sentence which is positive, is changed into negative and which is in negative, is changed into positive.
Example-2:
Assertive: My brother has never visited India.
Interrogative: Has my brother ever visited India?
Explanation: Here, only the word ‘never’ is changed into ‘ever’ and the rest are in the same structure.
Example-3:
Assertive: He has nothing to do in this situation.
Interrogative: Has he anything to do in this situation?
Explanation: Here, only the word ‘nothing’ is changed into ‘anything’ and the rest are in the same structure.
Example-4:
Assertive: Everybody wants to be happy in life.
Interrogative: Who doesn’t want to be happy in life?
Assertive: All were present in the last meeting.
Interrogative: Who were not present in the last meeting?
Explanation: Here, you have to use a wh-words-’who’ in the beginning and the rest parts are in same structure. And ‘everybody/everyone/all’ are positive in sense, so the interrogative structure should be negative.
Example-5:
Assertive: Nobody believes a liar in this world.
Interrogative: Who believe a liar?
Assertive: None helped him yesterday.
Interrogative: Who helped him yesterday?
Explanation: Here, you have to use a wh-word-’who’ in the beginning and the rest are in same structure. And ‘nobody/none/on one’ are negative in sense so the interrogative structure should be affirmative.
Imperative Sentence:
Look at the following sentence. What do they have in common?
Enjoy yourselves.
Give me some time to decide.
Feel free to write when you need.
Give me your phone number.
Don't shut the door.
Stop!
Imperative sentences are used for requests, suggestions, advice, or commands. Generally, the subjects are missing here and the sentence begin with verbs. Imperative sentences are widely used in social communication especially in conversation. The above sentences are positive imperatives. However, in the negative imperative sentences, we commonly use contracted forms. Now look at the examples below.
Don't eat my banana.
Don't wait for my answer.
Don't neglect your study.
Don't shout.
Exclamatory Sentence:
Exclamatory sentences express strong emotions. It doesn’t really matter what the emotion is; an exclamatory sentence is the type of sentence needed to express it. Exclamatory sentences always end in an exclamation mark. So, it’s easy to spot them. Example:
What a stupid person he is!
How wonderful you look!
It's very important to know how to make exclamations because they are very common both in speaking and writing.
Look at the sentence below_
That is a piece of awful news. This is an assertive sentence expressing strong feelings. We can express the feeling more strongly using an exclamatory sentence. Look at the following sentence.
What an awful news is!
Or
How awful the news is!
Look at another example:
Assertive: The baby has a very lovely smile.
Exclamatory: What a lovely smile the baby has!
Look at some more examples of exclamatory sentences below:
The river is rising!
I don’t know what I'll do if I don’t pass this test!
Suddenly, a snake appeared in my path!
This is the best day of my life!
Introductory There:
Notice the sentences beginning with there.
I’ve got my own room. In my room there is a bed, a table, a chair, a wardrobe and a television. There is a window above the table. The television is opposite my bed so I can watch it when I am in bed.
The wardrobe is on the left and my bed is on the right. There is a computer on the table and books, pens and CDs are near the computer. There is a magazine and a camera on the bed.
Look at some more examples of sentence beginning with there.
There is a discussion this afternoon. It will start at four. There has been an an accident. I hope no one is hurt.
‘there’ in the sentences above are known as introductory there. In these sentences there is used as the subject.
Now, read the following section to know more about the use of there
In English, the introductory there is used to introduce the sentence.
There is a hole in my shoes. (More natural than A hole is in my shoes)
There is bridge over the river.
There are is used with a plural subject. Example:
There are two people in the room.
Once upon a time there were three bears in a forest.
Read the following sections to check the use of introductory there:
When we talk about numbers or quantities, we frequently say-
There was a lot of rain yesterday. There were less than two hundred people in the hall.
Again, if we want to say where something/somebody/is/was/likely to be, we use sentences as follows.
There used to be a playground at the end fo the lane. There are many gardens in the city. I wonder if there will be anyone there. ( =at that place)
There is also used with infinitives:
There was nothing to watch on television. There is a lot of work to do.
We use a singular verb if the noun phrase in singular:
There is a meeting this evening. It will start at seven. There was a lot of rain last night. There is someone waiting to see you.
We use a plural verb if the noun phrase is plural:
There are more than ten people waiting to see my father. There were a lot of people doing the work.
You can read our previous posts of Gerund and Participles and also of Parts of Speech
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