Wordplay Blog: 10 Sentence Patterns that Everyone Should Know

Wordplay is a blog project featuring posts from students enrolled in ENG 320 Grammar and Linguistics (Fall 2019)

10 Sentence Patterns that Everyone Should Know

Katie Strohschein

My Spanish teacher once told me that students learn more about the components of a sentence in her class then in our English classes. Now looking back that statement for me was nothing but accurate. Not once in junior high or high school had I ever had to dissect a sentence and explain what the noun or verb was. I however did have to correct sentences, for example explain if a comma was used properly or if a word needed to be capitalized or not. I believe that schools are so focused on the writing side of Enlglish that the grammar side is being shoved to the back of the bus. I know many people will argue that without grammar you can not write! Well, the thing is anyone can write without knowing the proper rules of grammar. I mean heck, I am doing it right now!

The point I am trying to get at here is that maybe knowing the deeper structure of a sentence can make our writing better. As I continue to prepare myself to be an educator, I had to take this class called “Grammar and Linguistics,” and my professor made us do these exercises called “sentence diagramming.” Some of you may be wondering what that is–well it turns out that it is kind of what I was talking about above. When I said I never really had to dissect sentences and tell you what words or phrases made up what part of a sentence, apparently that is called diagramming. It has a lot of confusing rules and structures, but there are 10 sentence patterns that account for almost all of the possible grammatical sentences that can help even a hopeless English learner like myself get the basic idea of sentence diagramming:

I hope that by explaining briefly and giving an example of the 10 sentence patterns above helped you become a sentence diagramming pro!

References:

Kolln, M., Gray, L., & Salvatore, J. (n.d.). Sentence Patterns. Understanding English
Grammar (10th ed., pp. 29–51). Pearson.

Katie Strohschein is a junior at CSC studying Elementary Education. She attended Eastern Wyoming College in Torrington, Wyoming for three years and transferred to Chadron State College this semester to finish up her degree. She plans to students teach in South Dakota a graduate in May 2020. She hopes to teach second grade back home in Wright, Wyoming.