Name: Grammar Lesson #1 - Tips to Improve Your Sentence Structure
Uploaded: 2021-06-11T01:59:57.000Z
Duration: 16 min 32 s
Description: VoiceTubeの動画で発音を聞きながら英語表現を覚えよう！学べる英語：

法助動詞 A2

In this lesson, you can learn the most important grammar rule in English.

Of course, you need to know many things to use grammar correctly in English.

However, there's one tip that can dramatically improve your English grammar—especially

First, don't forget to check out our website: Oxford Online English dot com.

We have many free lessons to help you improve your English.

There's also a level test, which can show you how good your grammar is now.

But, you want to hear the grammar tip, right?

Here's the basic idea: make sure your sentence has a subject and a verb, and that you know

Every sentence needs a verb, and unless your sentence is an imperative—meaning that you're

giving someone a command—then your sentence needs a subject, too.

Each clause in your sentence should have one subject and one main verb, and only one subject

Maybe you're thinking, 'This is too easy!

However, we see students make mistakes with this all the time, especially in writing.

Mistakes with this point are serious, because they often make it hard to understand what

Even if your meaning is clear, sentences with this problem are often difficult to read.

It's especially serious if you're taking an exam, like IELTS.

Your sentence needs a subject, which should be a noun or noun phrase, like 'they',

'everybody', or 'my maths teacher from high school'.

Then, you need a main verb, which generally goes after the subject.

With this, you can make simple sentences like these: 'They have a nice house';

'My maths teacher from high school was really good at explaining complicated things.'

After the main verb, you might have a simple complement, like 'a nice house'.

Your sentence might finish after the verb, like 'Everybody agreed.'

Or, you might have a longer complement, possibly including other verbs, as in 'My math teacher

from high school was really good at explaining complicated things.'

So, you're probably still thinking that this is easy.

Look at five sentences: By the way, these sentences are all real examples

Most of them come from IELTS writing practice.

All these sentences break the basic rule we mentioned above.

Pause the video, read the sentences, and try to find the problems.

In the first sentence, there's no main verb.

'Will' is a modal verb, but a modal verb can't be a main verb; you need a main verb after

For example, 'We will *go* back home next Friday.'

The second sentence has two subjects: 'Imposing higher taxes on fast food' and 'it'.

To correct this sentence, remove 'it': 'Imposing higher taxes on fast food *is*

The third sentence has a main verb, but no subject.

*What* affects individuals' lives directly?

This is difficult to correct, because it's impossible to know what the writer wanted

You would need to add a noun before the verb 'affects' to make it understandable.

The fourth sentence has a fragment at the end which includes a subject and a verb.

This means the sentence has too many subjects and verbs; each clause can only have one subject

There are many possibilities, but the easiest way to correct this is to break the sentence

You can do this by changing the comma after 'Alexandria' to a semicolon.

Again, it's difficult to correct this sentence, because it's hard to see the writer's

The problem is that this sentence has several parts with several subjects and verbs, and

For example, 'each society' is a subject, but then 'forced medical treatment' is

Later in the sentence, we have a verb—'avoid'—and it isn't clear which subject goes with it.

On a more practical level, it just isn't clear what this sentence is about.

Does the writer want to say something about 'each society', or about 'large sets

of people,' or about 'forced medical treatment'?

This is why subject-verb structure is so important: if it isn't clear, it will be hard to understand

Sometimes, this might mean that your ideas aren't clear in your mind.

Next, let's expand this basic rule and see how you can use it to make a wider range of

You heard before that both subjects and verbs can be words or phrases.

Sometimes, your subject or verb might be a longer phrase.

This often leads to mistakes, because when your subject and verb are multiple words,

it's more difficult to keep track of your sentence structure.

Take a sentence you saw before: 'Everybody agreed.'

You can make the subject—'everybody'—into a phrase.

For example: 'Everybody who was at the meeting agreed.'

You can make the verb into a phrase, like this: 'Everybody who was at the meeting

For example: 'Everybody who was at the board meeting held last Tuesday evening agreed to

change the existing office dress code to something more informal.'

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Grammar Lesson #1 - Tips to Improve Your Sentence Structure

phrase

improve

structure

accurate