Sentence structure is the order of the words in an English sentence. Since it follows a rather rigid formula, it is something that English learners need to know in order to make themselves comprehensible.
The beauty of working with English learners is that you also get a first-hand glimpse into how their native language sentence structure plays out when learning English. I know, I know, my inner nerd is coming out but bear with me for a moment.
Just recently, I asked my students to use the vocabulary word “cultivate” and come up with a sentence using it. One example was: My grandfather is cultivate tomatoes in his garden.
For my older students, this is a fairly frequent error. So we dissected the sentence and split it into two possible variations using the two verbs separately.
My grandfather is a tomato.
My grandfather cultivates tomatoes.
Yes, they chose the first sentence. And yes, we all had a really good laugh. But sentence structure is something we also have to work at every day.
Here is another simple English sentence, such as:
My mother cooks dinner every night.
And now take a look at a few variations (all taken from my personal teaching experience)
My mother is cook dinner every night.
My mother cook dinner every night.
Every night cook my mother dinner.
My mother, she cook dinner every night.
The sentence is comprehensible most of the time. But to an English speaker, even though he/she may understand what the person is saying, it sounds awkward.
So yes, we should teach sentence structure to our ESL students. And it can be done at all ages and with the help of different activities.
How do I teach sentence structure?
This blog post was inspired by a question from one of my readers. Here it goes:
What I would like to know is how do I move on to full sentences and conversation? Should I start stringing the vocab into short sentences and hope that repetition will lead to understanding?
Below I provide a few tips on how you can move into a conversation. Most of this is not linear because the words are strung into sentences as we learn them. In addition, some students are more open to practicing the language right away while others wait longer to produce until they think they are perfect.
However, once the students get a chance to practice, they will be able to retrieve more and more information on their own.
It is important to remember, that it takes some time for absolute beginners to string longer sentences together. Just like with children learning their first language, ESL students first listen to determine the words and the overall rhythm, then work through the words that carry the most meaning (nouns and verbs), and are then able to add more information. For example, add a descriptive adjective (a brown dog, a great poet), or make a compound and even complex sentence.
However, you can have a great conversation with just the basics. Remember, body language is also a fantastic tool to convey meaning.
Start with the simplest sentence structure
Determine your goal. Is your goal to get the students speaking in general? Or is it to get them to use what they know and create longer sentences?
At the most basic level, the English sentence structure follows a simple rule. First, we have a subject (who or what the sentence is about) and then we have a verb (what is that subject doing/did/will do).
When we are teaching beginners, we provide them with a variety of words. Some of them are nouns (such as things in their immediate environment) and some of them are actions.
For example, I sleep. Mary reads. We talk.
The simplest way to begin teaching sentence structure to English students is to provide pictures of people or objects and pictures of actions and have the students put the two together.
Note: once the students get this (which usually does not take a lot of time), you should also do a lesson on personal pronouns. It is important to teach that the third person singular (he/she/it) takes a suffix -s in present simple tense. It is just as important to remember that this grammatical rule is one of the more difficult to master and will take a considerable amount of time.
Build on the basics
Once the students have the basic subject + verb down, you can introduce the subject + verb + object structure. This can be manipulated in a variety of ways but building on what they know is key.
Subject + verb + object
Tom reads a book.
I play basketball
My mother cooks dinner.
My brother and I like movies.
To get you started, here is a simple worksheet that the students can use to practice stringing sentences together.
Teach parts of speech
Parts of speech are similar in many languages (for more information about the specifics, you can read this article), at least the way different languages express nouns (concepts, places, people, events, etc.) and verbs (actions). In some, it is more complicated and therefore it transfers when learning English.
For the purpose of this blog post, though, let’s focus on the parts of speech you will teach your beginners right away.
Nouns, verbs, adjectives, prepositions (in, on, at, etc.). When teaching the sentence structure, you can give examples of where in the sentence you will find each of those. In addition, remember that the part of speech of a word is determined by where in the sentence it is found.
For example:
The view from the mountain was wonderful.
We view movies in class and then talk about it.
And of course, teaching prepositions will take a longer period of time, possibly a few lessons and constant repetition.
Sentence structure activities
Below are a few activities you can incorporate into your classroom and turn it into both speaking and writing tasks.
Sentence structure writing practice
Give a map of word order in the longer sentence
Who? – the subject
What? – the verb
Why? – the reason (why was the action taken?)
Where? – the place where it all happened (action, using the appropriate tense)
When? – the time (using prepositions)
How? – the manner in which it all happened
The cat jumped on the table because it wanted to taste the milk.
The who and the what are the questions for a simple sentence, but once your students begin to feel more comfortable, encourage them to answer the other questions as well.
Once the students know the basics, have them play around with the parts of speech and put a sentence in order following a formula
(adjective) Subject + (adverb) verb + ( preposition, adjective ) object
A black cat quickly jumped on the big table.
Use color coding
Whenever your students write, either have them color code the parts of speech or use colors yourself when you are giving feedback. For example, subject (yellow), verb (pink), object (green).
Correct the mistakes
Pair students up and give them a few sentences that are written incorrectly. The students must fix the mistakes and then share out their results.
Sentence structure speaking practice
Interview
Students work in pairs for this activity. Depending on your topic, prepare a few interview questions. One of the students asks his/her partner the questions and the other student has to answer them in complete sentences. Then they switch. You can observe by walking around and listening in and finishing up the lesson by having each pair share – in a complete sentence! – one thing they learned or found out from the interview.
Picture/photo discussion
This activity is very versatile and you can utilize it teaching almost anything, including the sentence structure.
Students can work in pairs or groups. Each student takes a turn to say what they see in the picture. One of them can be a scribe and write it down (it is not necessary, but if you think it would help them remember, you can utilize this too). Again, the task is to use complete sentences and, if this is something you have already practiced a number of times, have them add adjectives, or form compound sentences.
Here is a high-interest and low-stress ESL speaking activity to get your students going.
Provide sentence frames
When we give open-ended practice activities to beginner level ESL students, we sometimes forget that it takes some time to retrieve the information that is already there.
Therefore, providing sentence frames and word banks for the students to work with will help them tremendously.
To grab your free sentence practice worksheet, click here.
And if you are ready to take your ESL teaching to the next level with not only ready-made resources but also personalized guidance, check out The ESL Teaching Roadmap => access it here
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