long_aaron_lbeh_4|Student Resources|Part III: Sentence Parts and Patterns|Introduction

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Part III: Sentence Parts and Patterns
Introduction

Sentence Parts and Patterns

Sentence parts and patterns are often referred to as grammar. Grammar describes how language works. Following the rules of standard English is what allows you to communicate with others across barriers of personality, region, class, or ethnic origin. If you are a native speaker of English, you follow these rules mostly unconsciously. But when you’re trying to improve your ability to communicate, it can help to make the rules conscious and learn the language used to describe them.

Grammar tells a lot about a sentence, even if you don’t know the meaning of all the words:

The rumfrums prattly biggled the pooba.

You don’t know what this sentence means, but you can infer that some things called rumfrums did something to a pooba. They biggled it, whatever that means, in a prattly way. Two grammatical clues, especially, tell you that this sentence is like The students easily passed the test:

Word forms. The ending –s means more than one rumfrum. The ending –ed means that biggled is an action that happened in the past. The ending –ly means that prattly probably describes how the rumfrums biggled.
Word order. Rumfrums biggled pooba resembles a common sequence in English: something (rumfrums) performed some action (biggled) to or on something else (pooba). Since prattly comes right before the action, it probably decribes the action.

The section of the web page contains exercises to help you understand how such structures work and gives you opportunities to practice with them to help you communicate more effectively. The exercises are divided into the following categories:

Recognizing Correct Grammar: This section will help you recognize the correct form of grammar parts that give students the most trouble. Each section has links to multiple choice exercises.
Producing Correct Grammar: This section will help you practice writing grammar forms correctly. Instead of choosing an answer from among a given set of choices, you will have to produce your own response to each question.
Grammar Quizzes: The four quizzes in this section test your knowledge of the grammatical forms you reviewed in the Recognizing and Producing Correct Grammar sections.