Page 79 - English - Teaching Academic Esl Writing

Sentences, Phrases, and Text Construction
OVERVIEW
• Rigid and mobile sentence elements
• The order of elements in the noun phrase
• The order of elements in the verb phrase
• Transitive and intransitive verbs
• Compound sentences
• Common errors in sentence construction
InEnglishthe structureofabasicsentence isrelativelyeasytoteachbecause English has rigid word order (e.g., the subject is followed by a verb, which is followed by an object). Although many variations of this skeletal structure are possible, the additions also adhere to somewhat inflexible patterns. For example, a prepositional phrase cannot perform the function of a subject: Only noun phrases can function as a subject, and a verb must be present in every sentence for it to be grammatical. For example, the structure *For most studentsgototheU.S.tostudy isincorrectbecauseaprepositionalphraseoccu- pies the subject position.
The simplest approach to teaching the basic sentence structure can take 1
advantageoftherelativerigidityinEnglishsentencestructure. Anexam- ple of a basic sentence structure can consist of an optional adverb/preposi- tional phrase, subject noun (phrase), a verb, and an object if the main verbis transitive (requires a direct object). The essential sentence elements and
'in his teaching of composition courses, Kenneth L. Pike originally developed the idea in the 1950s and 1960s. His tagmemics theory wasbased on the principle that grammatical units are simultaneously marked for two features: the slot that they occupy relative to other units within a structure (e.g., the subject slot or the predicate slot in a sentence) and the syntactic class/type (e.g., noun [phrase], verb [phrase], or adjective [phrase]; Pike, 1964).
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