Basic Sentence Patterns 5.
Sad / seemed / he
Pattern – 1 6. this boy / seems / restless
7. smells / the rose / sweet
Subject + Intransitive verb + Adverbials 8. bitter / this fruit / taste
Ex. 9. upstairs / is / my / brother
1. He Sings Well 10. must have been / the party / enjoyable
2. You laughed loudly 11. were / in the library / they
12. on Sunday / the examination / will be
Pattern – 2 13. Mahatma Gandhi / a great leader / was
14. my brother / a doctor / became
Ex. Sub + Linking verb + Complement 15. they /quiet / remained
1. They were happy. Exercise (Intermediate)
2. She is a teacher.
Pattern – 3 Arrange the words in the order.
Subject + Transitive verb + Direct Object / Indirect
Sub + Transitive verb + Direct object + Adverbial object + Adverbials (if any)
1. Sachin scored a century 1. A coat / you / need
2. He has read this book. 2. Have started / the game / they
Pattern – 4 3. the Principal / he / yesterday / met
4. Scored / a century / Sachin
Subject + Transitive verb + Indirect Object + Direct 5. my mother / a story / tells / me / every night
Object + Adverbials 6. The problem / carefully/ I / explained
1. I gave my friend a present on his birthday. 7. Football / don’t like / very much / I
2. The teacher asked him a question. 8. Harish / very well / English / doesn’t speak
9. We / at the airport / some friends / met
10. I / In bed / this morning / my break fast / had
Arrange the following words in the order subject + 11. Ravi / last month / this picture / painted
Intransitive verb + Adverbials. Start with a capital 12. us / teaches / English / Mr. Sharma
letter and end with a full stop. 13. passed / John/ easily / the exam
1. Ravi / with a pen / writes 14. A lot of work / did / I / yesterday
2. in the east / the sun / rises 15. two / letters / I / this morning / wrote
3. The bus / late / arrived
4. Ran / fast / he Exercise (Advanced)
5. studied / in the room / children
6. He / over the wall / jumped Write one sentence for each of the sentence patterns.
7. Heavily / it / rained 1. Sub + Intransitive verb
8. Well / she / sings 2. Subject +Liking verb + Complement
9. Laughed / loudly /He 3. Subject + Transitive verb + Direct object
10. Rohit / there / sat 4. Subject + Transitive verb + Indirect object+ Direct
11. Sanjay / loud / spoke object
12. The Scooter / fast /runs 5. Subject + Transitive verb + Direct object +
13. Begins / my college /in July compliment
14. Went /Home /they 6. Subject + Intransitive verb + Adverb
15. on the ice / Ravi / slipped 7. Subject + Liking verb + Compliment
8. Subject + Transitive verb + Direct object
Exercise (Intermediate) 9. Subject + Transitive verb + Direct object + Indirect
Object
Arrange the words in the order. 10. Subject + Transitive verb + Direct object +
Subject + linking verb + complements. Compliment
1. Are/ busy / the boys
2. tall / my brother / is
3. Ravi / happy / appeared
4. feel / they / annoyed
7 Basic Sentence Patterns
The English language has seven basic sentence (or
clause) patterns. Examples are:
1. John / laughed. (SV)*
2. John / kissed / Jane. (SVO)
3. John / is / tall. (SVC)
4. John / gave / Jane / a present. (SVOO)
5. John / made / Jane / angry. (SVOC)
6. John / sat / up. (SVA)
7. John / put / the bag / down. (SVOA)
Most simple and complex (but not compound) clauses
are of one of these patterns no matter how long the
clauses are. For example, the following two sentences
are essentially of the same pattern.
8. Jane / bought / fruit. (SVO)
9. My long lost sister Jane / has been buying / a
variety of fruit. (SVO)
* There are five sentence class terms: S = subject, V
= verb, O = object, C = complement, and A =
adverbial. The slash (/) denotes the boundary between
syntactic terms.