Most students should feel confident in being able to identify different types of simple sentences and sentence clauses. Students coming into Key Stage 3 from UK primary schools will have been taught about compound, simple and complex sentences, as well as main and subordinate clauses, and should be able to clearly identify these in practice. However, in-depth understanding of the actual function and effect of these varying constructions can present more of a challenge. Many students may not know that clauses can be split into finer, more grammatically descriptive categories, or why a compound sentence might have been used over a simple sentence beyond being able to say that it makes the sentence more āinterestingā or āinformativeā. Understanding the effects of different sentence choices will enable students to make more precise and insightful comments about a writerās craft. This can also lead to students making more thoughtful decisions about the way in which they construct their own creative or analytical sentences for effect.
In this chapter we will break down the different sentence types and clauses, clearly explaining how they can be identified and used for effect, with extracts from popularly studied texts across all three Key Stages to evidence how analysis of sentence construction can work in practice. We will also look at how sentences and sentence clauses can be woven into the teaching of creative writing, helping students to make more informed, deliberate choices to develop the sophistication of their work.
In all of our grammatical explanations we strive to simplify and clarify as much as possible and opt for the most straightforward approach when explaining terminology. There are always ways in which grammatical constructs can be broken down into more finite technical explanations, but as our students are not required to be linguistic experts we feel that too much terminology can often be a hindrance rather than a help. As such, we have included only the terms that we feel will actually be of use to students of secondary school age.
Main clause
Every deliberately grammatically correct sentence should include at least one main clause. In its simplest and most straightforward terms, a main clause consists of a subject and a predicate and stands alone as a complete sentence. The subject will typically be a noun, noun phrase or pronoun, and the predicate will be a verb or verb phrase. As such, the sentence I ate dinner last night serves as a main clause just as I ate does, with the āIā in both cases functioning as the subject and the verb āateā functioning as the predicate.
Note: some students may have been taught that a main clause is called an āindependent clauseā.
Subordinate clause
The subordinate clause is the part of the sentence that does not stand alone, and should, in a grammatically correct sentence, be joined to a main clause either through the use of punctuation or a conjunction. Subordinate clauses begin with either a relative pronoun or a subordinate conjunction. They will still contain a subject and a verb but will not make sense by themselves. Who arrived late thanks to the tube strike is an example of a subordinate clause beginning with a relative pronoun (who). This is clearly a subordinate clause as we are missing the vital information of knowing to whom the relative pronoun refers. After she had written the book is an example of a subordinate clause beginning with a subordinate conjunction (after); again, this is clearly a subordinate clause as we have no idea of the context the āafterā is referring to. A subordinate clause can come anywhere within a sentence; it is not always at the end.
Note: some students may have been taught that the subordinate clause is called a ādependentā clause.
A subordinate clause has two main categories, usually being either conditional or relative. A conditional clause describes something that is possible or probable, and a relative clause gives more information on a topic and is identified as beginning with a relative pronoun. Relative clauses can be restrictive or non-restrictive; a restrictive relative clause gives necessary information about the noun that comes before it, and a non-restrictive relative clause gives non-necessary information about a noun that comes before it. For example:
She showed him the painting that he had bought.
āThat he had boughtā functions here as a restrictive relative clause as it gives necessary information about the painting and is introduced by a relative pronoun.
His hand was cut by the knife, which he was using to chop up the meat.
āWhich he was using to chop up the meatā functions here as a non-restrictive relative clause because we donāt need to know what he was doing with the knife in order to know that his hand was cut.
I canāt come to the party unless my mum can drive me.
āUnless my mum can drive meā functions here as a conditional clause as it details an event that can only happen if something else happens first.
Simple sentence
A simple sentence is simply a main clause: a sentence with a single subject and a single verb. For example:
I ate dinner.
Sam was running late for school.
There were only five people in the queue.
Compound sentence
A compound sentence is made up of two main clauses, or simple sentences, joined by a conjunction. For example:
I ate dinner and it was delicious.
Complex sentence
A complex sentence contains a main and a subordinate clause joined by a subordinating conjunction or punctuation. For example:
She turned up, late as usual, to the lesson.
As it careered around the bend, the bus tottered onto two wheels.
Sentences of any construction can be split into four main categories:
Declarative
A declarative sentence is one that makes a statement. It will give information or ideas. Declarative sentences are the basis of most speech and writing. There was no possibility of taking a walk that day, the famous opening line of Charlotte BrontĆ«ās Jane Eyre, is a declarative sentence.
Imperative
An imperative sentence is one that gives a command or a request. Some imperative sentences can also be exclamatory, depending on the context, such as Stop! Other imperative sentences ā such as please can you pick up that pen? ā can seem to be interrogative questions, but the difference between an imperative and an interrogative is that an interrogative sentence is asking a question, not making a request.
Exclamatory
An exclamatory sentence expresses strong emotion and always uses exclamation marks. These sorts of sentences can often be headache-inducing for us teachers when students feel the need to make every sentence, regardless of how exciting the content, end in an exclamation mark or, even worse, the dreaded several exclamation marks. To save yourself from this frustration, make sure your students understand that they only need to use an exclamation mark when there is strong emotion involved. I canāt believe I just won a million pounds! definitely needs an exclamation mark: I went shopping and bought some shoes! does not.
Interrogative
Interrogative sentences always ask a direct question and always end in a question mark. As explained above, these can be confused with imperative sentences, where a request is being made, so ensure that students understand what a direct question looks like. For example:
Did she wear the red dress?
Have you eaten yet?
Putting it into practice
Now weāve covered the basics of the theory behind sentence construction, weāre going to have a look at how this works in practice when it comes to exploring how texts have been constructed and what meanings we can infer from this. We have split our examples by Key Stage to enable you to see a variety of texts and levels of analysis.
Key Stage 3: Northern Lights by Philip Pullman
Extract from Chapter One
āLyra! What the hell are you doing?ā
āLet go of me and Iāll tell you!ā
āIāll break your arm first. How dare you come in here?ā
āIāve just saved your life!ā
They were still for a moment, the girl twisted in pain but grimacing to prevent herself from crying out louder, the man bent over her frowning like thunder.
(London: Scholastic, 1998, p.14)
For Key Stage 3 students studying a text, character is often the focus of discussion. As such, looking at characters and how they speak is usually the easiest way for students to start to feel confident at using grammar in their analysis of texts.
WHY NOT CONSIDER?
ā How could you use sentence types to draw comparisons between the characters?
ā What is interesting about the type of sentences Lyra and Lord Asriel use to address each other? What could this infer about their relationship?
ā How could knowledge of grammatical vocabulary enable younger students to make more insightful literary analysis?
Here the most effective way of looking at sentence structure is to consider what it tells us about the characters of Lyra and Lord Asriel. Letās tackle Lord Asriel first. We can tell much about his character from this short section of dialogue solely by looking at the sentence construction. Lord Asrielās first line, āLyra! What the hell are you doing?ā uses two simple sentences: a one word, exclamatory sentence, followed by an interrogative. His next line of dialogue, āIāll break your arm first. How dare you come in here?ā consists of two more simple sentences, the first a declarative and the following an interrogative. Lord Asrielās speech is therefore made up of short, perfunctory sentences that demand answers of Lyra. By using interrogatives he places himself in a position of power and authority. He has the right to ask questions, and Lyra does not. The fact that his sentences are simple shows a direct, no-nonsense, powerful personality; he is someone who is used to being in charge and who has no need to impress with the language he uses.
Lyraās responses to Lord Asriel are interesting. She uses one simple and one compound sentence, but both are exclamatory. Like her father, Lyra uses simple, straightforward sentence constructions; she sees no need to waste time or effort on impressing with her language. Her use of exclamation shows her anger and frustration at her treatment, and the fact that she responds to interrogative questions with exclamatory rather than declarative sentences hints at a rebellious nature; she is resisting the attempts of Lord Asriel to control her through refusing to reply in the expected manner.
The similarities between Lyra and Lord Asrielās sentence construction reveal shared character traits of confidence and a desire to be in control, while also revealing the power struggle in their relationship; Lyra will not submit to Lord Asriel and so they are in conflict from their very first encounter. This could, for more able students, be a way to introduce the idea of foreshadowing; it can be argued that Pullman foreshadows the revelation of Lord Asrielās true identity as Lyraās biological father through the similarities in their speech at their first meeting.
As we have shown, grammatical analysis of the construction of sentences can already reveal a great deal before attention is turned to their actual word-level content. Students can use their knowledge of different types of sentences to draw interesting conclusions about charactersā personalities and motivations that can greatly enrich their understanding of a characterās role within the text.
We would suggest that this type of activity is best used with a short piece of text, with students taught only the terms th...
