Basic Sentence Structure

English uses Five Basic Sentence Patterns:

• Subject + Verb
  • I swim. Joe swims. They swam.
• Subject + Verb + Object
  • I drive a car. Joe plays the guitar. They ate dinner.
• Subject + Verb + Complement
  • I am busy. Joe became a doctor. They look sick.
• Subject + Verb + Indirect Object + Direct Object
  • I gave her a gift. She teaches us English.
• Subject + Verb + Object + Complement
  • I left the door open. We elected him president. They named her Jane

This video goes through the basic parts of a sentence.

Syntax - English sentence structure

This site talks abut subjects, predicates, clause types and common sentence problems.

Try this practice exercise.

Scrambled Sentences - Conversation Questions--Put the words in the correct order.

This is another site for arranging words into sentences. http://www.rong-chang.com/easyread/emx/contents.htm

This site is called ESL in Canada and it gives a lot of information on Sentence types.