Think back to the Hemingway passage from the beginning of this story. What does this have to do with Hemingway? These examples show another common BE structure: Subject + BE + Adverbial. In the second sentence, the adverbial structure is the adverb “yesterday.” In the first sentence, the adverbial structure is the prepositional phrase “at the concert.” In these examples, the subject and the BE verb are followed by adverbials, which are, in this case, words or phrases that tell where or when. The Subject + BE + Subject Complement pattern is not the only pattern you will find with the verb BE. The difference is that the sentence has added information, a noun that is the same as the subject of the sentence. Pattern #1: Subject + BE + Subject Complement*Ĭonsider a line from the song “Beautiful,” by Christina Aguiliera:Īt first, the sentence appears complicated, but the basic structure of the sentence remains the same: Subject + BE + Subject complement. Good and also, now, there are shadows of the leaves.”ĭo you notice patterns in these sentences? If you do not recognize them, you will by the end of this report! In this installment of Everyday Grammar, we are focusing on two of the most common patterns in English. It comes from the short story “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place.” The story is one of the most famous ones that Hemingway wrote. Understanding and mastering common patterns will not only help you do better on grammar tests, but improve your writing skills, too.įor example, here is a passage written by Ernest Hemingway, a famous American author. In other writings, she says that 95% of sentences in English fit into basic patterns. In the book Rhetorical Grammar, author Martha Kolln describes seven common sentence patterns. One way to get a bigger view of English is to study common sentence patterns. But sometimes studying the English sentence from a larger perspective is useful. Many English learners have spent a lot of time studying the parts of speech: adjectives, nouns and verbs, for example.