Grammar and Sentence Structure: Do As Directed
Grammar and Sentence Structure appears as 'do as directed' items: tense and aspect, subject-verb agreement, articles and prepositions, modals, active and passive voice, direct and indirect speech, degrees of comparison, clause types, sentence combination and error correction.
Rules
- Agreement: the verb agrees with the head noun, not with a phrase in between. 'The list of items is long.'
- Passive: object becomes subject, verb becomes be plus past participle, and the tense and modal are preserved: must sign becomes must be signed.
- Reported speech: backshift one step only when the reporting verb is past; first-person pronouns follow the subject, second-person follow the object, third-person stay unchanged; now becomes then, today becomes that day.
- Comparison: than with comparatives, the with superlatives, and never double them. 'More better' is always wrong.
- Combination: although makes a complex sentence, but makes a compound one, and a participial phrase makes a simple sentence.
Worked example
Direct: The teacher said to me, 'Why are you late today?' Reasoning: the reporting verb is past, so are becomes were; you refers to the listener, so it becomes I; today becomes that day; a wh-question becomes a statement, so there is no inversion and no question mark. Indirect: The teacher asked me why I was late that day.
Traps
Forgetting to backshift, leaving a question mark in reported speech, dropping by plus the agent when it carries information, misplacing not with infinitives (asked me not to go), inserting that before a wh-clause, and pairing no sooner with when instead of than.