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.