Science, Technology and Engineering

Academic Language and Learning

What is a sentence?

In order for a sentence to be complete it must usually contain a subject and a verb. A sentence must also convey a complete thought. For example, ‘A student is.’ contains a subject and a verb but doesn’t express a complete thought. It doesn’t convey any information and is thus not a complete sentence.

The subject says who or what does the verb e.g. ‘who read?’

The verb is the ‘doing word’ and describes an action or state.

For example,

   The students           read.
      (subject)          (verb)

A simple sentence can also have other elements:

An object answers the question ‘what’ after the verb e.g. ‘read what?’

For example,

   The students      read       an article.
      (subject)     (verb)    (object)

A complement says what something is/was etc.

For example,

   The students      were       confused.
      (subject)     (verb)    (complement)


An adverbial tells us how, when, where, or why.

For example,

   The students        read      the article      slowly.
       (subject)    (verb)       (object)    (adverbial - how)

   At first,               the students             read            the article      slowly.
(adverbial -when)    (subject)          (verb)         (object)        (adverbial -how)

Notice that we use a comma if the adverbial element comes before the subject.