How make sentence with a word in english

How to Make Your Own English Sentences with These 18 Easy Forms

By learning some easy English sentences, you are setting yourself up for understanding all English conversation.

Even the most complicated sentences start with a simple structure.

Learn these basic sentence structures, and you will be learning a valuable lesson—no matter what your level of English is.

Contents

• Understanding Parts of Speech
• How to Break Sentences into Sections
• Learning More About Sentence Structure
• 18 Quick Ways to Build Easy English Sentences, with 65+ Examples
• • Making Statements About the Present
  • • 1. Describing something or someone.
    • 2. Stating the location of something or someone.
    • 3. Explaining what someone is doing.
    • 4. Stating what someone does for a living or a hobby.
    • 5. Expressing feelings.
    • 6. Making a suggestion.
  • Making Statements About the Past
  • • 7. Describing something or someone in the past.
    • 8. Stating the location of something or someone in the past.
    • 9. Explaining what someone did, or used to do in the past.
  • Making Statements About the Future
  • • 10. Stating what someone will do in the future.
    • 11. Stating when something will happen.
  • Making Negative Statements
  • • 12. Stating what someone is not, or not doing.
    • 13. Stating what someone did not do.
    • 14. Stating what someone will not do in the future.
  • Asking Questions
  • • 15. Asking where someone is.
    • 16. Asking what someone is doing.
    • 17. Asking about when something will happen.
    • 18. Asking who is doing something.

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Understanding Parts of Speech

To understand easy English sentences, you need to break them down into even smaller parts.

Sentences are made up of words. More specifically, they are made up of parts of speech. A part of speech defines what a word does in a sentence.

The parts of speech are:

• Noun: A person, place or thing. Examples: Cat, table, king.

• Pronoun: A word used in place of a noun. Examples: He, she, they.

• Verb: An action word. Examples: Swim, is, write.

• Adjective: A word that modifies (changes) or describes a noun or another adjective. Examples: Beautiful, white, shiny.

• Adverb: A word that modifies or describes a verb. (It shows how something is done.) Examples: Quickly, carefully, brightly.

• Preposition: A word that describes the relationship to a noun. Examples: From, under, until.

• Conjunction: A connecting word. Examples: And, but, although.

If you don’t already know these parts of speech, read that list a few times. These terms will be important later in this post, in your English studies and in whichever English situations you find yourself in, whether with friends, at school or at work!

How to Break Sentences into Sections

So now you have the words you need to form your sentence, and you know what parts of speech they are. Now you need to learn how to combine them. A sentence has a subject (the person, place or thing that the sentence is about) and an action (what the subject is doing). Together, they express a complete thought. Even the shortest complete sentence in the English language follows this rule:

“I am.” (“I” is the subject, “am” is the action!)

Here is another simple sentence:

“I ate.”

Once you have your subject and action, you can start to add more detail. You can add an object (whoever or whatever the action is being done to):

“I ate a hamburger.”

Or you can add a description:

“I ate a delicious hamburger.”

Sometimes you can even add more subjects and actions:

“I ate a delicious hamburger, but my friend only ate some fries.”

When you are trying to understand a sentence, you can use the above knowledge to break it into smaller pieces. You can also use this information to create the most basic sentences.

Learning More About Sentence Structure

In this article, we are only giving you a basic glance of the many different sentence structures in the English language, perfect for anyone learning English for beginners. To learn more about sentence structure, visit one (or all) of these fantastic resources:

• This page has some useful advice for writing excellent sentences, with plenty of examples. The BBC also has a helpful video about English sentence structure.

• Click on any of the sentence structures in this article for a more detailed explanation.

• If you are a visual learner, Grammar Revolution provides a visual guide to different types of sentence structure.

• Tired of all the reading? Watch an English video instead! You’ll hear how native speakers build sentences naturally. FluentU is the perfect tool for this.

Okay, now you are ready to move on to building sentences!

Before you begin, there are two things you should know about this guide:

1. Whenever we use [noun], you can replace it with a [pronoun]. For example, you can say “Sam is tired,” or you can say “He is tired.” Both are correct.

2. Whenever we use “is,” you will need to replace it with the correct form of “to be.” Choose the right form based on this list for the present tense:

• I am.
• He / she / it is.
• You / they / we are.

And this list for the past tense:

• I / he / she / it was.
• You / they / we were.

That’s all! Now you are ready to begin.

Making Statements About the Present

1. Describing something or someone.

Form: [Noun] is [adjective].

Notes: If the noun you are using is not a pronoun, the name of a place or the name of a person, add the word “the” (or “this,” or “that”) before it.

Examples:

• The flower is red.
• You are wonderful.
• The Empire State Building is tall.

2. Stating the location of something or someone.

Form: [Noun] is [preposition] [location].

Notes: To state the location of something or someone, a preposition is usually necessary. Choose the correct preposition to give the right information. You can also say someone was “here” or “over there.” Since these terms are relative (their meaning depends on your own location), you do not need to add the final “location.”

Once again, nouns that are not names of people or places get “the” added before them.

Examples:

• The cat is under the bed.
• Charlie is next to Anne.
• He is on the train.
• The dog is here.
• The men are over there.

3. Explaining what someone is doing.

Form: [Noun] is [verb -ing].

Notes: The “-ing” form of a verb means an action is taking place right now. Use this form when talking about an action that has not ended yet.

Examples:

• He is reading.
• The cat is napping.
• Kate is singing.

4. Stating what someone does for a living or a hobby.

Form: [Noun] [verb -s].

Notes: Using this structure implies the subject of your sentence does the action regularly (like a hobby, or a job), even if they are not necessarily doing it right now.

Examples:

• He reads.
• The cat naps.
• Kate sings.

5. Expressing feelings.

Form: [Noun] [feeling verb -s] [noun]. / [Noun] [feeling verb -s] [to verb / verb -ing].

Notes: Feeling verbs are verbs like “love,” “like” or “hate.” You can love or hate an object, or an action. When you describe someone’s feelings about an action, you can use either the “to verb” or “verb -ing” forms. In most cases, both are correct! You can also use this form to describe needs and wants, but remember that in that case, the “verb -ing” form cannot be used. For example, you don’t “need sleeping.” You “need to sleep,” or just “need sleep.”

Examples:

• I love sunshine.
• The elephant likes painting.
• Tom hates his job.
• I need to eat.
• I want food.
• She wants to sleep.
• She needs sleep.

6. Making a suggestion.

Form: Let’s [verb]. / Please [verb].

Notes: To suggest an action that you will also take part in, use the first structure. To politely ask someone to do something, use the second one.

Examples:

• Let’s eat.
• Please eat.
• Please move. (Please note: This might be grammatically correct, but it is actually not very polite! The polite way to ask someone to move is to say “excuse me.”)

Making Statements About the Past

7. Describing something or someone in the past.

Form: [Noun] was [adjective].

Notes: You describe someone in the past tense almost the same exact way as in the present—just change the “is” to “was.” Using this structure suggests that either the description is no longer accurate, or that the description is for a specific moment.

Examples:

• The flower was red. (…It is not red anymore.)
• You were wonderful. (…You played the violin so well in the concert.)
• The Empire State Building was tall. (…Until the giant apes tore it down.)

8. Stating the location of something or someone in the past.

Form: [Noun] was [preposition] [location].

Notes: As with a description, describing a location in the past and the present is very similar. The rules remain the same; only the verb tense changes. Remember, again, that using this form means the location has changed, or that the statement was only true for a specific time period in the past.

Examples:

• The cat was under the bed. (…But then it ran away.)
• Charlie was next to Anne. (…Then he went behind her.)
• He was on the train. (…That is how he knew the train was going to be late.)
• The dog was here. (…But then its owner took it away.)
• The men were over there. (…Until they finished their job and went home.)

9. Explaining what someone did, or used to do in the past.

Form: [Noun] was [verb -ing]. / [Noun] [verb -ed].

Notes: There is a slight difference between the “verb -ed” form of an action, and the “was verb -ing” form. Using the “verb -ed” form describes something that has finished happening. Using the “-ing” form of a verb describes something that was happening during a specific period of time in the past.

Another form you can use is: [Noun] used [to verb]. This form is used for any kind of action that someone used to do in the past, but has since stopped doing.

All these forms can be used with feeling verbs, as well! Just add the “noun” or “verb -ing” after the feeling verb for a complete sentence.

Examples:

• The cat napped. (…That’s why he is so happy now.)
• Kate sang. (…The concert was wonderful.)
• He was reading. (…That is why he did not hear the doorbell ring.)
• The Statue of Liberty used to shine. (…But being in the salty water all those years has made it green.)
• I used to love shrimp. (…But then I learned that I am allergic to it.)
• Sally hated swimming. (…She had to do it every day in school.)

Making Statements About the Future

10. Stating what someone will do in the future.

Form: [Noun] is going to [verb]. / [Noun] will [verb].

Notes: The great thing about the future tense is that you don’t need to remember any verb forms! To turn a sentence into the future tense, just add the words “is going to” or “will” before the verb. Using this structure without any additional details means you will be doing the action very soon.

Examples:

• I am going to dance.
• We are going to eat.
• The baby is going to sleep.

11. Stating when something will happen.

Form: [Noun] will [verb] [preposition] [time]. / [Noun] is going to [verb] [time adverb].

Notes: Use this structure to talk about things that will happen in the future. When you use a specific time, a preposition is needed. Use “at” when stating a clock time, and “on” when stating a day or date. Use “in” when stating a year, month or another time frame (like “a couple of years” or “two minutes”). When you use a time adverb like today, tomorrow or yesterday, you don’t need a preposition.

Examples:

• The train will leave at 5:00 AM.
• I will visit my parents in October.
• Anthony is going to dance tomorrow.

Making Negative Statements

12. Stating what someone is not, or not doing.

Form: [Noun] is not [adjective / verb-ing].

Notes: Changing a sentence into a negative one is as easy as adding the word “not.”

Examples:

• The flower is not red. (…It is white.)
• You are not wonderful. (…That’s not very nice!)
• The Empire State Building is not tall. (…We never said the sentence has to be true!)
• Kate is not singing. (…Why did she stop?)

13. Stating what someone did not do.

Form: [Noun] did not [verb]. / [Noun] was not [verb -ing].

Notes: Remember the rules from before. Using the first form above puts the focus on the action (in this case, saying it did not happen at all). “Verb -ing” puts the focus on the time the action took place (saying it was not happening at a specific moment).

Examples:

• I did not sleep. (…I stayed awake all night.)
• I was not sleeping. (…While the teacher gave her lesson.)
• The customer did not pay. (…At all. How terrible!)

14. Stating what someone will not do in the future.

Form: [Noun] is not going to [verb]. / [Noun] will not [verb].

Notes: Changing the future tense into a negative sentence is just as easy. Just add “not” before the verb.

Examples:

• I am not going to eat. (…I will not eat green eggs and ham!)
• Sam will not dance. (…He has ants in his pants.)
• The cat will not nap. (…He is going to eat first.)

Asking Questions

15. Asking where someone is.

Form: Where is [noun]?

Notes: You can also use this form to ask about places, things and any other kind of noun you might be trying to find.

Examples:

• Where is the dog?
• Where is George?
• Where is the bathroom?

16. Asking what someone is doing.

Form: What is [noun] doing?

Notes: The noun in this case should be a living thing. (Generally, non-living objects don’t do much!)

Examples:

• What is that dog doing?
• What is Sal doing?
• What is the baby doing?

17. Asking about when something will happen.

Form: When will [noun] [verb]?

Notes: This is a useful sentence structure to know when you want to find out about events in the future.

Examples:

• When will the train leave?
• When will Fran visit?
• When will your mom call?

18. Asking who is doing something.

Form: Who is [verb -ing]? / Who is [verb -ing] [noun]?

Notes: This structure is a bit different. It can be used to refer to the present, and to the near future tenses. Use it to find out who is doing a certain action (for example, if you hear a trumpet and want to know who is playing it). Or, you can use it to find out who will be doing an action in the near future—for example, if you are going on a trip and want to know who will drive the car.

If the action is being done to something, don’t forget to add that something in for a complete thought!

Examples:

• Who is playing the trumpet?
• Who is driving?
• Who is cooking? (…It smells great!)

The easy sentences you learned above are just the beginning.

You have the first Legos in place.

Now go build a castle!

Download:
This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you
can take anywhere.
Click here to get a copy. (Download)