What do you need to master (=get a firm grasp of)? Here is a checklist.
Parts of Speech
Noun
Verb
Adjective – regular and participal
Adverb
Preposition – movement and location
Conjunction
Interjection
Pronoun
Sentence Components
Subject
Predicate
Dynamic verbs – active and stative
Direct objects vs indirect objects
Linking verbs (also known as copular verbs)
Complement
Sentence, independent clause, dependent clause, phrase
Simple, compound, complex, compound-complex sentences
Concepts
Active vs passive voice – subject of the sentence vs doer of the action
Subject of a sentence vs subject and object of a verb
Tense vs aspect
Modality – grammatical modals and lexical modals
Gerund vs infinitive
Transitive vs intransitive
Participles – verbal vs adjectival use
Syntax
NP (4 part NPs, gerunds, relative pronoun-lead clauses)
Determiners – articles, pronouns, quantifiers
4 part NPs – pre-modification can be adjectives or other nouns
4 part NPs – post-modification can be prepositional phrases, that- phrases, relative pronoun-lead clauses)
embedded clauses
VP
AP or AdvP
PP
CP
Movement rules – yes/no questions vs Wh- questions, helping verbs, negation
Why investing the time and effort benefits you:
1 Fluency increases when you know the anatomy of a sentence.
2 Accuracy improves.
3 Cognitive load decreases, making loading sentences faster when speaking.
4 You can self-correct in real time. I have seen students get way better at self-editing, which is a game-changer when writing under time pressure.
5 More of your passive vocabulary becomes active when speaking; this is a byproduct of a reduced cognitive load at the ‘produce a sentence’ level. That is, you can focus on word choice once producing sentences has been automatized.
6 Corrections from tutors make more sense, and are more likely to be integrated and then produced.
*This post will be added to and refined as time goes on. Phonology and morphology come in a future post.
Why CEFR C1s benefit from mastering parts of speech, sentence components, grammatical concepts, syntax