Unit 3: Reading

Subjects and Verbs

In Unit 2, you learned about the eight parts of speech and how these word categories are the basic building materials of sentences. Understanding the grammatical roles these parts of speech play will help you make good choices when composing

• sentences,
• paragraphs, and 
  
• multi-paragraph compositions.

Subjects and verbs make up all sentences. Of course, there are certain guidelines that must be followed when creating sentences. At the very least, sentences must have one subject, one verb, and punctuation. In addition, they must be complete thoughts. These basic sentence structures can be more easily understood by examining their base parts:

SubjectsWords that identify the actor in a sentence or tell what/who a sentence is about.VerbsWords that either describe what action the actor is doing or provide a link to the condition/state of being of the subject.PunctuationSymbols that tell readers when a sentence ends.

All sentences contain at least one subject and one verb. Sentences that contain a single subject and a single verb are called simple sentences. Recall the sentence Seals Perform from PARTS OF SPEECH AT WORK in Unit 2. The sentence has one subject and one verb:

Seals perform.

Seals is the subject; seals identifies the actor or who this sentence is about. Perform is the verb; perform describes what action the actor is doing. And the two words create a meaningful, complete thought. In addition to containing a single subject and a single verb, simple sentences can also contain one subject and multiple verbs OR multiple subjects and one verb OR multiple subjects and multiple verbs. Look at the sentences below.

One subject and one verb:Children play.Two subjects and one verb:Basketballs and volleyballs bounce.One subject and two verbs:Sharks swim and hunt.Two subjects and two verbs:Juan and Alex talk and laugh.

Of course, simple sentences like these aren’t the types of sentences that you will find in academic and professional writing, mostly because they don’t provide readers much information. However, simple sentences are a good place to start. Understanding what creates simple sentences is important because you can eventually expand them so that you can use the expanded sentences in your writing.