跟读练习: Grammar Lesson #1 - Tips to Improve Your Sentence Structure - 通过视频学习英语口语

选择练习模式

每种模式都会打开全屏练习室。

127 句
如果句子过短或过长,请点击 Edit 进行调整。
1
Hi, I’m Daniel.
2
Welcome to Oxford Online English!
3
In this lesson, you can learn the most important grammar rule in English.
4
Of course, you need to know many things to use grammar correctly in English.
5
However, there’s one tip that can dramatically improve your English grammar—especially in writing.
6
First, don’t forget to check out our website: Oxford Online English dot com.
7
We have many free lessons to help you improve your English.
8
There’s also a level test, which can show you how good your grammar is now.
9
But, you want to hear the grammar tip, right?
10
What is it?
11
Let’s see! Here’s the basic idea: make sure your sentence has a subject and a verb, and that you know what the subject and main verb are.
12
Every sentence needs a verb, and unless your sentence is an imperative—meaning that you’re giving someone a command—then your sentence needs a subject, too.
13
Each clause in your sentence should have one subject and one main verb, and only one subject and one main verb.
14
It sounds simple.
15
Maybe you’re thinking, ‘This is too easy!
16
I know this already!’ However, we see students make mistakes with this all the time, especially in writing.
17
Mistakes with this point are serious, because they often make it hard to understand what you want to say.
18
Even if your meaning is clear, sentences with this problem are often difficult to read.
19
In any situation, that’s a problem.
20
It’s especially serious if you’re taking an exam, like IELTS.
21
Let’s look at the most basic point.
22
Your sentence needs a subject, which should be a noun or noun phrase, like ‘they’, ‘everybody’, or ‘my maths teacher from high school’.
23
Then, you need a main verb, which generally goes after the subject.
24
With this, you can make simple sentences like these: ‘They have a nice house’; ‘Everybody agreed.’ ‘My maths teacher from high school was really good at explaining complicated things.’ After the main verb, you might have a simple complement, like ‘a nice house’.
25
You might have nothing at all.
26
Your sentence might finish after the verb, like ‘Everybody agreed.’ Or, you might have a longer complement, possibly including other verbs, as in ‘My math teacher from high school was really good at explaining complicated things.’ So, you’re probably still thinking that this is easy.
27
And, so far, it is!
28
Let’s see how it can go wrong.
29
Look at five sentences: By the way, these sentences are all real examples from our students’ writing.
30
Most of them come from IELTS writing practice.
31
All these sentences break the basic rule we mentioned above.
32
Can you see how?
33
Pause the video, read the sentences, and try to find the problems.
34
Start again when you’re ready.
35
In the first sentence, there's no main verb.
36
'Will' is a modal verb, but a modal verb can't be a main verb; you need a main verb after it.
37
For example, 'We will back home next Friday.' The second sentence has two subjects: ‘Imposing higher taxes on fast food’ and ‘it’.
38
One clause can’t have two subjects.
39
To correct this sentence, remove ‘it’: ‘Imposing higher taxes on fast food a good idea.’ The third sentence has a main verb, but no subject.
40
affects individuals’ lives directly?
41
This is difficult to correct, because it’s impossible to know what the writer wanted to say.
42
You would need to add a noun before the verb ‘affects’ to make it understandable.
43
The fourth sentence has a fragment at the end which includes a subject and a verb.
44
This means the sentence has too many subjects and verbs; each clause can only have one subject and one main verb.
45
What’s the solution?
46
There are many possibilities, but the easiest way to correct this is to break the sentence into two parts.
47
You can do this by changing the comma after ‘Alexandria’ to a semicolon.
48
Finally, what about the fifth sentence?
49
It’s difficult to understand, right?
50
Again, it’s difficult to correct this sentence, because it’s hard to see the writer’s ideas.
51
The problem is that this sentence has several parts with several subjects and verbs, and it’s not clear what refers to what.
52
For example, ‘each society’ is a subject, but then ‘forced medical treatment’ is also a subject.
53
Later in the sentence, we have a verb—‘avoid’—and it isn’t clear which subject goes with it.
54
On a more practical level, it just isn’t clear what this sentence is about.
55
Does the writer want to say something about ‘each society’, or about ‘large sets of people,’ or about ‘forced medical treatment’?
56
We don’t know.
57
This is why subject-verb structure is so important: if it isn’t clear, it will be hard to understand what your sentence is about.
58
Sometimes, this might mean that your ideas aren’t clear in your mind.
59
Next, let’s expand this basic rule and see how you can use it to make a wider range of sentences.
60
You heard before that both subjects and verbs can be words or phrases.
61
Sometimes, your subject or verb might be a longer phrase.
62
This often leads to mistakes, because when your subject and verb are multiple words, it’s more difficult to keep track of your sentence structure.
63
Let’s do an example together.
64
Take a sentence you saw before: ‘Everybody agreed.’ You can make the subject—‘everybody’—into a phrase.
65
For example: ‘Everybody who was at the meeting agreed.’ You can make the verb into a phrase, like this: ‘Everybody who was at the meeting agreed to change the office dress code.’ You can make each phrase even longer.
66
For example: ‘Everybody who was at the board meeting held last Tuesday evening agreed to change the existing office dress code to something more informal.’ Even though we’ve added lots of new words and ideas, this sentence has the same basic structure as before.
67
It still has one subject, and one main verb.
68
Although we’ve added a complement after the verb, the verb doesn’t have a direct object.
69
We haven’t added anything grammatically new to the sentence; we’ve simply expanded the existing parts.
70
Let’s do one more example of this.
71
This time, we want you to try!
72
Here’s a basic sentence: ‘My sister called.’ Can you make this sentence longer by changing the subject and verb to longer phrases?
73
For this exercise, there are a couple of rules.
74
You can’t add a noun after ‘called’, because that would change the structure.
75
You also can’t use conjunctions like ‘although’ or ‘because’.
76
The idea is to keep the basic structure the same, so that the sentence has one subject and one verb which doesn’t have a direct object.
77
Pause the video and try it now.
78
How did you do?
79
Of course, there are many ways to do this.
80
Let’s look at three possibilities.
81
‘My sister Mandy called last night.’ ‘My sister, who I haven’t spoken to for ages, called to tell me about her new job.’ You can see that you can do this in a simpler way, or you can make the sentence much more complicated, by adding relative clauses, adjectives, adverbs, and so on.
82
However, remember the basic idea: all of these sentences have the same basic structure: one subject and one main verb.
83
Let’s move on and talk about one more important point.
84
As you heard before, almost all sentences need a subject.
85
Only imperatives, like ‘Come here!’ don’t need a subject.
86
Interjections, like ‘Wow!’, also don’t need a subject, but many linguists—including us—would say that these are not sentences.
87
However, sometimes there isn’t a clear noun subject.
88
In this case, you need to use a word like ‘it’ or ‘there’.
89
For example: ‘It won’t take long to get there.’ ‘It’s worth going.’ ‘There’s a mosquito on your nose.’ ‘There have been several developments since the last time we spoke.’ In these sentences, the words ‘it’ and ‘there’ are empty subjects; they don’t refer to a specific noun or thing.
90
You use them only because the sentence needs a subject.
91
They don’t add any meaning to the sentence.
92
So, what’s the difference?
93
When do you need to use ‘it’, and when do you need to use ‘there’?
94
Use ‘it’ to talk about distances and times.
95
For example: ‘It’s not far to the metro.’ ‘How long will it take you to finish everything?’ ‘It’s six thirty.’ You often use ‘it’ to talk about the weather, too.
96
For example: ‘It’s sunny.’ ‘It’ll be cold tomorrow.’ ‘It was really wet last month.’ You also use ‘it’ to talk about situations, and in a number of phrases like ‘it’s worth…’ For example: ‘It’s safe to walk around at night here.’ ‘It’s good that you could join us.’ ‘It’s really cosy in here.’ What about ‘there’?
97
Use ‘there’ to say that something exists, or doesn’t exist.
98
Usually, when you use ‘there’, it’s the first time you’re mentioning something.
99
For example: ‘There’s some salad in the fridge.’ ‘There are several reasons why I have to say ‘no’ to this idea.’ ‘There didn’t use to be so many homeless people here.’ Let’s practise together.
100
Look at five sentences.
101
Do you need to add ‘it’ or ‘there’?
102
Pause the video, and think about your answers.
103
Ready? Here they are.
104
Finally, we have one more thing to show you.
105
In general, the subject of your sentence goes immediately before the main verb.
106
You can see this in the sentences you’ve already seen in this lesson.
107
Sometimes, the main verb also has an auxiliary verb, like ‘have’, ‘has’, ‘do’, ‘does’, ‘will’, ‘can’ and so on.
108
In positive sentences, the auxiliary verb and the main verb almost always go together.
109
For example: ‘They have bought a nice house.’ ‘My sister Mandy will call tonight.’ However, there’s one case where the main verb goes before the subject: questions with ‘be’.
110
For example: ‘Are you ready?’; ‘Were there many people there?’; In some cases, the auxiliary verb needs to come before the subject.
111
This is most common in questions.
112
For example: ‘Can you help me?’ ‘What time does she arrive?’ ‘How many pieces of cake have you had already?’ It’s also possible in certain structures which are mostly used in formal writing, like ‘At no time did I suspect that he was the thief.’ At this point, let’s review the most important points that you should take away from this lesson.
113
One: make sure every sentence has a subject and a main verb in each clause.
114
Don’t put more than one subject or main verb in one clause.
115
Two: if your subject and main verb are longer phrases, or if you add a lot of adverbs or subordinate clauses to your sentence, it might be harder to keep track of the structure.
116
Before you write a sentence, think about this question: what are you talking about, and what are you saying about this thing?
117
Decide what you’re talking about—the subject—and what you’re saying about it—the main verb.
118
Keep these in your head.
119
Three: study the difference between main verbs and auxiliary verbs.
120
Remember that auxiliary verbs can’t generally be used alone.
121
Make sure every auxiliary verb has a main verb attached.
122
Learn the cases when the auxiliary verb needs to come before the subject.
123
If you can follow these simple steps, your writing will be clearer, better-organised, and more accurate.
124
Do you have any tips to help other English learners improve their grammar?
125
Please share your suggestions in the comments!
126
Thanks for watching!
127
See you next time!

下载应用

流利口语所需的一切

AI 发音评分逐句打分
音标练习掌握每个音
词汇学习建立你的词库
词汇游戏边玩边学

同频道

FOR YOU

推荐视频

谁适合看这个视频?

无论是刚开始学英语的新手,还是准备雅思等考试的考生,这个视频都能帮你快速提升句子结构能力。尤其是写作时总被语法错误困扰、想让表达更清晰的同学,跟着视频学这招“主语+谓语”核心规则,能轻松解决80%的基础语法问题,让你的英语表达更地道、更易读。

值得积累的实用表达

  • dramatically improve:极大地提升。比如“这招能dramatically improve你的写作语法”。
  • imperative:祈使句(表示命令或建议的句子)。比如“Close the door”就是imperative。
  • complement:补语。用来补充说明主语或谓语,比如“They have a nice house”中的“a nice house”就是complement。

如何练好发音?试试Shadowing!

看YouTube学英语时,除了学语法,还能练发音。视频里Daniel的发音清晰、语速适中,非常适合用来做shadowing practice。跟着他的节奏,模仿每个单词的重音和语调,比如“subject”和“verb”的重音位置,“especially”的连读技巧。坚持用shadow speech的方法练习,不仅能提高英语发音,还能培养语感。如果觉得自己跟不上,可以先用慢速播放,熟练后再加速。配合专门的shadowing site,效果会更好哦!

记住,学好英语没有捷径,但找对方法就能事半功倍。从今天开始,用视频里的“主语+谓语”规则检查自己的句子,再加上shadowing练习,你的英语口语和写作一定会进步神速!

视频中的语法

说话人最常用的结构,并附上视频中的原话:

结构视频中的用法
条件句 if + 从句,will/would + 动词 — 条件及其结果if it isn't clear, it will be
现在完成时 have/has + 过去分词 — 过去发生但与现在仍有关联的事we've added · haven't added · haven't spoken
定语从句 who / which + 从句 — 补充说明人或事物test, which can · structures which are
用 “might / may” 表可能 might/may + 动词 — 有可能但不确定的事might have · might finish · might mean

什么是跟读法?

跟读法 (Shadowing) 是一种有科学依据的语言学习技巧,最初开发用于专业口译员的培训,并由多语言者Alexander Arguelles博士普及。这个方法简单而强大:您在听英语母语原声的同时立即大声重复——就像是一个延迟1-2秒紧跟说话者的影子。与被动听力或语法练习不同,跟读法强迫您的大脑和口腔肌肉同时处理并模仿真实的讲话模式。研究表明它能显着提高发音准确性,语调,节奏,连读,听力理解和口语流利度——使其成为雅思口语备考和真实英语交流最有效的方法之一。

影子跟读法: 阅读完整分步指南 →