All English sentences involve two main parts: a subject, which is the topic of the sentence, and a verb, which describes what the subject does or what’s done to it. The simplest sentences have only a subject and a verb: “Jason swims.” The subject of a sentence includes all the words that describe the subject. In the sentence “The little boy with the life vest swims,” the subject is “the little boy with the life vest.” The predicate of a sentence includes all the words that describe the verb. In the sentence “Jason swims with the dolphins to the island,” the predicate is “swims with the dolphins to the island.”
In English sentences, the subject comes first, followed by the verb. If the sentence has direct or indirect objects, they follow the verb. For example, a sentence with a direct object might read, “Sarah washed the dog.” “Sarah” is the subject, “washed” is the verb and “the dog” is the direct object. Indirect objects and direct objects can switch places, depending on how you word your sentence, but they always follow the verb. For example, you can either say, “Sarah gave a bone to the dog” or “Sarah gave the dog a bone.” In both sentences, “a bone” is the direct object and “the dog” is the indirect object.
English verbs conjugate, or change forms, depending on what the sentence’s subject is. For instance, “go” is the main verb in the sentences “I go” and “he goes,” but its form changes to agree with the subject in each case. Because a few of the most common English verbs are irregular -- “be” and “do,” for example -- it’s essential to memorize their conjugations. And if you have a compound subject, as in the sentence “My wife and I are delighted,” make sure to use a plural verb: “are,” not “am” or “is.”
The primary tenses in English are the same as in any language. In temporal order from past to present, they are the past perfect, simple past, present perfect, simple present, future perfect and future. English has a more complex tense system than many languages, in that it uses “helping verbs,” or auxiliaries, to create four of these six main tenses. So in temporal order, the primary verb tenses are formed this way: “I had flown,” “I flew,” “I have flown,” “I fly,” “I will have flown” and “I will fly.” The tense of a sentence’s main verb tells listeners when the action takes place, and it governs the tenses of any other verbs in the sentence. For example, the sentence “I will take the medicine that the doctor gave me,” the main verb “will take” is in the future tense, but the sentence also uses the past-tense verb “gave.” These tenses tell listeners that in the present, I already have the medicine, but I have not taken it yet.