Hello, we're starting with structure. Now you will say why structure?

As you all
know, TOEFL IBT and the IELTS measure all four language skills. Namely,
listening, speaking, reading and writing. But it should be noted that in
assessing your test score, one of the most important criteria will be grammar
or structure. Therefore, we say that grammar is inevitable. Now let's have a
look at these criteria. The first one you see is you can use advanced grammar
structures with a high degree of accuracy. If you can attain this criterion, it will
most probably guarantee you a score between 100 and 120 in the TOEFL IBT.
Similarly, it will guarantee you a score between 7.5 and 9 in the IELTS. Let's
have a look at the second criterion. It says you can use either accurate, easier
grammatical structures with a few errors. Now with this criterion, you can
guarantee a score of something between 80 and 100 in the TOEFL IBT, and 6.5
and 7.5 for the IELTS. Now, structure and vocabulary. We're going to discuss
the relationship between structure and vocabulary. You have to gain some
knowledge and some skills in guessing the word within a passage using some
structural clues. In other words, grammatical clues. Let's look at what these
clues are. The first one is punctuation. Now what we mean by punctuation is to
notice the importance of a comma, parentheses and dashes within the
passage. We will have a look at some examples in a short while. The second
one is restatement or paraphrasing. Now, what are the words which signify
restatement or paraphrase? They are the word or that is in other words and
the abbreviation for in other words, or that is is, IE. The third one is
exemplification. Now words that we use to give examples are such as, for
example, for instance, the abbreviation EG, namely, etc. And the 4th and then
last one for structural clues, is the pronoun reference, particularly the relative
pronoun reference like who, whom, which, that, and whose. Now let's proceed
with some more detail. We have an example here. This is a passage excerpt.
From the story of a teddy bear, I'm sure you all know what a teddy bear is. I'm
sure you had a toy a teddy bear, when you were a child. Well, if you can see in
the middle of the passage, you see the word Teddy. Teddy actually was the
nickname given to Theodore Roosevelt who was one of the most important
presidents of the United States. So let's have a look at this passage. I'll read it
out for you. “He was an unusually active man with varied pastimes, one of
which was hunting”. In the answered choices, this is a vocabulary question. Of
course you will be asked the synonym of pastimes. I have to make an
important note here. It is the wording in the question will never be the same as
the one in the passage. So, the meaning of pastimes can be understood from
the structural group, one of which was hunting. So he had varied pastimes.
Very, as you know, comes from the verb to vary meaning various different
pastimes, and one of which tells us that he had more than one pastimes and
one of them was hunting. So this is a clue for you. Let us continue. “A bear was
captured, clanked over the head to knock it out, and tied to a tree; however,
Teddy, who really wanted to actually hunt, refused to shoot the bear and in
fact demanded that the bear be extricated from the ropes; that is, he
demanded that the bear be set free”. Now look our clue here that is. After
that is we have the explanation which includes the synonym of extricate. So
you understand that the meaning of extricate is set free. Again I have to repeat
this. The wording in the question will never be the same as the wording in the
answer choices. So most probably in the answer choices the synonym for
extricated will be released and look extricated, released and set free are all
synonyms. So, using the structural clues you can determine that pastimes can
be replaced by leisure activities. In the answer choices leisure activities takes
place. The clue is the relative pronoun one of which, which we said earlier.
Another example of structural clue is the restatement word that is, which leads
you to determine the meaning of extricate given the synonym set free. Now
let's have a look at the sentence formation. I will explain shortly why this is
important. You can see the. Senseless. Or uh, the sentence, which I'm sure you
don't know what each word in the sentence means “togonapism”, "fotted”,
"osiropation”, "leposly”. Do you know what these words mean? I'm sure you
don't, because they do not exist. I made them up. Now I'm going to point out
to some word parts here. Word formation, word endings in a different way of
saying “togonapism” ISM tells you that it's a noun. "fotted” with the suffix –ed
indicates that it's a verb in simple past tense. “osiropation” -tion tells you that
it's another noun, and “leposly” with the –ly suffix determines that it's an
adverb, how the action is done, how the action is performed. Now I'm going to
substitute some other words that words that you already know to show you
the relationship between words and word endings. Let me see. I can say
- Capitalism
- Invaded
- European nations
- Completely.
Now you understand this sentence, don't you? Of course, instead of
“togonapism”, I replaced “capitalism”. Instead of "fotted”, I replaced
“invaded”, another simple past word. “osiropation” I replaced it by “European
nations” –tion is the noun ending. “leposly”, I said “completely” an adverb. So
if you can tell if you can determine what the word forms are, it will help you
understand the meaning of a reading passage more easily. So –ism and –tion
are noun forms, -ed is a verb form and naturally –ly is an adverb. Yes. Now I
will say that this is the magic formula. When understanding sentence
formation, we have to know
- Who does what.
- Who did what?
- Who will do what?
- And with who?
- With whom?
- Where and when?
- Why and under what circumstances?
- Then what happened?
- How did it happen?
Now I'd like to say that English grammar is nothing but gossip.
Look at this, a kangaroo can travel whit it's mate very fast in a series of leaps.
So who did what? Who does what? Who can do what? Who, what's who here?
A kangaroo. So A is a kangaroo can travel. That's the verb, the action who does
what, who did what, with whom? With its mate. How very fast in a series of
loops?
So structure and usage and vocabulary are inevitable in all four skills. Listening,
speaking, reading and writing, and we have a dialogue here, the man says:
Man: This molar is giving me a lot of trouble. By the way, molar is one of the
teeth that exists in the back of our mouth. Woman says, why don't you see a
dentist? Man says I went only last week. He should have pinpointed what
was wrong. The narrator asks the question: What is the problem? If you don't
know the function of modal verbs, present modals or be it past modals it is,
there is no way you can answer this question correctly. What is the problem?
Let's see the answer choices a. The dentist was unwilling to help him. Yeah,
no, this is not the answer. He has a toothache. No, this is not really the
answer. The dentist is giving him trouble. Maybe he can't pinpoint what is
wrong. Well, (d) looks like it's a misleading answer choice, but when we go
back to the dialogue. What does the man say? I went only last week. He should
have pinpointed what was wrong. He should have pinpointed what was wrong.
But did he? No, he didn't. That's why the correct answer is C the dentist is
giving him trouble. He still suffers from toothache.
OK, now we're going to have a look at sentence structure practice. We're going
to have a look at simple sentences, compound sentences and complex
sentences. Now what is a simple sentence structure as simple sentence is a
sentence which has only one clause. Students usually make two types of
sentence structure errors in sentences with one clause. What are these errors?
The first one is. Missing verb. They don't put the verb. Look at the example, the
ideas for the construction of the project. So what. Where's the verb? All of this
is the subject. What is the core subject? The ideas. The words that follow the
ideas are just complimenting the core subject. But there's no verb here. Let's
put a verb. What can we say? The idea is for the construction of the project.
Were. Quite innovative, we can say. We can put the verb “were”. Look at the
second error. That's the missing subject. This time the subject is missing.
Definitely is not true. What is not true? There's no subject. Let's put a subject.
Where can we put it? How can we put it? We can say “It is definitely not true.”
Then it would be complete. It would be a simple sentence structure with its
verb and with its subject. Also simple sentences cannot be introduced by a
subordinate clause connector such as because. Now, don't mind my saying
subordinate clause connectors. I know it's too much grammatical terminology,
but you know the word because in any other language you may be able to start
the sentence with “because”, but not in English grammar, especially when it's a
simple sentence structure. Look at the error in the example, because the
manager told me to do it. This is wrong. It is not possible to start a sentence
with because. So to sum up,
- a simple sentence is a sentence with one clause,
- a simple sentence must have both a subject and a verb.
- Thirdly and lastly, a simple sentence may not be introduced by a
subordinate clause connector like because, while, although, and so on.
So now we have an exercise about sentence structure. We're going to decide
whether the following are correct or incorrect in terms of simple sentence
structure. Let's read the first one, the evident reasons for the election of the
candidate. Is this correct? I'm afraid not. There is no verb. Verb is missing. All
of this is the subject. What's the core subject? The reasons. Which reasons?
The evident reasons for what? For the election of the candidate. There's no
verb. Let's look at the second one. Why everyone in the room did not believe
his explanation. Is this correct? Is it? No, because this is not a question. I know
what you thought. You thought that this was a question, but it's not. Why is it
not a question? Because the word order is not the same as it should be in a
question. And where's the question mark? There's no question mark. So let's
make it correct. It should have been. Why did everyone in the room not
believe his explanation? Then it's OK. So in this case. This is incorrect. This can
only be a noun clause, which we will go into detail later on in complex
sentence structure, noun clause in subject position or noun clause in object
position. Let's give it a try. Let's give it a try. Let's suppose that this is a noun
clause in subject position. Let's complete this. We can say why everyone in the
room did not believe his explanation was surprising. Now it's OK. Let's make
another example. Putting this whole noun clause in object position. We can say
I don't know why everyone in the room did not believe his explanation. Now
it's OK. But as it is, this is incorrect. We cannot have something like this in a
simple sentence structure. The third one, I found his ideas rather
disappointing and rude. Is this OK? Where’s the subject? Oh, we have a
subject, “I” is the subject. Where's the verb found? I found and we have the
compliment, the object and so on. So this is correct, number 3 is correct.
Now practice, sentence structure practice. Now we're gonna have a look at
compound sentence structure. Now compound. I'm sure you'll know what the
name compound is. When you have two simple sentences, you combine them
and it becomes a compound sentence. A compound sentence is a sentence
that has more than one main clause. Usually two. Look at the example. Susie
studies hard. That's the first clause. (period) Or (full stop) In British English, she
gets high grades. Period. That's our second main clause. Now, how do we
combine them? How do we make this a compound sentence? We can say Susie
studies hard, (comma) So she gets high grades. Now it's a compound sentence.
Let's try a second one. We can say Susie studies hard; (semi-colon) She gets
high grades. Can you imagine? A punctuation mark such as a semi-colon (;) If
you put a semi-colon (;) between the two clauses, it becomes a compound
sentence. It's like magic. Now this is the first method of making compound
sentences. I call it the magnificent 7. Because there are seven words
connectors that you can use to make a compound sentence. That was the first
method. We can also form compound sentences by using adverbs and adverb
transitions. Note that adverb transitions are not conjunctions. They are not
conjunctions. So either a coordinate conjunction with a comma or a semi colon
is needed. Now look at the difference between the first example and the
second example. Susie studies hard. (period) As a result, (comma) she gets high
grades again. Here we have two clauses. 2 main clauses. But how did we
combine them? We used a transition expression. The transition expression is
as a result, but notice how important the punctuation is. Look at these second
one. Susie studies hard /semi-colon); As a result she gets high grades so you
can either put a period. But then you should start with a capital letter, and
after the transition expression you must always, you must always put a
comma. Now going on to complex sentence structure, which is our third. Kind
of sentence structure. A complex sentence is a sentence that has at least one
main clause, one main clause and one at least one subordinate clause or
dependent clause. What are these dependent clauses? What are these
subordinate clauses? I'm sure you know all of them already. Npun clauses,
adjective or relative clauses, adverb clauses, conditionals. Time clauses. These
are all types of subordinate clauses. Now we're going to decide whether the
following are correct or incorrect. I just took. Some of the exercises in the slide.
The rest of the exercises are for you to do later on. Now look at the first one.
Why that man did something so terrible will never be known. Remember,
we're not talking about simple sentence anymore. Nor are we talking about
compound sentences. Now we're talking about complex sentences. Why that
man did something so terrible will never be known. Remember what I said
about the errors and the simple sentence structure? That it wasn't a question.
It could only be a noun clause in subject position or object position. Here you
are. Here you have your noun clause in subject position. Why that man did
something so terrible is your subject. What's the verb? It say passive verb and
future tense will never be known. Alright, so far so good. Let's continue the
second one. The ticket that I needed to get on to the plane was not included in
the package. Or package both of them OK. First of all, let me ask you whether
you did number 1 correct or incorrect. What do you think? Is #1 correct? In
terms of complex sentence structure. Yes, we have the subject, which is a noun
clause. Why that man did something so terrible is the subject we'll never be
known is the verb, so it's correct. Let's continue with number two again. What
do you think? Is number 2 correct or incorrect? What's the subject? The ticket?
That's the core subject. Which ticket? The ticket that I needed. Why did I need
that ticket to get onto the plane? You see, we have a few clauses embedded
within each other within one another, like the ticket. And then after the ticket
you have your relative close the ticket. Which ticket that I needed? Why did I
need that ticket to get on to the plane? Infinitive of purpose. So the whole
thing, the whole subject is the ticket that I needed to get on to the plane.
Where’s the verb? was not included. Another passive verb was not included in
the packet. Is this correct or incorrect? What do you say? Correct. The third
one, What the lifeguard did it was quite heroic. OK, now it's time for you to
think about this one. Again, we have a noun clause in subject position, don't
we? What the lifeguard did? That's the subject. And We have the "it” there.
Why do we need that “it”? Do we need that “it”? No, it's extra. We don't need
it. So this one is incorrect. “It” is extra. It should have been. What the lifeguard
did was quite heroic. OK, everybody. All right, now 4. The day when I found out
the news, it was a good day. Now I want you to think about this one. Try to
detect where the subject is and where the verb is and then let me know.
Ready. The day when I found out the news. Here we have another relative
clause which day the day when I found out the news. This is our subject, our
relative clause in subject position. "it” do we need it here? No, we don't. So
this one is incorrect. The fifth one. The teacher. Whose advice I remember to
this day was my 6th grade teacher. OK, I'll allow you some time to think about
this one. Correct or incorrect. Yeah, you're right, it's correct. What's the core
subject? The teacher. Which teacher? The teacher whose advice I remember to
this day. All of that is the subject. What's the verb? Was my 6th grade teacher.