Brize Norton Primary School
Gruesome Grammar Level 17
Parent Guide
Subjunctive
This is a word for a particular type of sentence which is particularly used in formal
situations. The idea is that if a sentence suggests a possibility, the verb is the
infinitive form rather than the more usual form. The most common example of this is
“If I were you” rather than “If I was you”.
Other examples:
“If he were here”
“If it were Christmas Day”
“Mrs Pritchard suggested that the boy join the choir.”
Informal and Formal Sentence Structures
Formal language uses certain types of sentences which are different from regular
speech. For example, there will be no slang. Contractions are not used: instead of
“I’ll come” it would say “I will come”. Formal language also does not use question
tags, such as “isn’t it?” at the end of statements.
Example, informal: “It’s a fab day today, isn’t it?”
Formal:
“It is a marvellous day today.”
Hyphens
Hyphens join two words together to form a new word, usually an adjective.
For example, “a meal which makes your mouth water” would become “a mouthwatering meal”, and “a tiger which eats men” would become “a man-eating tiger”.
Synonyms and Antonyms
A synonym is a word which means the same as another word. An antonym is its
opposite. For example:
loud
friendly
Subject and Object
Synonym
noisy
kind
Antonym
quiet
unfriendly
At its most basic, every sentence contains a subject and a verb. The subject is the
person (or thing) which does the verb.
For example, in the sentence “The girl kicked”, the subject is “the girl” and the verb is
“kicked”.
Many sentences also have an object, which is the person (or thing) which the verb is
done to.
For example, in the sentence “The girl kicked the ball”, “the girl” is still the subject
and “kicked” is still the verb. “The ball” is the object, because the kicking is done to it.
Sometimes, the object is at the front of the sentence; this is called the passive voice.
For example, in the sentence “The football is kicked by the girl”, it is still the girl who
does the kicking, even though the football is at the beginning of the sentence.
Children need to be able to underline the subject, verb or object in any sentence.
Types of Clauses
A clause is a part of a sentence, a group of words which contains a verb.
A complex sentence consists of two or more clauses. One clause could make a
sentence on its own without the other: this is called the main clause. The other (or
others) could not: they are called subordinate clauses.
For example, the sentence “After I had lunch, I went outside” has two clauses,
divided by a comma. The first is “after I had lunch” and the second is “I went
outside”. Of these, “I went outside” could be a sentence on its own: that is the main
clause. “After I had lunch” makes no sense without the other part of the sentence:
this is the subordinate clause.
A relative clause is a type of subordinate clause, starting with a relative pronoun:
who, whom, that, which, whose. Relative clauses are often embedded within a main
clause.
For example, in the sentence “My cat, which likes its dinner, always appears at the
door at 3.00”, the main clause is “My cat always appears at the door at 3.00.” The
relative clause is “which likes its dinner”.
Children need to be able to identify main, subordinate and relative clauses in any
sentence.