Use of "loves" in a sentence

Question

I understand a complex (as an elementary teacher - or Primary, since I'm teaching in the UK) sentence to be:

"A sentence in which there is one (or more) independent clause and one (or more) dependent clause."

Is this correct? Bear in mind I am teaching kids of age 9-10, most of whom are way behind, so I don't want to complicate things too much. However, I would personally like to improve my knowledge to the point that I know catenative verbs and non-finite clauses with the ease and simplicity as you!

Are there any courses or authoritative texts you can suggest? I'm thinking a David Crystal book would be good, but I'd much rather do an ESL course or something. Any ideas?

Thanks!

CalifJim · Accepted Answer

Here's the result of a Google search on the topic.

https://www.google.com/search?source=hp&ei=z88dWor8L6a6jwT9kpHgDw&q=simple+compound+complex+and+compound-complex+sentences&oq=simple+compoun&gs_l=psy-ab.1.1.0l10.2137.5671.0.8157.16.14.0.1.1.0.314.1880.0j7j2j1.10.0....0...1c.1.64.psy-ab..5.11.1900...46j0i131k1j0i46k1.0.cbbzxJ74Kn8

You will find these three sites on the list.

http://www2.ivcc.edu/rambo/eng1001/sentences.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentence_clause_structure
https://www.lamission.edu/learningcenter/docs/asc/worksheets/Grammar/Sentence%20Types.pdf

They all say approximately the same thing, but they are careful not to give any tricky examples like "love eating" or "wants to open", which would require a discussion of non-finite clauses, and they want to avoid complicating things by mentioning them at all.

In their simplified approach they say that complex sentences must have a subordinating conjunction (after, when, while, because, until, ...) or a relative pronoun (who, which, ...). The construction "love eating" (or "wants to open") has neither of these, so by the definitions in this "traditional" approach to learning English, there is no dependent clause in that sentence, and the sentence is called a simple sentence.

If you have any control over which examples the students are exposed to, don't give them sentences with catenative verb constructions like "love eating" if you're teaching them the "traditional" classification of sentences (as seen in those links I gave you).

You can introduce the concept of catenative verbs later. At that point you can expand the definition of "complex" for your students.

CJ

BillJ · Answer

If you're teaching in the UK, shouldn't you be following a set curriculum?

To answer your earlier question, Crystal's work is a good starting point:

http://www.davidcrystal.com/?id=3341

Use of "loves" in a sentence

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