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Enhance Your Writing with Twelve Dynamic Declarative Sentence Patterns

  • ella1525
  • Jun 19
  • 2 min read

Updated: 3 days ago

 

1.     Begin with a gerund or -ING form of the verb. Example: Standing by the roadside, dishevelled Efua looked like she’d been hit by a truck.

 

2.     Begin your sentence with a past participle. Example: Annoyed by Babatunji’s constant nagging, Efua began a secret relationship with her boss, Obasanjo.

 

3.     Start your sentence with an adjective. Example: Dishevelled Efua had hit the doldrums.

 

4.     Avoid cliches please.  Examples: As good as gold. Head over heels in love.

 

5.     Use connectors to link ideas or actions. Not only was Babatunji plunged into despair, but he also developed a deep hatred for his  ex-girlfriend.

 

6.     Start your sentence with an adverbial phrase or clause which ordinarily would have been in the middle or end of your sentence. Example: Rather than ask her to leave their shared flat, Babatunji decided to set a trap for Efua and Obasanjo.

 

7.     Begin your sentence with a prepositional phrase. Example: In the interest of fairness, the driving test was rescheduled to accommodate learner drivers impacted by recent inclement weather.

 

8.   Please begin your declarative sentence with an appositive sometimes. Appositives are defined as pairs or occasionally a series of usually adjacent words, phrases, or clauses. Example: Babatunji, a vegetarian has just opened his own sushi restaurant.

 

9.  Use clauses in your sentence to turn them into complex sentences. Example: Obasanjo, who had been single most of his adult life, jumped at the chance to kiss voluptuous Efua in the kitchen, which was the darkest room in the rented property.

 

10.  You may wish to begin your sentence with the preposition to. Example: To catch the  amorous pair in the act, Babatunji left work early and sneaked into the garage underneath the kitchen.

 

11.   Please use an en dash with appropriate spaces (in Britain we use en not em dashes please.) Babatunji – who’ d grown increasingly suspicious of Efua – left work early and let himself into the flat through the back door.

 

  1. Please vary sentence lengths in your story or manuscript. Use short dramatic sentences to capture fast-moving action and intersperse them with lengthy sentences. Example: Babatunji ran like a sprinter.

 
 
 

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Featured Writer- Bridgette James

A comparative analysis of English Language Use by creatives in two countries in sub-Saharan Africa in 2023, by Bridgette James.

Hypothesis:

Any discussion of ethnolinguistic factors affecting language proficiency cannot be premised without examining the meaning of language. Cambridge Dictionary Online (2023) puts forward a concise definition that would be used in this paper: a system made up of phonemes, words, and grammar rules on how to use that particular language. An emphasis on maintaining a system of rules and standards in order to convey meaning in language is a persuasive argument (Open Learn, 2024).  The language under discussion here is the English used in two sub-Saharan countries, Sierra Leone, English 01 and Malawi, English 02.

Language had two of the meta functions first recognised by Thompson (2014 in Open Learn (2024)  in the creative pieces studied from March 2022 to December 2023: ideational and textual roles. In the poetry and stories analysed writers utilised English language to fictionally represent the world visualised in their imagination to convey written messages in textual forms.

In creative writing a speaker’s language is presumed to influence their thoughts and conceptualisation of ideas, validating the theory purported by German linguist Johann  Georg  Hamann (1905 cited in  De Gruyter Mouton 1968). Wilhelm von Humboldt discuss. Humboldt and Herder reportedly saw an alignment between language use and behavioural patterns affected by the speaker’s culture. Culture here is synonymous with how individuals from the same language community use the language under consideration based on recurrent themes and expressions in their writing. (Britannica, accessed 2023) This research concerns itself with factors affecting proficiency in English language based on common behaviours in aforenamed communities and from henceforth referred to as English 01 and English 02.

History of how English arrived in the chosen communities

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To give a historical overview, English was transported to Malawi via the similar route of colonisation by Britian and the establishment of English speaking mainly missionary schools on whose premises school age children in  both nations were  taught in English. (Matiki, 2001; accessed in 2024.) A notable feature of the way English arrived in Sierra Leone was through the deportation of freed slaves…

 

Miriam Conteh-Morgan (1997) highlighted the lack of extensive sociological research into the use of English language in Sierra Leone; she argued that it may be due to an [erroneous] perception that English is a native Sierra Leonean language spoken by the Krios. Conteh-Morgan distinguishes the English spoken in Sierra Leone from the native speaker variety- the variation spoken in Sierra Leone has been influenced by indigenous languages. My research unearthed the influence of the Krio language on English evidenced by the lack of subject-verb number coordination in the third person singular in the material of a large cohort of creative writers studied from March 2022 to December 2023.

Role English plays in Malawi

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To quote A. J. Matiki (2001), English was given official status in 1968 in Malawi when the government designated it as an official language. Mikiti has argues that assigning English such a high status has effectively led to the marginalisation of non-English speakers in the country. My contradictory argument centres on the need for Malawian creative writers to increase the frequency of English use in order to attain proficiency. This research shows a direct link between the use of the language for lengthy periods per day and a demonstration of level of proficiency required for writers.

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