First of all, I would like to explain about sentence types. As I learned during ESL class, a sentence must contain a subject and predicate such as ‘I am studying at SWA.’ ‘I’ is the subject and ‘am studying at SWA’ is for predicate. The predicate must contain the verb and it tells us what the subject does.
Secondly, let’s talk about what is simple sentence. What can you think about simple sentence? Perhaps, if you are get used to it, you probably think its just a simple sentence. However, it’s wrong, the simple sentence is called an independent clause and for an example ‘Jason is swimming on the Koi fond’. As you can see, it contains one subject and one predicate, that’s why we called it as simple sentence. Remember! One subject and one predicate is simple sentence!!
Thirdly, I would like to explain about compound sentence. What do you think about compound sentence? Ok, Compound sentence contains two independent clauses joined by a co-ordinator. As an example, ‘I tried to speak Indonesian and my friend tried to speak Chinese.’ This sentence, we can easily find two subjects and two predicates, which usually connect by conjunction. Remember! Two subjects, two predicate and conjunction between sentences is compound sentence.
Fourthly, I would like to explain about complex sentence. Complex sentence has an independent clauses joined by one or dependent clauses. As an example, ‘The students are studying because they have test tomorrow.’ Strangely, this sentence contains two subjects, two predicates and one preposition. Remember! Two subjects, two predicates and one preposition is Complex sentence!
