216 Part IV: The Grammar You Need to Know – and How to Teach It
Shortening verbs with contractions
In English, sometimes you can make verbs shorter by omitting letters and
using an apostrophe instead. This is very common in conversation and
informal writing. You can’t use contractions in academic and formal writing
though.
am= ’m I’m tall
is/ has= ’s He’s here. He’s got a car
will= ’ll We’ll help you.
have= ’ve You’ve been there.
had/ would= I’d better go. I’d like milk please.
are= ’re They’re at work.
Not= n’t He didn’t come. Notice that when not becomes n’t it’s attached to
the verb and written as one word. Cannot becomes can’t.
Acting on the object
In the sentence: Peter loves ice cream,‘Peter’ is the subject word and ‘loves’ is
the verb. But what does Peter love? He loves ice cream. So ice cream is the
object word. It’s involved in the action. Peter may love other things too:
Peter loves her.
Peter loves eating.
Peter loves the fact that the town was lively.
All these endings are the object of the sentence.
In English you don’t always need an object word: ‘Peter loves’ is actually a
complete sentence in itself.
The main reason why students get confused with object words is because
they’re not sure where to put them in the sentence. In a simple sentence stu-
dents can just follow the SVO (subject, verb, object) pattern. So even very
low-level students can usually manage sentences like
S (subject) V (verb) O (object)
The dog brings the newspaper.
However, what if the student wants to mention the owner of the dog? There
are now two objects.
