Collins Cobuild English Grammar (216 page)

At first glance, the system
seems
overwhelmingly complex.
Scientists fear that some viruses may
prove
challenging to deal with.
The source of the information must
remain
anonymous.

Common complements include:

nouns

The results of this experiment
remain a secret
.
Their decision
represents a turnaround
.

adjectives

The patients
appeared
to be
immune
to the HIV virus.
Predictions for next year
look
increasingly
uncertain
.

object complements

You can put a noun or adjective complement after the object of some transitive verbs. This complement describes the object, and is called an
object complement
.

They cannot
keep
the options of both politics and terrorism
open
.
Television scored significantly higher amongst those who
found
politics
interesting
.
Some analysts do not
consider
it
a virus
.

Ordering and connecting your message

There are several ways of using language to hold your whole message together and to give it meaning. The first step is to arrange content into a recognizable pattern. When you are planning a piece of work or a talk, you can use the following pattern to sequence your ideas:

describe a situation
outline any problems
suggest a solution
provide an evaluation.

The following sections describe techniques for ensuring that your writing or speech holds together well, and that both your intention and your message are clear:

using grammatical structures and vocabulary to
signpost
your intention

referring back and referring forward

providing connectors to hold sections together.

Using grammatical structures and vocabulary to ‘signpost’ your intention

There are several ways in which you can use grammatical structures and vocabulary within a section of text to express the following ideas:

the arrangement of events in time

procedure (= how something is done)

cause and effect