verb-subject sentences

For many students it's easier to learn the grammar and to put/string together an English sentence than it is to speak the language.  Like everything, all you need is practice, which in turns builds confidence.  Now let's take a look a the basic English sentence.

The basic English sentence has a subject followed by a verb.  This is the common way in which they are written!  For example:  The man [subject] is tall [verb].
The president of the United States [subject] is smart [verb].

However, in some sentences the verb comes before the subject; for example:  There is [verb] a lawn mower [subject] in the street!
We are [verb] the cookie monsters [subject].

English Basics

When learning to speak English the first thing that you want to know is how to build a complete simple sentence. Now, everyone wants to speak well and effectively, in a clear and concise way where you are getting your message across.  I find that most of the time when someone is learning to speak English or any language for that matter of fact, they tend to build fragmented sentences.  Fragmented sentences lacks completeness, because the subject or object of the sentence is not described, explained or mentionned at all. A complete English sentence has a subject and a predicate/object. The 'subject' is the main idea/focus of the sentence.  The 'predicate' says something about the subject, so in this case the subject is kind of described here.  If you can identify the verb, then you will be able to find the subject.  For example, The crowd is angry. Now, that is an example of a basic English sentence and if you can identify the verb then you can locate the subject. The verb in the sentence above is 'angry'.  Now identify or ask yourself what/whom is the verb describing, and that would be... 'the crowd'. As you can see, that is the basics of a complete English sentence.