ESL Blogs

Since I received a lot of encouraging comments about a grammar topic in one of my blogs a few months ago, I couldn’t help myself sharing with you another lesson that’d be useful in your writing.

Alright, what comes to your mind when you hear a grammatical term such as an appositive? Do you have any idea?

Let’s define this word and understand its purpose. Actually, this could be a bit confusing if I reiterate this lesson in full details. But for the sake of other members with beginner level in English, let’s tackle this topic as simple as possible, shall we?

What is an appositive?

An appositive is basically a word or group of words that ‘renames’ another word. It can be a noun, a noun phrase, or even an adjective phrase. It can give additional information about that noun. Moreover, appositive is usually placed right after a noun it renames.

Let’s have some example sentences so you could better understand this topic. The appositives are highlighted in bold.

• Mary, a cat lover, enjoys sipping her favorite wine at the end of a stressful day. 

• Mayumi, a teetotaler, loves to cook homemade meals for her friends than drinking alcohol in pubs.

• Estanis, a bakeshop mogul, enthusiastically prepares delectable and sweet pastries for his children.

• Adaline, a thoughtful lady, spends her time making creative artworks for MyEC.

• Peppo, a sweet-voiced gal, challenges herself to improve her speaking skills by joining Robbie’s pronunciation and IPA lessons.

Have you noticed I used a comma after a noun and after an appositive in each sentence? Commas are quite important, so don’t forget to include them when you’re writing appositives in your sentences. You can even use brackets [ ] or dashes (- -) as alternatives, but commas are more commonly used in written texts. In speaking though, commas provide a dramatic effect and usually noticeable as pauses.

Here are some more examples;

• Prime Minister Shinzo Abe - the highest elected official of Japan – appeared in a giant tube wearing a Super Mario costume and has captured the interests of many people at the closing ceremony of the Rio Olympics.

• Megan Young [the first Filipina who won the Miss World title] is making waves in showbiz industry.

Furthermore, we can use a relative clause  ‘who or which + an adjective clause’ as an appositive for an additional information.

• Michael Phelps, who is the record holder of most number of Olympic gold medals, has become an inspiration to many young swimmers around the world.

But if we think the appositive is unimportant, we can omit it and the sentence can still express a complete thought.

• Taylor Swift, who is being scrutinized by netizens for dating actor Tom Hiddleston, has donated $1 million to Louisiana flood victims.

So the sentence could be rewritten as…

• Taylor Swift has donated $1 million to Louisiana flood victims.

So there you have it, fellow learners! I wholeheartedly believe that this lesson would somehow give you extra ideas in terms of learning grammar. Most importantly, using appositive would make our writings exciting because it challenges us to use different words and phrases and that’s vocabulary variety practice!

Have you understood the lesson? Now it’s your turn. Can you write some sentences using appositives? Write them down on the comment box below. Thanks!

Note: The title of my blog has nothing to do with appositives. I just made it up for effect as usual. :)