Upgrade your writing with APPOSITIVES

Hi. I'm Rebecca from engVid. In the next few minutes, you're going to learn a

really great way to improve your English writing, and that's by using something

called an "appositive". Now, you might not have ever heard that word before,

and that's okay, because you will recognize what it is once we look at

some examples. And you can use this in all kinds of writing. Okay? Academic

writing; on your exams, like IELTS and TOEFL; or business writing; or personal

writing. It will just make you sound like a much more advanced user of

English. Okay? So, let's understand exactly what it is. So, let's take this

sentence: "Neil Armstrong, an American astronaut, was the first person to walk

on the moon." So, this part here: "an American astronaut" is the appositive.

So, what is an "appositive"? An "appositive" is a word or a few words

that give us more information about another noun in the sentence. Okay? So,

it's a noun or a noun phrase that gives us more information about another noun

in the sentence. Okay? All right. Let's look at another way that we can use the

appositive. "An American astronaut, Neil Armstrong, was the first person to walk

on the moon." Now, this shows you that we could actually put the appositive in

one of two places; you can put it after the noun that you're talking about, or

you can put it before the noun you're talking about. So, what's the noun we're

talking about here? "Neil Armstrong". What's the appositive? "an American

astronaut". Okay? And you can see that you need to use commas. So, here's...

this is part of it. Okay? There's one here; there's one after that; and here

because it started the sentence — you're just going to put it here. All right.

Another way that we can use appositives is not just with commas, but with

dashes. So, for example, we could write: "Neil Armstrong— an American astronaut —

was the first person to walk on the moon." Okay? Got it? Or another way —

not as... not used as much, but you can use it — is this: "Neil Armstrong (an

American astronaut) was the first person to walk on the moon." Okay? So, we see

that we can put it in two places: Before or after; and in three ways: With

commas, dashes, or parentheses. But most often, you will see it being used with

commas; especially in academic writing. Okay? Now, maybe that seems pretty

straightforward, but let's see what happens when we don't use appositive.

What happens to our writing? And how it sounds a lot less advanced. Okay? I'm

going to show you in a second.

All right. So, let's read these three sentences first. "Dr. Shepherd is a

cardiologist. He works at Sunnyvale hospital. He is highly respected by his

colleagues." Okay. Now, these sentences are fine; they're grammatically correct,

and everything is okay. But they're sort of short, and choppy, and a little bit

childish; this is a little bit of a childish way to write. So, if you want

to write in a more advanced way, then we start using the appositives, and we

combine some of this information. So, let's see how we can do that. All right?

So, first, let's combine these two pieces of information — okay? — that are

in these two sentences. So, we could say something like this: "Dr. Shepherd, a

cardiologist, works at Sunnyvale hospital." Now, I've combined this

information — that he's a cardiologist — with this information — that he works at

Sunnyvale hospital. Right? Now, of course, as I told you before, you can

turn that sentence around; you can put the appositive first. You could say: "A

cardiologist, Dr. Shepherd, works at Sunnyvale hospital." And that's also

correct. Okay? And that's better than these two sentences. Waste of time;

don't need to write two full sentences when we can write one good sentence. But

now, let's see if we can combine all three of these sentences. We can — okay?

— using an appositive. For example: "Dr. Shepherd, a highly-respected

cardiologist, works at Sunnyvale hospital." All right.

So, number one: "I have a new car. It's a Lamborghini. It's yellow. It's

attracting a lot of attention." Now, again, of course you can write like that

— but choppy, short, not very interesting. Let's make it more

interesting. Okay? Work with me. So, you could say something like... there are

many ways to do this, but here's one possibility: "My new car, a yellow

Lamborghini, is attracting a lot of attention." Okay? That's a much more

advanced and much more interesting sentence. Okay? Even if you're writing

about something personal in an email to a friend. All right. Now let's look at

an example from a business situation. Let's say you're writing a letter to

recommend someone. Okay? So, you could write like this: "Rohit is an engineer.

He is analytical and hard working. He could add value to your startup." Yeah,

you can write like that. Let's try to make it more interesting. So, we could

say: "Rohit, an analytical and hard-working engineer, could add value

to your startup." Do you like that? Does that sound better? Okay? Now, of course,

where I've said comma — you could, as I said, put the dashes or you could put

parentheses, but commas are very-commonly used. Okay? Now, here's an

example from something that you might get on the IELTS or the TOEFL. They ask

you questions like this: "What was the greatest invention of the 20th century?"

or something like that. Okay? So, you could write this, for example: "There

are many great inventions in the world. The internet is one of them. It has

transformed human lives." Now, some good vocabulary there and so on. You should

really try to avoid starting, especially academic essays and information... and

any kind of academic writing with these words: "There are", okay? It's a very

weak way to start. So, let's make it more interesting. Okay? So, we could

say: "The internet, one of the greatest inventions in the world"... right? "The

internet, one of the greatest inventions in the world, has transformed human

lives". Okay?

Now, if you write that kind of sentence in your IELTS essay or your TOEFL essay,

you're going to get lots of good grades from that. Okay? Those kinds of

sentences — those complex sentences — where you combine information; rather

than having lots of short, choppy sentences is going to get you a very

high score. Okay? So, whether that's in your academic life, or it's in your

professional life, or in your personal life — try to start using appositives.

Why? Because they can make a positive difference in your life. How do you like

that? I just thought about that. Okay. So, now the thing is, of course, you've

got to learn how to write them properly. So, what do you do for that? You

practice. So, go to our website: www.engvid.com and do the quiz there,

because it will really help you to master these appositives once and for

all, and then you'll find that you will start integrating them into your

writing. Okay? And don't forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel. All

right? So, I can keep on giving you more and more lessons. Thanks so much for

watching. Bye for now.