Let's look at this sentence: "Busy ants have lots of twisty tunnels in the anthill scurry around."
What's wrong? The words are out of order. We need a clear subject (who), a verb (what they do), and then where it happens (place).
Step 1 — Find the subject and verb:
- Subject (who?): busy ants
- Verb (action?): scurry (the ants are moving)
In the original sentence, the verb scurry is stuck at the end so the sentence sounds mixed up.
Step 2 — Put them in the right order:
- Subject + verb + place
- So we can say: Busy ants scurry around the anthill through lots of twisty tunnels.
Other correct ways to say it:
- Busy ants scurry through lots of twisty tunnels in the anthill.
- Busy ants have lots of twisty tunnels in their anthill. (Here the verb is have and it matches the subject ants.)
Quick grammar tip: Ants is plural (more than one), so the verb must match: we say ants scurry, not ants scurries. If it were one ant, we'd say The ant scurries.
Try it yourself:
- Fix this sentence: The cat on the mat sleep. → The cat on the mat sleeps.
- Now rewrite the original sentence in your own words.
Great! You just practiced subject, verb, and word order—three important parts of a sentence.