A lot of English students, be it as a first or an additional language, have trouble when they have to find the object in a sentence. But is this really hard? No! It doesn’t have to be. And here you’ll find out how to determine what the object in a sentence is very easily. Read on.
Object in a sentence
First, let’s understand what the object is.
The object of a sentence is the person or thing that receives the action expressed by the verb. It is the person or thing that the subject does something to.
Here’s a simple example:
| Subject | Verb | Object |
| Tim | painted | his bedroom |
In this sentence, Tim is the subject (he did the action described by the verb), painted is the verb (the action word), and his bedroom is the object (the thing that received the action of the verb).
Objects are usually noun phrases. It means that they are most commonly represented by pronouns or nouns with any dependent words before or after them.
Direct object and indirect object
There are two basic types of objects: direct and indirect.
A direct object is a person or thing that receives the action of the verb.
An indirect object is the person or thing that receives the direct object.
To make it easier to understand, here’s a table with each of them categorized.
| Subject | Verb | Indirect object | Direct object |
| Fábio | gave | him | a gift |
| We | watched | – | a movie |
Notice that you can invert the order of the objects. If you put the direct object first, the indirect object has to be followed by a prepositional phrase with to/for.
| Subject | Verb | Direct object | Indirect object |
| Fábio | gave | a gift | to him |
| My mother | made | an apple pie | for me |
More examples of objects in a sentence
| Subject | Verb | Indirect object | Direct object |
| I | played | – | soccer |
| My mother | made | me | an apple pie |
| My friends | like | – | popcorn |
| Jerry | told | me | the news |
| Sally | met | – | Suzy |
| That man | paints | – | beautiful images |
How to find an object in a sentence?
Ask questions starting with what…? or (to) whom…? to find out the person or thing that received the action described by the verb and the person or thing that received the direct object.
| Sentence | What/whom…? | Indirect Object | Direct object | |
| I played soccer | – | – | What did I play? | Soccer |
| My mother made me an apple pie | To whom did my mother make an apple pie? | Me | What did my mother make? | An apple pie |
| My friends like popcorn | – | – | What do my friends like? | Popcorn |
| Jerry told me the news | To whom did Jerry tell the news? | Me | What did Jerry tell me? | The news |
| Sally met Suzy | – | – | Who did Sally meet? | Suzy |
| That man paints beautiful images | – | – | What does that man paint? | Beautiful Images |
Easy, isn’t it?
If you want to master every aspect of English grammar, take a look at our awesome article on the best books to learn English grammar.
