Which sentence do you think is correct?
Justin Bieber, the Canadian famous young pop singer, performed in Jakarta in April.
Justin Bieber, the young Canadian famous pop singer, performed in Jakarta in April.
Justin Bieber, the famous young Canadian pop singer, performed in Jakarta in April.
Well, do you find it difficult to choose the correct one? Don’t worry. You will certainly do it easily if you know the secret behind it, which is the rule in forming noun phrase or word order. Let’s check the rule below:
Physical Description
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Determiner Observation Size Shape Age Colour Origin Material qualifier Noun
Examples:
1. a nice young woman (determiner-observation-age-headword)
2. four old Mandarin songs (determiner-age-origin-headword)
3. those big square plastic boxes (determiner-size-shape-material-headword)
4. some old French writing desks (determiner-age-origin-qualifier-headword)
5. my huge red Italian car (determiner-size-colour-origin-headword)
Now, let’s practise.
Correct the following noun phrases:
Jumbled word order Corrected into
thin long arms long thin arms
a young tall handsome actor a handsome tall young actor
a party pink beautiful dress a beautiful pink party dress
Javanese young slender girls slender young Javanese girls
tall school strong boys strong tall schoolboys
blue round big eyes big round blue eyes
a black metal small container a small black metal container
marital complicated serious problems complicated marital problems
the film Indonesian industry the Indonesian film industry
a thick grammar English good book a good thick English grammar book
Easy, isn’t it? And now I am sure you will choose the third sentence about Justin Bieber as the correct one. Good job!
