Once you have a structural framework of English grammar in place, every example sentence (or even sentence fragment) you encounter in daily life -- whether through active learning or not -- becomes useful input that can help you both consolidate your existing knowledge and learn new things like vocabulary, expressions, as well as their characteristics.
Here is another example sentence taken from an article I read today:
American youth sports have grown into a $40 billion business.
美國青少年體育已經發展成一個價值 400 億美元的產業
Even in a simple sentence like this, you can find something to learn if you spent a few seconds to analyze it simply.
Let’s look, for instance, at the expression “grow into…” here.
The subject of this clause is “American youth sports,” and the finite verb is “have grown.” Since this finite verb form shows present perfect tense and aspect, another thing you can consolidate with this sentence is the range of meaning that this tense and aspect form can express -- in this context, it is expressing that, by the time of writing (now), this “has action (of youth sports growing into this big business) is already complete.”
Now, there is a prepositional phrase “into a $40 billion business” completing the meaning of this finite verb. From this, we can learn that, when the verb “grow” is modified/completed by a specific prepositional phrase with the preposition “into,” it expresses the specific meaning of “increasing to become something (much bigger).”
In our framework, you have to link this new knowledge back to your existing understanding that verbs have a set of specific structural characteristics for each specific meaning they express -- for example, whether they have objects and specific modifiers etc.
Also, you have to remember that prepositional phrases, like “into a $40 billion business,” consist of prepositions like “into” and noun phrases.
Let’s use this expression (and even this finite verb tense and aspect form) in another sentence:
Ms. Charlotte Academy has grown into an online education community with 7000 students. 💯
Ms. Charlotte Academy 已經發展成一個擁有 7000 名學生的網上教育社群
Can you write one on your own?
當你對英文文法已經建立起一個結構框架之後，日常生活中接觸到的每一個例句，甚至每個詞組，不管是不是在「刻意學習」的情況下看到，其實都可以變成有用的 input，幫你一方面鞏固原有知識，一方面再學到新的東西，包括字彙、表達方式，以及它們各自的文法特徵。
例如，我今天讀文章時看到這一句：
American youth sports have grown into a $40 billion business.
美國青少年體育已經發展成一個價值 400 億美元的產業。
像這樣一句表面上很簡單的句子，只要你願意做一點簡單分析，其實已經可以學到東西。
例如，我們可以先看這裡的 「grow into...」。
這個子句的主語是 American youth sports，限定動詞是 have grown。既然這個限定動詞字形呈現的是 present perfect 這 tense 和 aspect 的組合，那麼這一句本身也可以順便幫你鞏固這個時態／體貌字形的其中一種意義範圍：在這個語境裡，它表達的是，到寫作當下為止，這個「青少年體育發展成為這樣一個龐大產業」的動作，已經「完成」了。
接下來，後面有一個介詞詞組「into a $40 billion business」，在這裡完成這個限定動詞的意思。從這裡，我們又可以學到：當動詞「grow」配合一個由「into」引出的特定介詞組時，它可以表達「增長到成為某種更大的東西」這種特定意思。
而在我們的框架裡，你要做的，不是把這個表達方式孤立地背下來，而是把這個新知識接回你原本已有的理解：動詞在表達每個不同意思的時候，本來就會有一套對應的結構特徵，例如會不會帶賓語、會不會需要某些特定修飾語，等等。
例如，我們現在就可以用這個表達方式，甚至連這個有限動詞的時態／體貌字形也一起用，寫出另一句：
Ms. Charlotte Academy has grown into an online education community with close to 7000 students. 💯
Ms. Charlotte Academy 已經發展成一個擁有接近 7000 名學生的網上教育社群。
你也可以試試看，自己用這個表達方式寫一句。
如果你也想讓自己以後接觸到的英文 input 不再只是「看過就算」，而是真的能夠不斷累積、吸收、連結，《Core Concepts of English》就是幫大家建立英文結構框架的地方：