---
title: Praise is most useful when it says what was good; then pick one thin… — Putting it together: reading and writing like a… · tree and pragmatics
description: Praise is most useful when it says what was good; then pick one thing to improve. Who acts: Praise. A sentence of the lesson «Putting it together: reading and writing like a writer» of the english course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/54-reading-and-writing-like-a-writer/16/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [English](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/) / [Putting it together: reading and writi…](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/54-reading-and-writing-like-a-writer/) / 16

# Putting it together: reading and writing like a writer, sentence 16

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Praise is most useful when it says what was good; then pick one thing to improve.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Praise · **What happens:** be, say, pick, improve · **To what, where:** one thing · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of the lesson «Putting it together: reading and writing like a writer» of the english course of Mova's primary school. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Praise), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:english:054-reading-and-writing-like-a-writer.lesson:16
# text = Praise is most useful when it says what was good; then pick one thing to improve.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = english
# lesson = 054-reading-and-writing-like-a-writer.lesson
# annotation = Mova annot: Rust (en) → Haiku 5.5 (medium, Batches API) patches; gates UD 2.18; agreed by treeagree rules (Stanza, Trankit, spaCy trf): R7-rel-agree ×1
1	Praise	praise	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
2	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
3	most	most	ADV	RBS	Degree=Sup	4	advmod	_	_
4	useful	useful	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
5	when	when	SCONJ	WRB	_	7	mark	_	_
6	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
7	says	say	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	advcl	_	_
8	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	10	nsubj	_	_
9	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	cop	_	_
10	good	good	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	ccomp	_	_
11	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	13	punct	_	_
12	then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	13	advmod	_	_
13	pick	pick	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	parataxis	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=4:conj
14	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	15	nummod	_	_
15	thing	thing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obj	_	_
16	to	to	PART	TO	_	17	mark	_	_
17	improve	improve	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	15	acl	_	_
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- sa -->
- form: statement
- act: evaluate
- voice: narrator
- polarity: pos
- teacher: kept the draft

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | present | Praise |  |  |  |  | useful *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | present | Praise |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **is** | past |  |  |  |  |  | good *property* | tree rules |
| 4 | **pick** | infinitive |  | one thing |  |  | then |  | vn chew-39.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent thing=Patient |
| 5 | **improve** | to-infinitive |  | one thing *not said here* |  |  |  |  | vn other\_cos-45.4 «NP.patient V»: agent=Patient |

<!-- .note -->
One row per clause the reader finds. «not said here»: a role filled from the clause above. «roles by»: a VerbNet class and frame when one fits the verb, else the reader's rules on the tree.

<!-- div src -->

**Licence: [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)**, as the whole of Mova corpus 0.4, of which this treebank (the agreed school, `mova-school-agreed-en.conllu`) is part. The lessons were written for Mova's primary school. Sentence `school:english:054-reading-and-writing-like-a-writer.lesson:16`.

**The tree:** Mova annot: Rust (en) → Haiku 5.5 (medium, Batches API) patches; gates UD 2.18; agreed by treeagree rules (Stanza, Trankit, spaCy trf): R7-rel-agree ×1. **The frames** are read from the tree by Mova's frames reader (`prag`) when this page is built, the lesson read in order, so a pronoun may be resolved from an earlier sentence.

See the [release 0.4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/releases/0.4/).

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [Putting it together: reading and writi…, 15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/54-reading-and-writing-like-a-writer/15/)
- next →: [Putting it together: reading and writi…, 17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/54-reading-and-writing-like-a-writer/17/)
- ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/54-reading-and-writing-like-a-writer/)