As an important grammar part in Mandarin language, the noun-predicate sentence indicates the sentence that the predicate is acted by noun or nominal phrases. We can say there are noun-predicate sentences in Chinese language but not every noun can act as the predicate of the sentence. This point needs much attraction during the process of teaching Chinese language as a foreign language. Otherwise, the overseas students who study in volunteer programs in China will be confused and misuse all nouns as the predicate in Chinese sentences, thus making many mistakes.

In daily communication, we often say 昨天的天气很好. However, if the students are misled, they will make sentence like 昨天很好的天气. Therefore, in the teaching process, teachers should tell the students that some special requirements are needed for the nouns functioning as predicate in the noun-predicate sentence. To be specific, we can learn the different requirements of the subject to the predicate through the differences in the subjects. The two conditions that the noun functions as subject and the subject-predicate phrase is the subject will be explained in the following parts.

In the noun-predicate sentence, if the subject is the noun, the feature is that both the subject and predicate are the nominal element of the sentence. The subject indicates the assure things while the predicate is used to judge, explain or describe the things indicated by the subject. Usually speaking, the subject is the noun indicating time while the predicate is the noun of time indicating date, season and weather. Sometimes, both subject and predicate are all the noun of location. You can say 今天是星期三and门前一条小河.

Another condition is that the subject is the name or pronoun of person while the predicate indicates the name, post, characteristic, birth place and working place. For example, you can say 张芳已经教授了. When it comes to the condition that the subject is the subject-predicate phrase, the students in HSK preparation program in China should know the element can act such predicate is usually the numeral phrase formed by the quantifiers. The place before it often has the adverbs indicating time such as 已经、都、才、快and刚 like 他当医生已经30多年了.