Phrases and Clauses

Now that we know the parts of a sentence and their order in a sentence, let's review why a group of words is called a sentence. We learned in the first part of Unit 1 that we can group parts of speech to create phrases, so it is necessary to understand the difference between a phrase and a sentence to write correctly in English.

Phrases

Phrases are groups of words that work together as a single unit but do not have a subject or a verb. English includes five basic kinds of phrases.

Types of Phrases	Descriptions	Examples
Noun phrase	multiple words acting as a noun	a ham sandwich Robert ate a ham sandwich.
Verb phrase	helping and auxiliary verbs used with the main verb	should have started The class should have started a half-hour earlier.
Prepositional phrase	begins with a preposition	after the holiday rush Work will be easier after the holiday rush.
Adjective phrase	group of related adjectives	very tall and handsome My brother is very tall and handsome.
Adverb phrase	group of adverbs	very slowly Maria walked very slowly.

Clauses

Clauses include both subjects and verbs that work together as a single unit. When they form stand-alone sentences, they are called independent clauses. An independent clause can stand alone or can be used with other clauses and phrases. A dependent clause also includes both a subject and a verb, but it must combine with an independent clause to form a complete sentence.

Sources:

Text adapted from Karen Palmer, https://roughwritersguide.pressbooks.com/back-matter/writing-for-non-native-speakers/#back-matter-365-section-12
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License.

Activity from Excelsior Online Writing Lab, https://owl.excelsior.edu/grammar-essentials/sentence-structure/basic-sentence-structure/
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.