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 
Creative Commons License 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/ 
Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.