Part 5: Understanding the writing point Task 10: Read the following text to learn about phrases, clauses and sentences.
Writing is made up of phrases, clauses and sentences. Understanding how these grammatical categories work is very important if you want your writing to make sense. Five key facts about each of these areas are given below, along with examples from the text that you have just read.
What is a phrase?
Example from the text: the language of business (noun phrase) 1. A phrase is a group of words which work as a single unit. Phrases are often combined in order to make clauses (see below).
2. Phrases can be categorized according to the most important word in the phrase, for example: noun phrases, verb phrases and prepositional phrases.
3. A phrase can be short (e.g., a man) or long (e.g., a man who likes playing football on Sundays). Generally, however, they are quite short.
4. Phrases are usually a combination of content words (e.g., nouns and verbs) and structure words (e.g., determiners and prepositions).
5. A phrase cannot exist by itself in a piece of writing because it will not make sense. What is a clause?
Example from the text: because it is the language of business (dependent clause) 1. A clause is a group of words containing at least a noun phrase and a verb phrase. 2. There are two main types of clause in English, independent (main) clauses and dependent (subordinate) clauses.
3. An independent clause shows a complete thought which makes sense by itself. 4. A dependent clause shows an incomplete thought which does not make sense by itself. Dependent clauses must contain words such as conjunctions and relative pronouns.
5. Relative clauses (using which, who, where, etc.) are a very common type of dependent clause.
What is a sentence?
Example from the text: Many people learn English because it is the language of business. (complex sentence) 1. A sentence is a piece of writing which makes sense by itself. 2. In its most basic form (a ‘simple’ sentence), a sentence is just an independent clause. 3. There are four main types of sentence in English: simple, complex, compound and complex-compound. Unit 2 looks at these in more detail.
4. There are four main purposes for writing sentences in English: declarative, interrogative, imperative and exclamative. Again, these are examined in Unit 2. 5. A sentence must begin with a capital letter and end with a full stop.
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