Phrases
Essential Question
How can a group of words work together to provide more information in a sentence?
Grammar in the World
What Do I Know?
What have you already learned about words that provide more information in sentences?
Select the words in the following sentences that are phrases.
Building Blocks
Grammar is a complex system and structure of language. Mizzou Academy Grammar Lab spotlights one skill (or block) at a time, but it’s often helpful to see how a skill works together with other, related blocks to build the language structure as a whole. You may find the following resource topics helpful as context for this lesson:
Learn About Phrases
A phrase is a group of words that works together to give more information about a clause or sentence. Phrases do not contain a subject and verb, so they can’t stand on their own as a complete thought. Often, phrases provide extra information or context. They also make sentences more interesting. Here are some examples of phrases:
- to the park
- with careful thought
- is reading a book
- taking a bubble bath
As you can see in the above examples, phrases may have nouns or verbs, but they do not have both a subject and a predicate. You will learn more about different types of phrases in later lessons. For now, you can just focus on being able to identify them in sentences, but here are the types of phrases you will learn about in future lessons:
Do I Get It?
What have you learned about phrases? Use this interactive quiz to check your understanding.
Directions: Carefully read each of the sentences below, and then identify which part of the sentence is the phrase.