Reena, a girl in my class was absent today. "a girl in my class" is a phrase or a clause

Answer 1

"a girl in my class is a phrase." A phrase is just a grammatical unit within a clause usually describing something.

A clause is a group of words containing a subject and a predicate. In this sentence, the subject is Rena. The predicate, or action word (doing word) is "is."

The phrase refers back to the subject Rena. Because it describes Rena (as a girl in my class), the phrase is an adjective phrase.

Another easy way to identify a phrase is that the sentence is complete without the phrase! Rena is absent today is a complete sentence.

This concept will be easy if you know the basic parts of speech, the noun, verb, adjective, and adverb, and can find the subject of the sentence as well as the predicate.

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Answer 2

It is a special type of noun phrase called an appositive phrase. It's not a clause because it does not have both a subject and predicate. An appositive phrase follows a noun and provides more information about that noun. In your example, Reena is a noun which is made more specific by the appositive phrase "a girl in my class."

Answer 3

A clause or a phrase? Good question. It seems like a clause and a phrase are both the same, but they’re not. 

So, what makes them different then? The answer is, a subject and a verb. One has a subject and a verb, and the other doesn’t.

Does this selection of words have a subject and a verb? If the answer is yes, then it’s a clause. If the answer is no, then it’s a phrase.