Please Help with these questions

Question

Select the correct answers to answer questions from a student in your composition class.

“I feel like I can identify conjunctions when I see them, but I can’t explain their purpose. Can you help?”

What do conjunctions do?

Conjunctions are like engines: they make sentences go by expressing actions and conditions.

Conjunctions refer to people, animals, places, things, and ideas.

Conjunctions are like glue: they connect words, clauses, and phrases.

“I’m studying conjunctions, and I could use some help. I figured out which word in the following sentence is the conjunction—it’s highlighted—but I’m not sure what its purpose is. Do you know?”

Alex is a fisherman, and his brother is a pilot.

What is this conjunction doing?

It is connecting two phrases.

It is connecting two clauses.

It is connecting two words.

“I’m a little stuck on the difference between a clause and a phrase. Can you help me figure out which of these options is a phrase?”

Which of the following is a phrase?

Because Sarah can jump high above the rim

Above the rim

Sarah can jump high

Answer 1

Hi! So, let's talk through each question. This is a list of conjunctions: for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so. For this answer, I am going to bold the conjunctions I use. Conjunctions are words that we can use to connect parts of sentences together. We can use them to connect phrases, clauses, sentences, or even words (here, the conjunction "or" was used to connect words).

Phrases and clauses are different in a very important way. A clause has both a subject and a verb, but a phrase does not. A clause expresses a complete thought. So, in the second question, "Alex" and "his brother" are both subjects, and "is" is the verb. So, there are two clauses in that sentence. The conjunction is the glue that holds those two clauses together.

For the last question, we need to identify the phrase. This will be the option that is not a complete thought and does not have both a subject and a verb. In the first option, "Sarah" is the person completing the action, so "Sarah" is the subject. The action is "can jump". So, that option has both a subject and a verb. It can't be a phrase. The last option is the exact same. It has "Sarah" and "can jump". But, the second option doesn't have either. Instead, it just has a preposition (above) and an object of the preposition (rim). The object of the preposition is a noun that comes after a preposition. So, the second option must be the phrase.

I hope this helps!