Constructing More
Complex Sentences
Use
more parts of speech to add additional information about what's happening in a
sentence to make it more complex. Take the first sentence from above, for
example, and incorporate more information about how and why birds fly.
- Birds fly when migrating before
winter.
Birds and fly remain
the noun and the verb, but now there is more description.
When is an adverb that modifies the verb fly. The word before is a little tricky because it can be either a conjunction,
preposition, or adverb depending on the context. In this case, it's a
preposition because it's followed by a noun. This preposition begins an
adverbial phrase of time (before winter) that
answers the question of when the birds migrate. Before is not a conjunction because it does not connect two
clauses.