Decide whether a group of words contains a clause and identify its role.
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Practise it now
Build a sentence that can stand up. Drag two bricks onto the plate.
Loading the interactive exercise. Nothing you do here is saved or scored.
A worked example
One question of the kind this skill is tested with, worked all the way through: the reasoning, and what the wrong answers are there to catch.
Worked example: Phrase or clause?
Worked example: Which group of words is a clause?
whenever the printer jams
with a torn sail
a jar of loose buttons
underneath a heap of tarpaulins
Answer: whenever the printer jams
How you get there
A clause contains a verb that changes for tense with a subject in front of it, and a phrase does not. In "whenever the printer jams", the subject "the printer" has the tensed verb "jams", which makes it a clause. The others fall on the other side of that line: in "with a torn sail", this only says what something has; there is no verb; in "a jar of loose buttons", this only names a thing; there is no verb; in "underneath a heap of tarpaulins", this only says where; there is no verb.
Why the other answers tempt
Length decides nothing. "She waited" is a clause in two words, while "in the middle of the night" is six words and still only a phrase.
If they are stuck, say this
Look for a verb you could put into the past or the present, with someone or something doing it. That pair makes a clause; without it you have only a phrase.
Build a sentence that can stand up. Drag two bricks onto the plate.
A main clause has a subject and a verb and makes complete sense on its own, so it can stand up by itself. A subordinate clause starts with a word like "because", "when" or "although" - it leans on a main clause and topples over without one. Two subordinate clauses have nothing to lean on, and two main clauses cannot simply be pushed together: they need a conjunction or a full stop between them.
What to say if they get stuck
Try putting a plugged brick on the plate all by itself and see what happens to it.
Bricks with a plug on the left are subordinate clauses: "because", "when", "although". They have to lean on something.
Every sentence needs exactly one brick that makes sense on its own - a main clause.
How distinguish a phrase and clause differs from the skills beside it
The same exercise practises one other skill, and telling them apart is often the difficulty rather than the exercise itself. On this page the skill is: decide whether a group of words contains a clause and identify its role, and it stops where excludes joining clauses.
Questions parents ask about distinguish a phrase and clause
Answered from what the skill map records about this skill, not from a template. Every answer here is on the page, and the same questions are the page's FAQ structured data.
Decide whether a group of words contains a clause and identify its role. It is one of 41 named English skills in the 11+, in the grammar strand, and this page carries 1 interactive exercise that practises it.
Length decides nothing. "She waited" is a clause in two words, while "in the middle of the night" is six words and still only a phrase. The wrong answers on this skill are built out of that, not out of random numbers, so it is worth naming out loud before your child meets it under time pressure.
Point at the next move rather than explaining the whole rule. Look for a verb you could put into the past or the present, with someone or something doing it. That pair makes a clause; without it you have only a phrase.
The skill map draws the line here: Excludes joining clauses. A question past that line is testing a different named English skill, which is worth knowing before you spend a week practising the wrong one.
The grammar strand holds 9 skills that are tested together, and the pages next to distinguish a phrase and clause are maintain consistent tense, match subject and verb and order sentence elements. Each has its own exercise and its own link, and none of them needs an account.
Use Clause Builder, embedded on this page. It is the exercise the skill map attaches to distinguish a phrase and clause, it runs in the browser with no account to make, nothing is scored, and nothing a child does here is recorded or sent anywhere. It also has its own link, so you can send it to a child without sending them anywhere else first.
Comprehension, vocabulary, grammar and punctuation are four different problems
A free diagnostic separates them, so practice goes where the gap actually is rather than on whichever one is easiest to set.
