Forming Compound Sentences

com·pound sen·tence noun plural noun: compound sentences A sentence with more than one subject or predicate. This page contains definitions of simple, compound, and complex sentences with many simple examples. The purpose of these examples is to help the ESL/EFL learner to identify sentence basics including identification of sentences in the short quizzes that follow. After that, it will be possible to analyze more complex sentence varieties. Simple Sentence A simple sentence, also called an independent clause, contains a subject and a verb, and it expresses a complete thought. In the following simple sentences, subjects are in yellow, and verbs are in green. Some students like to study in the mornings. Juan and Arturo play football every afternoon. Alicia goes to the library and studies every day. The three examples above are all simple sentences. Note that sentence 2 contains a compound subject, and sentence 3 contains a compound verb. Simple sentences, therefore, contain a subject and verb and express a complete thought, but they can also contain compound subjects or verbs.