Thinking critically about sentences

The following sentences come from the openings of well-known works. Identify the independent and dependent clauses in each sentence. Then choose one sentence, and write a sentence of your own imitating its structure, clause for clause and phrase for phrase.

Click Submit after each question to record your answer. If your instructor has assigned this exercise set, you must answer every question before your answers will be submitted to the gradebook.

  1. We observe today not a victory of party but a celebration of freedom, symbolizing an end as well as a beginning, signifying renewal as well as change.—JOHN F. KENNEDY, Inaugural Address
    We observe today not a victory of party but a celebration of freedom, symbolizing an end as well as a beginning, signifying renewal as well as...
  2. Once in a long while, four times so far for me, my mother brings out the metal tube that holds her medical diploma.—MAXINE HONG KINGSTON, “Photographs of My Parents”
    Once in a long while, four times so far for me, my mother brings out the metal tube that holds her medical diploma.—MAXINE HONG KINGSTON,...