Building Complex Sentences with Independent and Dependent Clauses

Khan Academy

In this engaging grammar tutorial, Paige and Rosie break down the structure of complex sentences, explaining how they differ from simple and compound sentences. The video uses clear handwritten examples to demonstrate how complex sentences are built by combining one independent clause with at least one dependent clause. Through color-coded sentence analysis, the narrators visually distinguish between the parts of a sentence that can stand alone and those that rely on additional information to be complete. The video explores key grammatical concepts including subjects, verbs, and the critical role of subordinating conjunctions like "when," "although," and "because." By analyzing examples involving birthday cakes and camping trips, the narrators show how these conjunctions transform an independent clause into a dependent one. They also demonstrate flexibility in sentence structure, showing that dependent clauses can appear at the beginning or end of a sentence, and that a single complex sentence can contain multiple dependent clauses. This resource is highly valuable for upper elementary and middle school classrooms as it moves beyond basic sentence identification into more sophisticated writing structures. It provides a clear, visual method for students to check their own writing for fragments and run-ons. Teachers can use this video to introduce subordinating conjunctions, practice identifying sentence components, and encourage students to vary their sentence fluency by combining simple ideas into more nuanced complex sentences.