CAMBRIDGE LOWER SECONDARY ENGLISH 7: WORKSHEET 1A

Name Date

Worksheet 1A
1 Read this extract from ‘Beware Low-Flying Girls’ by Katherine Rundell. Every time you
find a simple sentence (a sentence that has just one main clause), copy it into the table
below. The first one has been done for you.

She wore her father’s coat. It came down past her knees, and she had rolled the sleeves up,
so they hung at her wrist in a great roll of wool. The coat had once been a deep, cocoa-bean
brown, but now it was the colour of an elderly shoe. It smelt, very slightly, of horses and
woodsmoke.
The wind was fierce that day. It was often windy in winter at the top of the mountain; birds
got blown backwards up the cliff edge, reverse-somersaulting through the sky, their wings
shedding feathers like confetti. Seagulls blew into the house, sometimes right into her lap as
she sat curled up in the corner, wrapped in rugs, reading by the firelight. Suddenly finding
that you had an irate seagull as a bookmark was not, Odile thought, ideal, but her
grandfather would throw a blanket over them and stomp out into the night with the bird
bundled into his arms.
‘Always be polite to birds,’ he would say. ‘They know more than they let on.’
The house was built into the rock of the mountain, and the door was polished stone. Her
grandfather had lived on the mountaintop all his life. Odile had lived with him since she was a
baby. She had nobody else. In the house, the fire burned all the year round. ‘Keep the fire as
hot as the human heart,’ said her grandfather, his jaw stern. ‘Never let it go out.’

If you are not sure about whether a sentence is simple or not, ask yourself the questions
in columns 2 and 3.

Does it have Does it make

Simple sentence
just one clause? sense by itself?
She wore her father’s coat.  

Cambridge Lower Secondary English 7 – Creamer, Williams, Rees-Bidder & Elsdon © Cambridge University Press 2021 1
 CAMBRIDGE LOWER SECONDARY ENGLISH 7: WORKSHEET 1A

Two simple sentences can be combined to make a compound sentence – a sentence with two main
clauses. You can do this by using connectives – words that join one main clause with another main
clause. The easiest conjunctions to use are and, or and but. For example:
The house was built into the rock of the mountain, and the door was polished stone.

2 Combine each pair of simple sentences into a single compound sentence. For example:
Anil has just been to see the latest ‘Spider-Man’ film.
Theo preferred to go and see ‘Ant-Man’.
Anil has just been to see the latest ‘Spider-Man’ film, but Theo preferred to go and see ‘Ant-Man’.

a Kiri’s brother has got a place for next year at university.

Maria’s sister has got a place at university for the year after.

b You can have fruit for breakfast.

You can have yoghurt for breakfast.

c It had been pouring with rain all day.

The streets were running with streams of water.

d It had been pouring with rain all day.

The storm-drains were coping with the streams of water.

Cambridge Lower Secondary English 7 – Creamer, Williams, Rees-Bidder & Elsdon © Cambridge University Press 2021 2