Directions:
1. Read each sentence closely to comprehend its message.
2. Find nine verb phrases in the following paragraph and copy them in the box “Student Notes”.
3. When finished, click on “Show Answer” to check your answers.

*Remember that a verb phrase consists of a main verb (action or linking) and all helping verbs.

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Foreword by Mildred D. Taylor, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry

Hello, my name is Mildred D. Taylor. I was washing clothes in the basement of my parents’ house the day very special words came to me in a song. From the first, I knew that the words of the song were important, and I rushed upstairs to find a tape recorder so I wouldn’t lose them. Today I don’t even know where that recording is, but once a part of me, the song stayed with me. I was never to forget it.

For nearly a year before the song came to me, I had been working on the book that was to become Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. During that time I had been proofreading and editing for a text firm during the day, and I was writing in the evenings and on the weekends. I was consumed by the writing. The book dominated my life. I was living in Los Angeles, but my mind seemed always to be walking along Mississippi back roads into another time and another place. As the book neared completion, I found the writing to be increasingly more difficult. The events concluding the book were powerful ones and had to be powerfully written, but I couldn’t get them right. 


Student Notes: