Grammar in EAP

Classes of Group

Exercise 3

Can you identify the nominal groups in the following text. Click on one to see if you are correct.

Caddis flies are rather nondescript drab brown insects, which most of us fail to notice as they fly rather clumsily over rivers. That is when they are adults. But before they emerge as adults they have a rather longer incarnation as larvae walking about the river bottom. And caddis larvae are anything but nondescript. They are among the most remarkable creatures on earth. Using cement of their own manufacture, they skilfully build tubular houses for themselves out of materials that they pick up from the bed of the stream. The house is a mobile home, carried about as the caddis walks like the shell of a snail or hermit crab except that the animal builds it instead of growing it or finding it. Some species of caddis use sticks as building materials, others fragments of dead leaves, others small snail shells. But perhaps the most impressive caddis houses are the ones built in local stone. The caddis chooses its stones carefully, rejecting those that are too large or too small for the current gap in the wall. even rotating each stone until it achieves the snuggest fit.