Correct Response: B. This skill would enable students to make sense of a complex sentence step by step. Complex sentences are sentences that contain two or more clauses: an independent clause, which is the main clause, and one or more dependent clauses, which support or clarify the meaning of the main clause. The challenge for students in understanding this sentence structure is in understanding how the component clauses work together to communicate a coherent idea. Deconstructing the sentence into its component clauses allows the student to understand the ideas in each part of the sentence separately before considering how the ideas in the clauses are related. Option A is incorrect because distinguishing between sentences written in active voice and passive voice does not address the essential difficulty in understanding sentences with multiple clauses. Options C and D are incorrect because identifying transition words that link separate sentences (C) or distinguishing between demonstrative and indefinite pronouns (D) would not develop students' ability to understand complex sentences.
