Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[弗兰&]

Could you tell me what the difference between "break down into " and "break up into "
There are two sentence:
Each lesson is broken down into several units.
Sentences can be broken up into clauses.

in the twos above, I can't see any difference between them.

Please help me! Thanks!

[Anuradha Chepur]

.

In the first sentence, broken down into, means a systematic division of the lesson into smaller units, for better understanding.

In the second sentence, broken up into refers to a grammatical analysis of the sentence, where a sentence can be broken up into smaller units, each having an independent grammatical identity.