Read the following sentence. sea glass is perhaps the only beautiful thing that can come from litter. determine whether the underlined group of words is a phrase or a clause, then determine if it is essential or nonessential.
a. phrase, nonessential
b. clause, nonessential
c. phrase, essential
d. clause, essential

The answer to your question would be that the underlined group of words is an essential clause. That is, the correct option would be D.

A clause consists of a subject and a verb and is the smallest grammatical unit that expresses a thought. In this case, the clause "that can come from litter" is an essential relative clause because the information it provides is considered relevant to the meaning of the sentence. This information is considered necessary to identify the noun modified by the clause. If it was dropped, the meaning of the sentence would be altered (a)

(a) *Sea glass is perhaps the only beautiful thing

closer examination, however, finds the mcdonald's kind of job highly uneducational in several ways. far from providing opportunities for entrepreneurship (the lemonade stand) or self- discipline, self-supervision, and self-scheduling (the paper route), most teen jobs these days are highly structured — what social scientists call “highly routinized.”  

true, you still have to have the gumption to get yourself over to the hamburger stand, but once you don the prescribed uniform, your task is spelled out in minute detail.  

d) sarah's natural reaction to being accepted into college suggests that she has no other dreams.