This is the lesson the rest of the course leans on. You know the planets are the what (lesson 1) and the signs are the how (lesson 2). Put one of each together and you get a sentence about a person. Most of chart reading is doing that well, many times over, and then noticing how the sentences fit together.
Take the planet's part of life. Describe it in the style of the sign. That's the whole recipe.
Grammar helps here. The planet is the verb, the thing being done: loving, thinking, needing. The sign is the adverb: how it's done. Slowly, restlessly, carefully, dreamily. "Venus in Taurus" becomes "she loves slowly," and you're already reading.
When you build the sign, use the two ingredients from lesson 2 instead of a list of keywords you half remember. Element plus mode will almost always get you somewhere sensible, and you'll know why you said what you said.
Venus is love and taste. Taurus is fixed earth: steady, physical, slow to change. Here's a first try at a sentence about Maya:
Venus in Taurus means Maya loves luxury.
That's the kind of line you'd find on a keyword site, and it's weak for two reasons. It grabs one cliché and leaves most of Venus and Taurus behind. It also turns her into a shopper, which may have nothing to do with her.
Now build it from the pieces. Venus covers who she's drawn to and what she finds beautiful. Earth says she knows these things through her senses. Fixed says once she's decided, she stays decided. So:
Maya warms up to people and things slowly, and once she likes something she keeps it. She knows what she likes by how it feels, tastes and sounds, and she's hard to talk out of it.
Every part of that can be traced back to a piece you know. That's what makes it better. If someone asks "why do you say that?", you can answer.
Some planets fit certain signs especially well. Astrologers say a planet "rules" a sign, and a planet in a sign it rules is at home. Venus rules Taurus, so Maya's Venus is at home. It works easily and plainly, without having to translate itself.
The sign opposite a planet's home is the least natural spot for it. The old word is detriment. The Moon rules Cancer, and Maya's Moon is in Capricorn, right across the zodiac. Mercury rules Virgo, and Maya's Mercury is in Pisces, again right across. Traditional astrology also calls Pisces Mercury's fall, a second way of saying the fit is awkward.
Please don't read those words as "bad." A planet away from home still works. It just works in an unusual way, and people with these placements often end up unusually good at that thing because nothing about it came by default. We'll keep dignity light in this course. It's seasoning, and the sentence is the meal.
The Moon is what someone needs to feel okay. Capricorn is cardinal earth: starting practical things, building, taking charge of the real world.
Weak version: Moon in Capricorn is cold. You'll see that one a lot. It's unkind, and it confuses how a feeling looks from outside with what's going on inside.
Better: Maya feels settled when things are handled. A crossed-off list calms her more than being told everything will be fine. She may have learned early to be the steady one, and she can find it hard to be looked after instead of doing the looking after.
That last sentence is where the detriment shows. The Moon wants comfort, Capricorn wants results, and so comfort gets earned through results. That's a real tension for her, and you'll see it again in lesson 8.
Mercury is the mind: thinking, talking, learning. Pisces is mutable water: feeling that takes the shape of whatever it's near.
Weak version: Mercury in Pisces is bad at logic. Another cliché, and it only says what's missing.
Better: Maya tends to think in pictures and moods before words. She picks up what goes unsaid in a room, and she might forget a date but remember exactly how a conversation felt. Her ideas arrive whole, and explaining the steps afterward is the harder part.
Notice the words "tends to" and "might." A placement describes a leaning. It doesn't lock anyone into anything, and good sentences leave room for the actual person.
A good test: read your sentence and point to which words came from the planet and which came from the sign. If you can't, it's probably a keyword you picked up somewhere. Go back to the two ingredients.
A second test: could this sentence be about anyone? "She values honesty" fits nearly everybody. Push until it could only fit someone with this planet in this sign.
You'll also notice your sentences feel a bit flat on their own. That's expected. Maya's Venus is also in her first house (lesson 4) and talks to Jupiter and Uranus (lesson 6), and those will sharpen it. One planet, one sign, one sentence is enough for now.