About This Lesson
One of the earliest maxims taught in writing to “Omit needless words!” This free ESL Lesson Plan focuses on shortening relative clauses, a practical way of eliminating unnecessary words and ensuring that communication is clear and concise. The lesson provides a firm understanding of relative clauses as well as practice examples on shortening those clauses. And, to clarify, this lesson is suitable for advanced students.
Shortening Relative Clauses: The Basics
This lesson focuses on reducing subject relative clauses as well as shortening relative pronouns. An example of reducing a subject relative clause might be removing “who is” from the sentence, “the man who is standing over there.” In that example
Relative pronouns include that, which, who, whom, what, and whose.
An example might be “He doesn’t like the shirt that I bought.”
In defining relative clauses, when the relative pronoun (that) is the object of the clause (I bought)we can drop the relative pronoun.
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