🔗 Grammar B1-15: Defining relative clauses
The fifteenth material of the Fleydo B1 grammar series teaches the defining relative clause as a label glued straight onto a noun — no clause, no idea which one. The opening pair of cards makes the stakes plain: I talked to the girl points at nobody, I talked to the girl who sits behind me finds her. The word kit is a five-row table — who for people, which for things and animals, that as the everyday all-rounder, whose for the owner, where for places — with the warning that what is never on the team and that where, meaning in which, refuses a second in or at. A four-question decision list picks the word, rescues learners from the where-as-subject trap, and sets up the heart of the material: the one-glance test. Read the word straight after the pronoun — a verb next means the pronoun is the subject and must stay, a new person or thing next means the clause has its own subject and the pronoun may silently vanish: the film we watched, but always the man who called. Two worked runs walk the glance step by step, a compare-and-verdict pair fixes it, and a twelve-label sorter drills stay against vanish. A 129-word tap-and-explain text about Astrid’s best friend, a climbing wall, a café owner and his old dog shows kept, dropped and specialist labels working in prose, and a six-card definitions game turns the grammar into play. Practice runs to thirty-one explained multiple-choice items in four sets, plus six repairs of real learner sentences — the doubled pronoun, the vanished subject, which for a person, everything what, where as a subject, and commas around a defining clause. Teacher notes give a 45-minute sequence, the arrow board move, the crossing-out rescue for the double pronoun, and Cambridge B1 Preliminary relevance.
Lesson Plan
- A defining relative clause is a label that says which one — cut it and the sentence points at nobody
- The girl who sits behind me: the noun, the label word, the rest of the clause
- No commas, ever: the clause is the address of the noun, not a side note
Key Vocabulary
Grammar Points
- noun + who / that for people: the teacher who runs chess club
- noun + which / that for things and animals: the app that saves my homework
- whose replaces his / her / its: the boy whose phone rang
- where = in which, for places where something happens: the café where we meet — never where + a second in / at
- the object pronoun can vanish: the film (that) we watched — the subject pronoun never can: the man who called
- defining clauses take no commas: students who forget their kit run laps
Prerequisites
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