Relative Clauses…
A relative clause is a type of subordinate clause that modifies a noun.
For example, ‘Mr and Mrs Selfie arrived in the car that they had bought this morning.’ If often does this by using a relative pronoun such as ‘who’ or ‘that’ to refer back to the noun it changes.
For example, ‘Mr and Mrs Selfie want a nicer house and they think Auntie Eileen is an old woman who doesn’t need such a big house.’
In this sentence, ‘who doesn’t need such a big house’, is a relative clause that modifies the noun, ‘woman’.
‘Mr and Mrs Selfie want Eileen’s house but she doesn’t want to move.’
‘They have a pamphlet that outlines the wonderful world of old age care homes.’ ‘that outlines the wonderful world of old age care homes’ is a relative clause that describes the noun, ‘pamphlet’. The kind of pamphlet that you would give to a relative, especially if you wanted them to move out.
Unfortunately, for Mr Selfie, Eileen is the kind of relative that you never want to cross - ‘that you never want to cross’, is a relative clause that modifies the noun ‘relative’.
Just remember, a relative clause is a type of subordinate clause that modifies a noun.
Just like Mr Selfie’s relative modified him.
Video summary
Part of a series of animated clips following a cast of characters’ adventures and mishaps as they get to grips with grammatical terms.
In this clip, Mr Selfie finds out about relative clauses the hard way and takes an unexpected trip to Madagascar.
This clip is from the series Grammar for 11-14 year olds.
Teacher Notes
Students tackle the Identification of clauses within a given extract.
Students explore sentence types in their own writing to aid sophistication.
This clip is suitable for teaching English at Key Stage 3 or Third Level.
Nouns and Noun Phrases. video
Nouns, proper nouns and noun phrases are explained with farmer Frank.
Verbs. video
Verbs describe an action, occurrence or state, as explained in this animation.
Adjectives. video
Big Dave gets to grips with adjectives.
