Hi everyone welcome back to Learn Academic English on this channel I teach intermediate and advanced
level lessons for English learners who want to take their English to the next level I know that
if you want to improve your English grammar is an important part of that so in today's lesson I'm
going to teach you more about adjective clauses one of the most useful types of clauses that we
can use to improve our grammar and our writing and to make our writing more clear and easy to
read and we will look at common mistakes that are made with adjective clauses and how to correct
them before we get into that please make sure you give this video a like if you find it helpful
leave a comment and practice with me below and subscribe if you want more lessons like this one
so let's start with a quick review of what adjective clauses are an adjective clause
is called an adjective clause because it has a subject and a verb that's what a clause is and
it describes or modifies a noun so just like an adjective can describe a noun an adjective clause
also describes a noun but an adjective clause can also describe a whole sentence or a whole
phrase and we'll take a look at an example of that in a moment as you can see in this example
employees who work hard get a bonus the adjective clause is who work hard the subject is who the
verb is work and the adjective Clause describes or modifies employees it tells us which employees who
an adjective clause always comes immediately after the word or group of words that it describes
as you probably already know adjective clauses can have the following relative pronouns that which
refers to things or people who which refers to people which which refers only to things
where when and whose and whose is the possessive so that's when we would be using it to describe
what someone has for example employees whose work is good get a bonus one really important
point with adjective clauses is the difference between a restrictive and a non-restrictive
clause a restrictive clause restricts or limits the noun it shows something specific about that
noun that helps us to limit it to a certain group for example employees who work hard get a bonus
do all employees get a bonus no only employees who work hard so this is a restrictive clause
because it limits the group to a specific group only employees who work hard not all employees
so we call that a restrictive clause and notice that there are no commas and
you can try to remember that when there are no commas it means that
the adjective clause must be there it is essential to the meaning of the sentence
what happens if we take it out employees get a bonus but that's not what we want to say
we want to say employees who work hard get a bonus only limiting it to those who work hard
a non-restrictive adjective clause just gives extra information but it's not essential
to the meaning of the sentence it doesn't restrict or limit the noun to a certain group
for example employees who work hard get a bonus which is a gift of extra money to reward hard work
so now we have the second adjective clause and this is a non-restrictive clause it
gives extra information about the word bonus but what happens if we take it out
the meaning is still clear we still know what a bonus is notice that with non-restrictive
adjective clauses we use commas and that indicates that we can take the clause out or we can put it
back in again it gives nice information but it's not essential to the meaning of the sentence
okay let's look at some common mistakes with adjective clauses and then we'll look at how
we can correct them together I'm going to read the sentences to you and you can try to think
about what the problem is number one tend to have a healthy diet and this is good for their health
this example is grammatically correct but by using an adjective clause it could be so much
better this is an example of something that when I see it in my classes I tell
my students use an adjective clause to take your writing up a little bit higher number two
early detection of diseases reduces mortality that is one reason people are living longer
can you find the mistake
number three it's vital for patients need specialized care to have access to top hospitals
and finally for instance the Mayo Clinic hospital is ranked number one which is located in Minnesota
okay so let's take a look at these one by one and see how to correct the mistake okay let's take a
look at these example sentences and I'll show you how to fix them first women tend to have a
healthy diet and this is good for their health this sentence really should have an adjective
clause it sounds clunky without it so what are we going to do well we're going to make an adjective
clause that describes healthy diets which relative pronoun are we going to use well first we have to
decide is this going to be a restrictive or a non-restrictive clause well we know what a
healthy diet is we're not trying to restrict this to a certain group instead we are giving this
information and this is like extra information so we're going to use a non-restrictive clause if we
use a non-restrictive clause we must use which okay the pronoun that is only for restrictive
clauses so we're going to use which okay and we're going to use which to replace the subject this
okay let's read the sentence again women tend to have a healthy diet which is good for their health
this is a clause because it has a subject and a verb it describes the noun that comes
before and because it's non-restrictive we're going to set it off with commas
what happens if we take it out well we've lost that really interesting information but
we still understand the sentence okay all right let's look at the next one
early detection of disease reduces mortality that is one reason people are living longer
okay so here we have an adjective clause and this adjective clause is describing what
well it's not describing mortality mortality doesn't make people live longer mortality is
actually the opposite mortality is about dying so this adjective clause actually describes the whole
idea that comes before that early detection of disease reduces mortality okay so that
brings the death rate down and that's one reason people are living longer okay so this adjective
clause actually describes the whole previous sentence is it restrictive or non-restrictive
it's giving nice interesting information but it's not essential to understand the meaning of this
or it's not limiting this to a certain group so we're going to say this is non-restrictive
and that's one of the mistakes here is that we need to add a comma Okay then if we add a comma
we still have one more mistake do you know what it is it is that we need to change that to which
why because that is only for restrictive clauses with no comma let's read the sentence again early
detection of disease reduces mortality which is one reason people are living longer okay let's
go to the next one it's vital for patients need specialized care to have access to top hospitals
so we can see that even Google can detect that there is a grammar mistake here well
first of all let's look at the structure of the sentence we have our subject it
we have the verb is okay then we have this adjective vital which is similar to necessary
it's vital for patients need specialized care so what the what's the problem here well the problem
is that we have this second verb okay and this second verb doesn't make sense in the sentence
it doesn't follow the sentence structure because we already have our subject and our verb over
here so then we have to think about what is this describing this is describing patience okay so
we're missing that relative pronoun if we're describing patience what are we going to use
we're going to use who sometimes people will use that also but it's usually considered more correct
to use who especially in writing okay now let's take a look is it restrictive or non-restrictive
it's vital for patients who need specialized care to have access to top hospitals okay let's
think about it for a moment which patients are we talking about are we talking about all patients or
are we referring to a specific group of patients well let's try to take it out and see what happens
it's vital for patients to have access to top hospitals all patients well it would be nice
for all patients to have access to top hospitals but that's not what we want to say we're talking
about patients who need specialized care that they need access to top hospitals so we are
limiting this group which patients patients who need specialized care okay this is a restrictive
clause it restricts patients to a certain group and that means no commas okay remember that the
commas indicate that you can take it out or put it in but we want to keep it so no commas
all right let's look at the last one for instance the Mayo Clinic
hospital is ranked number one which is located in Minnesota
all right what do we have here well here we have this adjective clause and it seems to be
describing what it's describing the hospital okay restrictive or non-restrictive it's
non-restrictive because it's just giving extra information about the hospital we know what the
hospital is we have the name of the hospital but this is just giving extra information about it
so we need the comma but what's the problem
the problem is that the adjective Clause must go immediately after the information that it
describes is it describing number one no it's not it's describing the hospital so let's go
ahead and move it all right we're going to move it right here after hospital and we're going to
put another comma on the other side that indicates that we can take it out or put it in so let's look
for instance the Mayo Clinic hospital which is located in Minnesota is ranked number one
what happens if we take this out because remember the commas show us we can take it
out or put it in if we take it out the Mayo Clinic hospital is ranked number one we're missing that
information about the location but that's okay because we still know what this is all right
um I've gave you one bonus sentence just for fun let's take a look
men may keep in their anger for a long time that is not good for their health
notice that I'm using the word may to avoid a generalization because this is
not true for all men but how about that adjective clause what is it describing
the adjective clauses describing the whole idea that came before that men may keep in their anger
all right and is this restrictive or non-restrictive
it's non-restrictive it's just giving extra information so if it's non-restrictive we're
going to add a comma and then we have to think about the pronoun who that which whose
when where we're going to use which why because it's a non-restrictive
clause that is only for restrictive clauses when we don't have a comma
okay I hope that you found this video helpful if you have a question let me know and I'll leave a
couple more examples in the description box below that you can try to correct in the comments with
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