hi everyone I'm jenna welcome back to Learn Academic English on my channel I want to teach
you more advanced level English so you can be successful in school or work and in today's short
video I'm going to give you a quick grammar lesson that's going to help you level up your writing
so this grammar is reducing adverb clauses and it's useful for a couple of reasons one is that it
can help you add more variety to your writing and help your writing sound more like a native speaker
but also it's going to help you to understand people when they use this grammar
and help you understand it when you see it in reading so first of all
we're going to take a quick look at adverb clauses what are adverb clauses adverb clauses are a type
of dependent clause that tells how when or why and remember that a clause has a subject
and verb but these are dependent clauses why because they begin with a subordinating
conjunction and I have a video all about this type of clause if you want to check it out
so for example in this sentence we have after I arrived at the party I introduced myself
this sentence has two parts it has the dependent clause with the subordinating conjunction
and why is it a dependent clause because it cannot be alone it needs the second part of the
sentence to make sense if we take out the second part and we say after I arrived at the party
the meaning is not complete we don't know what happened so we need this second clause to make
the sentence complete notice that if we use the dependent clause at the beginning of the
sentence we're going to put a comma and then the main clause the independent clause comes after
this is a super common type of sentence and we use them a lot in writing to tell what happened but
there's a little trick so if the subject of the first clause and the subject of the second clause
are the same you can reduce this clause now why would you do this well the reason you would do
it is to add more variety to your writing so if you're using a lot of these types of sentences
it's a good idea to use some different grammar so that your writing is not too repetitive
and the other reason is that it makes your writing sound more advanced native speakers use reduced
clauses all the time so what the rule tells us is that we're going to take out the subject
and then we're going to change this verb by adding the ing after arriving at the party I
introduced myself sounds perfect how about the next one before I left
I thanked the hosts so first of all double check can we reduce the adverb clause in this sentence
are the subjects of the two clauses the same they are so how can we reduce this clause
before leaving I thanked the hosts so we're going to take out the I and then we're gonna change the
verb to the ing form now notice that we no longer have the past tense but that's okay because the
past tense is in the second clause so we know the time how about this one while I was leaving
I lost my keys can we reduce the adverb clause yes we can the subjects of the two clauses
are the same the same person so what we're going to do here is we're going to take out
I but then we have one more step we need to do we need the verb with the ing form and we have the b
verb here so we're going to take that one out too while leaving I lost my keys
okay how about the next one because I was late I gave up looking for my keys now stop for a moment
because you're going to notice that for all of these these are adverb clauses of time
they are talking about time but what about these two clauses because I was late
and since I didn't have my keys these are adverb clauses of reason they tell why something happened
the rule is different for these so for these we're going to double check the subject it is the same
so then we're going to take out because and then we're going to take out I
and we're going to change this to being so again we're going to take this verb and we're going
to add or we're going to use the ing form being late I gave up looking for my keys
so I have to be honest with you and I have to tell you that these adverb clauses of reason
can sound a little awkward when we reduce them especially in more informal situations so I don't
recommend using this in conversation you might hear it sometimes but it is more common in writing
however the adverb clauses of time are more common and I would say less awkward
however this is correct and you will hear it or see it sometimes okay let's try the next one since
I didn't have my keys I called my mom so in this one is this an adverb clause of time or reason
is it telling when or is it telling why it's telling why it's an adverb clause of reason so how
can we reduce it let's double check the subject it is the same in both clauses so we're going
to take out since we're going to take out I and then we need to change this to the ing form how
can we change this to the ing form having but what about the negative we're going to say not having
not having my keys I called my mom
okay what about the next one when I came home my mom let me in so let's see can we well first
of all is this an adverb clause of time or reason time now we have to check the subjects
so the subject of the first clause is I the subject of the second clause is my mom
can we reduce this one no we cannot if we reduce it then we don't know who did this one watch when
coming home my mom let me in what that means is that my mom is the one who came home
so if the subjects are different we cannot reduce it okay finally I want to show you that because
these are dependent clauses we have the rule that the sentence can be dependent clause comma
independent clause just like these sentences here or we can flip the order and we can say
independent clause dependent clause but if we do that notice that there's no comma for example
I introduced myself after arriving at the party so what did I do here I took this first sentence
I flipped the order of the clauses and I took out the comma here is the independent clause I
introduced myself and here's the second part the dependent clause the subordinating conjunction and
here the adverb clause has been reduced what does it mean I introduced myself after I arrived at
the party however these sentences that are adverb clauses of reason they might sound strange if we
flip the order so I would say for these I would keep it with the adverb clause at the beginning
but for the adverb clauses of time we can definitely flip the order of the clauses just
like I showed you in this example here so let me know if you have questions and I will leave
some examples in the description box below and I'll leave a little practice that you can do
to practice this grammar if you found this video helpful please don't forget to give it
a like leave a comment and subscribe if you haven't already let me know if you have any
other grammar questions I can help you with and I hope to see you back here next time take care!