hi everyone and welcome back to my channel Learn Academic English where I teach intermediate and
advanced level English lessons for people who want to take their English to the next level
in today's lesson I'm starting a short series of videos all about how to use conjunctions and
make clear sentences in English this is mostly to improve your English writing and you can use this
to help you in both school and work the first video in this series is about the difference
between independent and dependent clauses and this is an important topic because this is the
foundation for making clear sentences you need to know about independent and dependent clauses in
order to know how to connect them correctly how to use commas and semicolons correctly
and how to use all kinds of conjunctions and transition words so let's get started
with this short lesson about the difference between independent and dependent clauses
first for independent clauses an independent clause we're going to use the abbreviation IC and
notice that this always has a subject and verb but I want you to know that all clauses have a subject
and a verb that's what makes a clause a clause it has a subject and a verb an independent clause
also can be a sentence by itself and it expresses a complete thought for example I work from home
this is a complete thought when you hear it you understand it it has a subject and a verb so it's
a clause and it can be a sentence we can also use two subjects like this one my husband and I work
from home or I work and study from home here we have one subject but the subject does two things
work and study or we can say my husband and I work and study from home in this case the subject has
two people and the verb is two things now we call these sentences SV that's the subject and verb or
SSV that would be two subjects and one verb or SVV one subject and two verbs or we have SSVV which is
two subjects and two verbs these are all possible ways that an independent clause can look and in
the next video I'll show you how to join two independent clauses with a conjunction but
let's move now to the dependent clause what's the difference between an independent clause
and a dependent clause well a dependent clause also has a subject and verb because it's a clause
but it cannot be a sentence and this is the big difference between an independent and dependent
clause a dependent clause cannot be a sentence because it does not express a complete thought
it is an incomplete thought I always tell my students that a dependent clause dependent means
that it needs something or it cannot be alone and I tell my students that this is like a baby a baby
cannot be alone a baby needs its mother or father so it expresses an incomplete thought because
a dependent clause contains a subordinating conjunction like because since after while if etc
we have this word if and that means that there's some information missing if I work from home what
what will happen so this is considered a fragment it is not a complete sentence how can we fix that
we can join the dependent clause to an independent clause like this first we can put the dependent
clause first add a comma and then the independent clause for example If I work from home, I'll save
time. here we have the subordinating conjunction if we have the subject I and the verb work
at the end of this clause we have a comma and then we have the independent clause I will save time or
we can flip the order we can put the independent clause first but notice that if we do that
there is no comma I'll save time if I work from home so again we have the dependent clause here
joined with the independent clause now we have a sentence because this extra information was
missing over here now that we have it it's a complete thought and we have a complete sentence
so come back soon for the rest of this series of videos I will explain how to join clauses to do
all kinds of sentences how to use coordinating conjunctions, correlative conjunctions,
subordinating conjunctions, and adverbial conjunctions also how to use commas and
semicolons to connect clauses and how to use those rules to avoid fragments, comma splices,
and run-ons which are common mistakes for both English learners and native english speakers let
me know if you have questions in the comments below and I'll see you next time take care!