Hi I'm Jo from Specialist Language Courses, we are OET Premium Preparation Providers here to help
you prepare for your OET exam. In this video we're going to look at relative clauses and how
we can use them in OET writing, the material in this video is taken from our online course
OET Preparation for Nurses: Writing, it's a MOOC recently released by SLC on the Udemy platform
and it's been specifically designed for nurses who want help with the OET writing test,
so check out the link below. Let's take a look at relative clauses.
What do you know, first of all? Let's have a look at these sentences, so have a look at each
pair of sentences and have a think about which one is better and why, so pause the video now.
Okay, let's have a look. In the first two sentences the second one is better, Thank you
for seeing Mr Smith, comma, who was admitted to my ward on 12th April, in the next set of questions
the first one is better, His wife, who suffers from angina, is struggling to care for him.
And in the final set of sentences, the last one is the better sentence so Mrs Thompson,
who underwent a total hip replacement, is ready to be discharged to your rehabilitation centre.
So why is it better? Well, it's clearer and it avoids repetition, you know if you look at the
first sentence, Thank you for seeing Mr Smith. He was admitted to my ward on 12th April, it's very
disjointed it's much better, well connected and avoids repetition. When we use relative clauses,
we usually use the relative pronouns who, which, where and when, so pause the video
now and decide how would you complete these sentences, which relative pronoun would you use?
Okay let's take a look at the answers, so the first one it's who, Mrs Peters, who
has suffered from type 2 diabetes for 10 years, has problems self-administering her medication,
so the who references Mrs Peters. Let's look at number two, Mr King
will be discharged home tomorrow where he will be visited by the community nurse,
so here discharged home. His wound, which has been monitored closely, is healing well. He is
due for a follow-up appointment on 12th October when he will be assessed for further treatment.
So let's take a look at how we can connect sentences together using relative clauses,
as I said before, we want to do this to connect things together effectively and
also to avoid repetition, if we look at these two sentences here, we've repeated his wife, his wife
and it's not so effective so what we do is we replace his wife with the relative pronoun who
and then we can put that after the first mention of his wife in between some comments,
so the correct or the better phrase would be this, His wife, who suffers from angina, is struggling
to care for him. So the who, places his wife to avoid repetition and the commas are used to
add the extra information after the subject is introduced at the start of the sentence, okay?
The main sentence here is His wife is struggling to care for him, but we're just adding that extra
piece of information which might be important for the reader which is she suffers from angina.
Let's look at another example, Mr McFee won't be discharged today. His wound has become infected.
So here we're providing the reason why he won't be discharged today,
we could connect it together like this, so his wound would become whose wound possessive
and we would put that after the subject, so it becomes Mr McFee whose wound has become infected,
won't be discharged today. So let's have a go at connecting some sentences together, have a look
at these four groups of sentences, pause the video and connect them together using a relative clause.
All right, let's take a look at some examples. The first one
could be like this, Mr Mumba who was admitted to the hospital on 11th February with pneumonia,
is now ready for discharge. It's a nice well-connected coherent sentence.
Number two, She was reviewed by the dietitian, who gave her dietary advice,
so the extra information here is the dietary advice.
a follow-up appointment has been arranged for two weeks time when she will have her staples removed
Ms Flounders, who was admitted to the hospital on 12th April, had an emergency caesarean.
So notice after the comma is when the extra information is added so you may
know that there are two types of relative clauses, so we have the extra information,
relative clauses, and we often call these non-defining relative clauses.
Don't worry too much about the name of them, I call these the extra information relative clauses.
We also have relative clauses to make it clear who or what we are talking about and this is
not extra information, it's essential information or important information,
these we call defining relative clauses. Let's have a look at some examples,
so I have a couple of sentences here, in which sentence is there extra information?
so a non-defining relative clause and in which sentence do we have essential information?
and therefore using a defining relative clause, so pause the video and have a think about that now.
Okay so yes, hopefully you've identified the first sentence contains the extra information.
We've got the physiotherapist, who reviewed Mr Cod in hospital, has provided him with an exercise
plan. So the most important information is the providing of the plan, yeah? the physiotherapist
has provided him with an exercise plan, the extra information is that he reviewed the patient
in hospital. We've got the commas here as well that are used to add this extra information.
And the next sentence, The nurse who is at the nurses' station desk
will be able to answer your question. So this sentence doesn't have extra information,
it's all essential, okay? It's specifically that nurse, the nurse at the nurses' station desk,
we need this information to know who to talk to so we don't use a comma here.
Top tips for relative clauses, a good idea is to look at OET sample letters
and notice the use of relative clauses, also when reading, so this could be a medical text,
newspaper articles, anything you read notice the relative clauses,
which ones contain essential information and which ones contain extra information?
You can also link this to the speaking test and when practicing explaining treatment and
procedures, see how you can use relative clauses, so here's a couple of examples so
cholesterol is a substance which naturally occurs in the body,
the medication which should be taken with food should be taken every six hours. Thanks for
watching, if you want help with your OET writing including relative clauses and much, much more
just click the link in the description box and enrol on our course, don't forget to subscribe to
our YouTube channel for more tips and strategies for OET success, see you next time, bye!