In this video we'll be discussing noun clauses with wh words. This is the
second type of noun clause. noun clauses with wh words are again
dependent clauses, but with these types of noun clauses we don't start the noun clause
with 'that' instead we start it with a wh word such as when how and so on. so noun
clauses with wh words look like questions because they use the WH words. when we
write these noun clauses we use statement order instead of question order in other
words we start with the subject and verb and then sometimes object. we don't
use question word order and we also do not use a question mark at the end of
the statement. so let's look at a couple of examples so we'll start with a wh
question a very simple one. when is the test? we want to change this into a noun
clause with the WH word, so we need to start with an independent clause. Here's an
example. the students know so our independent clause is the students
subject know verb and here's the question, but we've changed it into a wh word now
clarence so we started with the same W H word when we switch the verb and subject
around so that it's in statement form or statement
word order and we end up with when the test is so we have the students know when the
test is here's another example what will she do tomorrow
this is the WH question. now you want to change it into a WH noun clause so we can
say she knows the subject and verb
we put in the WH word the same WH word "what" she will do tomorrow so again notice
that the helping verb and the subject they switch back around to statement word order here's
one more example When did he write the essay?
we turn it into a noun clause. "He remembers when he wrote the essay." so here remember
that when we write a question we have to add 'do' 'do' has the past tense but we change
it into a statement the past tense goes on to the main verb and it turns into 'wrote'
Here are some more examples. Here'r three WH questions and you guys can try to change these
into WH noun clauses and I'll give you some example answers.
so as you can see in all of these answers we start with the independent
clause. We build the independent clause. make sure you have a subject and verb then
we start the WH noun clause with the WH words and we chang the question word ordered
into statement word order so that we have, for example, subject verb object now
we're going to talk about some common errors two common areas the first common error
is using that and a WH word in the same sentence so for example the student
wants to know that how people learn languages so we see right here THAT is
for a statement type noun clause and HOW is for a WH type noun cause we can't use
both. So, to fix this error, we have 'The student wants to know that how people
learn languages' We just need to get rid of one of the words that start the noun clause
So I'm going take out THAT and we have 'The student wants to know how people
learn languages.', so we have a WH question turned into a noun clause. The second common
error is using the question form in a noun clause. So we can see for example 'The
teacher explained why did they need to study.' So, you see right here this WH noun
clause, it's still in question word order so again
it's incorrect. We need to change this. We start with The teacher explained why did
they need to study.' And, we switch the verb and subject into noun clause or
statement word order. So we end up with 'The teacher explained why the needed
(remember it's in past tense DID)
to study.