B1Relative clauses15 min

Relative clauses: who, which, that, where

Join ideas and give more information about people, things and places in one sentence.

A relative clause gives information about a noun. It comes straight after the noun and helps us join two short sentences into one: I have a friend. She speaks five languages. becomes I have a friend who speaks five languages.

Word	Used for	Example
who	people	The woman who lives next door is a pilot.
which	things and animals	The bus which goes to the airport leaves from here.
that	people or things (more informal)	Is this the key that opens the garage?
where	places	That's the café where we first met.
whose	possession (his, her, their)	I know a boy whose father is a chef.

In these sentences, the relative clause tells us exactly which person, thing or place we mean. We call them defining clauses, and they have no commas.

Can we leave the word out?

When who, which or that is the object of the clause (another subject comes after it), we can leave it out. When it is the subject of the clause, we must keep it. If a clause only adds extra information, we put it between commas and we cannot use that.

The film (that) we watched last night was very long. (object: you can leave it out)
The man who called you is waiting outside. (subject: it must stay)
This is the town where my grandmother grew up.
Kofi, who works at the hospital, is very busy this week. (extra information, with commas)

Source

Original lesson by Joy English.

Levels are suggestions. Found a mistake? Tell us through the Contact page.