Relative clauses

A candidate at CLB 5 writes in a chain of short sentences: I have a neighbour. She is a nurse. She works nights. Each sentence is correct, but the rater sees no control over sentence structure. A relative clause folds the second and third ideas into the first, so the same information arrives in one connected sentence: I have a neighbour who is a nurse and who works nights.

Readability and Vocabulary both reward this. You are not adding new ideas, you are showing that you can hold several ideas together, which is exactly what the higher bands describe.

Who is for people. Which is for things and animals. That can replace who or which, but only in a defining clause (no commas). Whose shows possession and works for people and things. Where follows a place, and when follows a time.

Ask yourself one question: what does the clause describe? If it describes a person, start with who. If it describes the person’s belongings or relatives, use whose. If it describes a place where something happened, use where.

• The technician who came yesterday fixed the heater in ten minutes.
• The heater, which is only two years old, has broken twice this winter.
• I complained to the landlord, whose office is on the ground floor.
• I still remember the winter when we first arrived in Winnipeg.

A defining clause tells the reader which one you mean. Without it, the sentence is incomplete or means something else: The employees who work weekends get a bonus (only those employees). There are no commas.

A non-defining clause adds extra information about something already clear. You could delete it and the sentence would still make sense: My manager, who started last month, is very organised. It always sits between commas, or between a comma and a full stop.

The commas change the meaning. My brother who lives in Ottawa is a teacher suggests you have more than one brother. My brother, who lives in Ottawa, is a teacher means you have one brother and you are adding where he lives.

When the relative word is the object of the clause, you can leave it out in a defining clause: The laptop (that) I bought last week has stopped working. This is natural and fluent, especially in speech.

You cannot leave it out when it is the subject: The man called you is here is wrong; it must be The man who called you is here. And you can never leave it out of a non-defining clause.

• The course I signed up for starts in September.
• The email you sent on Monday never reached me.

Prepositions can move to the front of the clause in formal writing: the person to whom I spoke, the reason for which I am writing. In speech, the preposition usually stays at the end: the person I spoke to. Both are correct; the front position sounds more formal in a Writing Task 1 email.

Which can also refer to a whole idea, not just one noun: The bus was cancelled, which meant I was late for my interview. This sentential which is excellent for showing a consequence in one sentence.

Quantifier + of + whom / which lets you describe part of a group: I have three colleagues, two of whom speak French. Use it once in an answer and it stands out.

• The flight was delayed by four hours, which meant that I missed my connection.
• We interviewed twelve candidates, most of whom had no customer-service experience.

Did I use who for people and which for things? Is there a comma before which when the information is extra? Did I avoid that after a comma? Did I avoid repeating the noun or pronoun inside the clause (which I bought it)? Did I avoid adding in after where?