Monday Recap

Guest post by our classmate Ilchmaa Erdene - Thanks Ilchmaa - Liam.

Hello guys,

This Monday, we started the class with 5 riddles on the board :

A place where young children go to school – (Kindergarten)

A person who cooks food professionally – (a chef)

A nap which people take during the day in hot countries - (siesta)

A food which is commonly eaten in Italy – (pasta)

A type of entertainment where people sing popular songs – (karaoke)

These sentences introduced today's lesson which talked about the relative pronouns,         ''who, whose, whom, which, what, that ''.

We also learned some foreign words used in the English language such as muesli (german) shampoo (hindi), igloo (inuit), algebra (arabic), robot (czech), macho (spanish), tycoon (japanese), graffiti (italian) and yogurt (turkish).

There are two ways to use relative pronouns : Non Defining Relative Clause (N.D.R.C) and Defining Relative Clause (D.R.C). You can find below a resume of relative clauses with some examples that we saw in class.

Non-Defining Relative Clause - N.D.R.C:

NDRC's give extra or non essential information. They use commas before and after. DON'T use ''that'' for NDRC.

E.g I had a cake for dessert, which was a great idea. In this case, ''which'' is used to give a comment or opinion on the previous phrase and not to define.

Defining Relative Clause – D.R.C : 

D.R.C's give essential information about a subject.

• WHO is used to define a person.
  The woman who lives next door is a drug addict. We can use ''that'' instead of ''who'' and ''which''.
• WHOSE means 'of who' or 'of which'.
  There's my neighbour whose wife was arrested for shoplifting.
• WHOM is used after a preposition.
  That's the man to whom I was speaking earlier. We can also say 'That's the man who I was speaking to earlier'.
• WHAT is used to mean 'the thing' or 'things'
  What I like best about my teacher is his good looks, immense intelligence and astounding sense of humour.
  She told me what she had seen.

D.R.Cs can define the object. E.g. James is the man who I met at the party. When a D.R.C describes an object, we can remove the relative pronoun. E.g That's the shop (which) I told you about.

When do we use Where or Which ? 

There's a little difference between D.R.C where and which.

E.g There's the hotel where I stayed

There's the hotel which I stayed in

We DON'T SAY There's the hotel where I stayed in.

That's the building where I live

That's the building which I lived in

That's the building in which I lived (formal english)

So we have 3 possibilities to write the same sentences in different ways, more formal or less formal.

Another example with 'whom' and 3 ways to write the same sentence.

1. The police officer to whom I spoke was working on the reception desk

2. The police officer who I spoke to was working on the reception desk.
3. The police officer I spoke to was working on the reception desk

Phrase N°1 with ''to whom'' is formal English, you need to know how to use it if you want to take a Cambridge exam. The phrases N° 2 and 3 are informal and spoken English.

We learned that the Prime Minister in Ireland is called ''An Taoiseach' and that he says Ireland is the best country to do business in. But English teachers wish he would say Ireland is the best country in which to do business.

We also did many exercices to put it all in our mind. This is very important to know the relative pronouns because people use them very often and we should use them more often. For example, we should say 'The movie I saw yesterday was amazing' instead of 'I saw this movie, it was amazing'.

That's it, see you tomorrow.

Ilchmaa