It’s time to take your English to the next level! Complex writing makes use of multiple clauses in its sentences, which means that a sentence can place clauses inside other clauses. We call these “embedded clauses.” This shouldn’t be confusing once you understand the function of each part of the sentence. In this advanced English grammar lesson, we’ll learn how to break down sentences into their individual clauses and see how each functions to deliver the writer’s message clearly. You’ll learn how to identify and understand the relationships between independent and dependent clauses, including noun clauses, adjective clauses, and adverb clauses. I told you this was going to take you to the next level! Test your knowledge with the quiz: https://www.engvid.com/advanced-english-grammar-multi-clause-sentences-embedded-clauses/
Watch my previous videos about all the different kinds of clauses: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxYD9HaZwsI5QYbTHi6V5vQF5Ce1zwkOm
Check out my other channel: @WritetotheTop
In this lesson:
0:00 Multi-clause Sentences in English
0:40 Can you identify all the clauses?
9:20 Example 2: Identify the clauses
13:35 Is this too difficult for you?
TRANSCRIPT:
Hi, everybody.
Welcome to www.engvid.com.
I'm Adam.
In today's lesson, I have a little bit of an advanced grammar lesson, so make sure you
take your time and concentrate because this can be a little bit difficult, okay?
What I'm going to show you is how to look at a multi-clause sentence, a sentence that
has more than one clause, or quite a few clauses, and some of these clauses are inside
other clauses.
So, we would call this "embedded clauses".
Now, you can have very simple embedded clauses.
This is not simple, okay?
So, here's what I want you to do first.
Before I show you all the different clauses in this sentence, I want you to take a moment
and try to identify them by yourself.
You can press pause on your video player, try to identify all the different clauses,
and then when you're ready, press play, come back, and I'll walk you through this sentence
slowly and show you all the different clauses, and then show you how all the relationships
work or how all the different pieces work together, okay?
Whenever you're ready, come back.
I'm going to start.
So, first, let me read the sentence.
"Many young people are taught that if they work hard while they are young, they will
have a good life as adults because they will have the money to do what they want."
Legitimate sentence.
It's actually not even that long because there's enough information in it.
It's properly organized, but there are quite a few different pieces to it.
So you need to start understanding the relationships between all these different pieces and how
they work together.
So let's start.
"Many young people are taught", you have a subject, you have a verb, a passive, but it's
still a verb, "are taught something", right?
So this is your independent clause because subject, verb, and there's an object coming,
so we're going to leave that there.
I'm just going to work with these two markers here.
Okay?
Now, first thing you notice, here's a "that", and I'm going to put this in a little bit
of a square.
"Taught what", so I need an object for "taught", and this is the beginning of my object.
This is the beginning of a noun clause.
And I'll tell you a little bit more about noun clauses, adjective clauses, all that
after.
So, basically, from here - actually, I'm going to do this differently.
I'm going to put this here.
Everything between the two brackets is the object "are taught".
They are taught all of this, beginning with a noun clause conjunction, or a noun clause
marker.
Good.
Right away, you see another one, "if".
"If they work", so you have a conjunction, subject, and verb, so right away you have
your second clause.
So now, the question is, what is the - this is a clause I mentioned, it's a noun clause
- a clause must have a subject and a verb.
So, what is the subject and verb of - that goes with "that"?
Same.
If they work - oh, no, not - sorry, this way.
They work.
"That they work".
So right away, you can notice that both of these conjunctions are actually sharing a
clause, a subject and a verb combination.
So, if I break it down like this, so, young people are taught that they will have a good
life as adults, right?
This is your independent clause with the object noun clause.
Now, if they work hard while they are young, they will have - when will they have, or how
will they have a good life as adults?
If they work hard, they will have a good life as adults.
So, I have this conjunction and this conjunction sharing one clause.
And this is where people get confused, because they don't - you have to understand that clauses
can be shared.
Dependent clauses can be shared.
Independent clause is independent and must be able to stand by itself.
Dependents, you can start playing with them, you can share, etc.
But we're not done yet. […]