Are you terrified of "clause" in the class?

Today’s English
June 30th, 2017

The very term “clause” makes students sick and feverish or at least remains a head ache to them. But, you will raise your eyebrows, if I say that the other name given to "sentence" is clause. What ordinary people call as a sentence is named as “main clause" by grammarians. All simple sentences of our day to day life such as “he is a doctor" and “he met me yesterday” are the other way known as main clauses. So first take it easy – sentence= clause and clause = sentence.

Father is a human being and his seven- years- old son is also a human being. The difference is that father can stand alone because he works, earns and can buy anything he likes. He is independent.  But the son cannot stand alone – he doesn’t earn and therefore he has to depend on his father for food, education, etc. This is what we say in grammatical jargons as main clause and subordinate clause. Father is the main clause (main sentence) and son is the subordinate clause (depending sentence). 

(She did not chat with her friends on WhatsApp) (as she had to complete her assignment.) – the first one is main sentence and the second one is subordinate sentence.

To speak fluently and effectively in English, you can make use of clauses, especially relative clauses(a kind of subordinate clause) frequently in your speech and writing:

1.Common: I don’t know his living place.
With Relative clause: I don’t know where he is living.

2.What I mean is different from what you have understood.

3.What worries me more is his indifference to study.

4.I don’t know who came here yesterday.

5.Who helps you in need is, in fact, the one who loves and cares you more.

6.Let’s know when he will return from Chennai.

7.When they will complete the project is quite uncertain in this case.

8.Why he is angry with everyone today is still not known to us.

9.We would like to know why he resigned his job.

10.Tell me anything that is interesting.

11.How he did this is still a mystery to us.

12.I still wonder how you get along with these students.

13.We are not sure whether he will come or not.

14.Whether she is on leave or not is not known to us.

15.We want the same material which you are searching for.

Remember!:  We use words such as what, why, where, who and how in relative clause but they are just relative pronouns and don’t mistake that these sentences are questions and don’t use question mark at the end. See the difference:

Where is he working?   (A question -verb first and subject next- “is he")

Tell me where he is working. (A clause – subject first, verb next – “he is")

Just for fun!
(Interviewer: introduce yourself

Candidate: What my name is, where I am living, where I studied, what skills I have, whether I have the required educational qualification, what I’m interested in and what my carrier objective is are all in the resume and what I would like to know from you first is why you are asking me to introduce myself when my resume carries all these details sir.

Interviewer: …………?!)