Page 281 - English - Teaching Academic Esl Writing

SUBORDINATE CLAUSES 267
Social interaction that isfound in many human activities plays an important role in socialization.
When the relative pronoun that is the subject of the adjective clause, it is easy to identify because it is immediately followed by the sentence predicate (verb). When that is not followed by the sentence predicate, it is the object of the adjective clause:
Emotions that people are not willing to discuss include aggression, envy, or disdain.
In this example, that is the verb object of the adjective clause: It is fol- lowed by the subject people and the verb are. In either case, when that is the subject or the object of the adjective clause, it cannot be merely dropped (as is the case with that in noun clauses) because without it the sentence would be ungrammatical.
CHAPTER SUMMARY
Subordinate clauses of all types represent advanced syntactic constructions. These clauses are necessary for L2 writers to use in academic writing to avoid having their writing appear too simple. However, to benefit from the sophistication subordinate clauses add to the students' writing, students must use these constructions correctly.
• Adverbial clauses are probably the easiest subordinate clauses for L2 writers to master, and they express a variety of contextual rela- tionships, some of which refer to time, cause, contrast, and condi- tion. Adverbial clauses are separate from the main clause of a sentence and contain supplemental information to the primary in- formation in the main clause.
• Adjective clauses perform the same function that adjectives and ad- jective phrases perform, but where adjectives precede the nouns they describe, adjective clauses follow the nouns they describe. Ad- jective clauses can be used to modify practically any type of noun or noun phrase, and in these subordinate clause constructions the rel- ative pronouns that, who, and which replace the noun that the adjec- tive clause modifies. Adjective clauses are easier for students when the relative pronoun is the subject in the clause. When the relative pronoun is the object, students need to be taught to move the rela- tive pronoun to the beginning of the clause and make sure that
there is only one object to the verb.
• Noun clauses are probably the most common type of subordinate
construction. Unfortunately, they are also the most structurally
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