Adverbial, relative and non-finite complex sentences revision | English

Starter quiz

Which sentence has all the correct capital letters?
- Jun handed Jacob the French Dictionary.
- Jun handed Jacob the french Dictionary.
- Jun handed Jacob the French dictionary. ✓
Which of these is a compound sentence?
- And then it was all over.
- He ducked and he dived. ✓
- As he burst in, we all gasped.
Which of the following are co-ordinating conjunctions?
- or ✓
- and ✓
- because
- which
- but ✓
Tick the sentences which are exclamations.
- How happy we were ✓
- How are you happy
- What a marvellous sound
- What a marvellous sound you make ✓
Tick the sentences which are commands.
- Do you want to
- Do what you want ✓
- Don't push me ✓
- He pushed me
Alex wants to rewrite this statement as a question. Which is the correct version? 'She was here a minute ago.'
- was she here a minute ago?
- Was she here a minute ago? ✓
- She was here a minute ago?
- Was she here a minute ago

Which of the following are subordinate clauses?
- the rain began slowly
- falling thunderously from the sky ✓
- which damaged many crops ✓
- as it fell harder and harder ✓
Which words in this complex sentence are subordinating conjunctions? 'When Miss O'Neill arrived, we cheered because she had been poorly for days.'
- when ✓
- arrived
- cheered
- because ✓
Which of these complex sentences need a comma after a fronted adverbial clause?
- Before we had time to rest it had begun. ✓
- It had begun before we had time to rest.
- When the movie started we all fell silent. ✓
- We all fell silent when the movie started.
What kind of word starts a relative clause?
- subordinating conjunction
- relative pronoun ✓
- -ing form of verb
Which of these sentences contain a relative clause?
- The house where I grew up is a ruin now. ✓
- We all chuckled when Jacob told his story.
- The day when Jacob told his story was one of the best of the year. ✓
- When we arrived, we went straight to our dormitories.
Which of these sentences contain a non-finite (-ing clause)?
- We were playing tennis.
- Gobbling down our food, we were desperate to go outside. ✓
- She looked at me sadly, hoping it wasn't true. ✓
- She was hoping to come, but she wasn't able to.

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Any complex sentence is formed of at least one main clause joined to at least one subordinate clause.
There are different types of subordinate clause: adverbial clause, relative clause and non-finite clause.
Any subordinate clause is a group of words that contains a verb and does not make complete sense.
There are three types of complex sentence: adverbial, relative and non-finite.
There are comma rules associated with clause demarcation in complex sentences.

Pupils may not grasp that the different types of subordinate clause are all subordinate clauses.

Reinforce the point that these are sub-types of subordinate clause.

Subordinate clause - a group of words that contains a verb and does not make complete sense
Adverbial clause - a type of subordinate clause that starts with a subordinating conjunction
Relative clause - a type of subordinate clause that starts with a relative pronoun
Non-finite clause - a type of subordinate clause that starts with a verb in the progressive tense
Complex sentence - a sentence formed of at least one main clause and a subordinate clause