Words for culture, and adding detail
You can add a detail about a person, a place or a thing inside one clear sentence, and put the commas where they belong.
The festival, which started as a harvest fair, now fills the town for a week. The part between the commas is a relative clause. It adds a detail without starting a new sentence.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy is one of the four criteria in Writing and in Speaking, and each criterion carries equal weight. Relative clauses are a clear way to show range in both. In writing, they also need the commas in the right places.
This unit's topic is culture, so the words come first: museums, festivals and the traditions people keep.
Warm-up
Collection or exhibition?
These words are easy to mix up. Choose the one that fits the sentence.
The museum's new ______ of Chinese kites opens in May and runs until the end of August.
Words for culture
Museums and the arts
A public show of objects or art, usually for a limited time. The exhibition of old maps closes on Sunday.
All the objects a museum or gallery owns. Only a small part of the collection is on display.
The person who looks after a collection and plans exhibitions. The curator decided which paintings to hang together.
The money you pay to go in. The gallery has no admission charge on Mondays.
Music, dance and theatre: art performed live for an audience. The city gives grants to the performing arts.
The buildings, customs and objects from the past that a society values. The old harbour is part of the town's heritage.
Festivals and traditions
A traditional way of doing something in a place or a group. At Lunar New Year it is the custom to give children money in red envelopes.
Organise it and make it happen. The town holds a dragon boat race every summer.
The place where an event happens. The concert has moved to a bigger venue.
A line of people, music and decorated vehicles moving through the streets. The parade ends in the main square.
Give or teach something to the next generation. My grandmother passed down her recipe for mooncakes.
Keep something from being lost or damaged. Volunteers are recording old songs to preserve them.
Grammar: relative clauses
A relative clause gives information about a noun. It comes straight after that noun and starts with a relative word. Which word you use depends on the noun.
The woman who runs the museum shop used to be a teacher.
The festival, which began in 1978, takes place every October.
This is the hall where the orchestra practises. Here where means in which.
The painter whose work you saw lives in the next village. It works for things too: a festival whose history goes back centuries.
Commas or no commas
The museum that opened last year is free on Sundays. Without the clause, the reader cannot tell which museum you mean. Here you can use that or which for things, and that or who for people.
The Harbour Museum, which opened last year, is free on Sundays. The name already tells the reader which museum it is, so the clause is extra. It goes between commas, and it never starts with that.
A quick test
Cover the clause and read the sentence without it. If the reader still knows exactly who or what you mean, the clause is extra, so it takes commas. If they no longer know, the clause is defining, which means it picks the thing out. A defining clause takes no commas. A clause after a name almost always takes commas. So does a clause about someone you have only one of, such as my mother.
Mistakes to avoid
- the festival which I went to it last year: which already stands for the festival. Drop it.
- It is a city where has many theatres.: where cannot be the subject of a verb. Write a city which has many theatres or a city where there are many theatres.
- My mother, that taught me to cook, ...: after a comma, write who or which.
- the people which organise the parade: people take who.
- the artist who's paintings: who's is short for who is or who has. For possession, write whose.
Watch me do one
Two sentences to join: The Harbour Museum reopened in March. and It had been closed for two years.
The second sentence is the extra detail, so it becomes the clause. It stands for a thing, so the relative word is which.
Commas or not? The Harbour Museum is a name. The reader already knows which museum, so the clause is extra and goes between commas.
I put it straight after the noun it describes: The Harbour Museum, which had been closed for two years, reopened in March.
Another pair: We visited the village. and My grandmother was born there. This detail is about a place, so I use where, and there goes: We visited the village where my grandmother was born.
No commas this time. Without the clause, the village could be any village at all.
Practice with Elita7 questions
The first questions ask for the right relative word. Then come commas, a mistake to find, and the words from the cards.
A person
Write one relative word in the gap.
The man repairs the paper lanterns has done the job for forty years.
Write no more than 1 word.
A place
Choose the word that fits the gap. Ask yourself what the gap stands for.
This is the square ______ the parade finishes every year.
Two gaps
Write one relative word in each gap.
The singer voice you heard on the radio grew up in the town the festival is held.
Write no more than 1 word in each gap.
Commas with a person
Only one of these is punctuated correctly. Which one?
Choose the correct sentence.
Which visitors?
Does this sentence need commas around the clause? Think about what it means with and without them.
Visitors who arrive before ten o'clock get in free.
One wrong sentence
These four sentences describe one festival. Choose the sentence with a grammar mistake.
Which sentence contains the error?
Match the words
Match each culture word to what it means.
Use it
A festival, a museum or a tradition
Write four or five sentences about a festival, a museum or a tradition you know. Use at least three relative clauses, one of them between commas.
Describe a festival, a museum or a tradition from your town or country. Use at least three relative clauses (who, which, where or whose), at least one of them between commas, and two words from this lesson.
0 / 50 words
Set up your learning path at the top of this lesson to get band-specific feedback.
Before you go
Use who for people, which for things, where for places and whose for possession.
Leave the commas out when the clause tells the reader which one. Put them in when it adds a fact about something the reader already knows, such as a name.
After a comma, write who or which. That never follows a comma.
Leave out the word the relative word replaces: the festival which I went to, the village where she was born.
Next: Next, a reading lesson: five people discuss museum collections on the internet, and you decide which of them made each statement.