General English Level 4 V 3
UNIT 05 Art, culture and history TOPIC 04 This is how it started
LANGUAGE FOCUS 04 Relative clauses
Relative clauses are a way to give more information in a sentence.
Our history of pop music says:
Pop music is any music that is popular. Ninety five percent of the music that people listen to today is pop …
Elvis ' music, which was called rockabilly , was a mixture of country music and rhythm and blues.
Young people, who were called teenagers for the first time, were looking for something new and more exciting to listen to.
Other singers, who combined sweet pop tunes with cute looks, created teen-idol music .
Sony introduced the Walkman, which was the first portable stereo.
Rap, which is rhyme spoken over music, began.
Madonna and Pop King Michael Jackson , who were seen for the first time, did dance pop .
Michael Jackson , who was born on August 29, 1958, was the seventh of nine children.
Michael left the group and released "Thriller", which became the best-selling album of all time, with 50 million copies sold worldwide.
The 1990s saw the introduction of many kinds of different music which had developed from rock and roll .

The clauses beginning with who, which and that are called relative clauses .
When the relative clause is about a person we use who or that .
When the relative clause is about a thing we use which or that .
There are two kinds of relative clauses.

1. Defining relative clauses

When we need to say exactly which person or thing we are talking about we use a defining relative clause .

The information in the defining relative clause identifies the person or thing we are talking about in the main clause.

We always put the defining clause immediately after the word it is defining in the main clause.

There is never a comma with a defining relative clause.

Examples

Pop music is any music that is popular .
Ninety-five percent of the music that people listen to today is pop.

2. Non-defining relative clauses

When we want to give more information about the subject of a sentence (but the information is not necessary) we use a non-defining relative clause .

We always put the non-defining clause immediately after the word it is adding information about in the main clause.

We always use commas with a non-defining relative clause.

Examples

Young people , who were called teenagers for the first time, were looking for something new and more exciting to listen to.
Michael Jackson , who was born on August 29, 1958, was the seventh of nine children.

Examples

1 Read the examples.
2 Listen to the examples.
3 Practise saying each example. Use the Pause button.
Rock and roll was the first music which spoke directly to teenagers .
Elvis Presley was the rockabilly singer who shook his hips .
Rockabilly was the name of the new music that young people listened to .
The Walkman , which was the first portable stereo, meant that teenagers could listen to music anywhere.
The Beatles , who brought pop music into a new era, are famous for their haircuts.

Now go to 05 WRITING Relative clauses.