Learn English with English, baby!

Join for FREE!

Social_nav_masthead_logged_in

My Battle With Grammar

View all entries from My Battle With Grammar >

Pavlionka

Pavlionka

Belarus

October 17, 2008

Here we are - after long struggle with my natural laziness - finally my new lesson is posted! Go to lesson page and rate it, rate it, rate it!!! Laughing

                          Giving emphasis: Cleft sentences

                                            (Introduction)

The usual word order for a sentence in English is 

SUBJECT + VERB + OBJECT + [ADVERBIAL PHRASE]

Ex.        I       enjoy  learning English [here at Ebaby!]

      (subject)  (verb)       (object)      (adverbial phrase)

 

However, if we want to emphasise that I particularly enjoy learning English (more that anything else), we can use a cleft sentence. It begins with a what clause and the verb be:

Ex. What I enjoy most is learning English.

Ex. What I like most about you is your sense of humour.

Similarly, if we want to emphasise a noun, we use a cleft structure with it +  be + noun + that/who:

Ex. Jenny spends all her money on shoes.

     It is Jenny who spends all her money on shoes.

or: It is shoes that Jenny spends all her money on. 

We can also use an it- cleft sentence to focus on other parts of the sentence:

Ex. It was in London that he met his first wife. (place)

Ex. It was only when he phoned that I realised what had happened. (time)

Ex. It is learning English that I find most enjoyable nowadays. (gerund action)

 

It was just brief introduction to  cleft sentences. This topic, actually, is advanced but not that hard as you can see Laughing And now, please, write here in comments what you liked the most about this lesson (using the cleft sentence, of course)Wink

 

More entries: I've passed my Masters!!! (3), My new lesson (2), Foreign Words and Phrases (10), Are you a true maniac? (5), I'm super great! (3), Frustration... (4), Suggestions, Conditionals (2), Quantifiers, Articles

View all entries from My Battle With Grammar >

12:32 AM Nov 09 2008

Pavlionka

Pavlionka
Belarus

As I've already written - we use it-cleft for emphasisng somthing that is not action.

Look here:

I'm learning English.

I want to emphasise English 

It is English that I'm learning , not Spanish.

And I wanted to emphasise action (learning English), it would be:

What I'm learning is English.

And also I can use it-cleft with other part of the sentence:

I'm learning English because I want to live in Britain.

It is because I want to live in Britain (not because of any other reasons) that I'm learning English.

Get it?Laughing

And popi, very funny indeed why it is always some problem with my comments on my page ...Cry

04:22 PM Nov 02 2008

pop272001

pop272001
Indonesia

Hi pav, i already gave 2 comments for your lesson! But where did my com go? I said that i 'm familiar with using 'what' but i couldn't know yet how to use second example using 'it'