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Reduced Adjective Clauses
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About This DLA
Important Note
All the activities (3) in the DLA must be completed in their entirety before meeting with a tutor and
receiving credit. Where indicated, complete your work on this sheet. If your instructor wants evidence of
this completed DLA, return this form to him or her with the tutor’s signature included.
Learning Outcomes
Through computer and other independent work, this activity will familiarize you with reduced adjective
clauses and help you create sentences with accurate use of these reduced clauses.
Activities (approximately 1 hour)
Read the information, complete the activities that follow, and be prepared to discuss your answers
when you meet with a tutor.
Understanding Adjective Clauses
An adjective clause—also called a relative clause—is a group of words that modify or describe a noun.
Remember that adjective clauses contain a subject and a verb, begin with a relative pronoun (who,
whom, whose, that, which), and are dependent clauses, which means that they cannot stand alone
because they have no meaning without an independent (main) clause.
Reduced Adjective Clauses
We reduce sentences when you have the same subject in the main clause and the adjective clause.
Adjective clauses contain relative pronouns like who, which, or that. The reduced adjective clause
becomes an adjective phrase, which does not have a subject. An adjective phrase does not have a
subject and a verb. Instead, it has a present participle (base verb + ing) for the active voice or a past
participle for the passive voice.