Quizziz on Reduced Relative Clauses

This is a quizziz game that involves transforming the relative clauses into reduced relative clauses (also known as participle clauses).  The sentences are recycled from a previous Garbage Man activity that I made.

Reduced Relative Clauses Naruto PowerPoint Game

(TESOL Materials--Reduced Relative Clauses)

Google: drive, slides, pub

[Notes: This is a Naruto PowerPoint Game.  As with all the PowerPoint games, I've included the links to the Google Slides version, but the game functions best if you download it as a PowerPoint from the drive version and open it as PowerPoint on your computer.

I made this game several months ago (I'm a bit behind in my posting of material).  I don't now remember where I got these sentences from, although I think I got them from somewhere--some book or some website.  Apologies for not remembering who to credit.

The answers are not on the PowerPoint, so when using this game in class, the teacher will have to act to confirm the right answers.]

Here is a quizziz on reduced relative clauses: Reduced Relative Clauses by Jihen Haouas.

I don't believe I know the original creator of this quizziz, but I got this link from a colleague one day when I was covering her class. I found that this quizziz worked well as a practice activity for reduced relative clauses.

Dinosaurs eating meat are called carnivores: Grammar Questions I Couldn't Answer

(Grammar Questions I Couldn't Answer)

Recently I was looking at the test for Impact 4 Unit 6.  The test instructions were: “Write the sentences again with a reduced relative clause. Tick the sentence if it does not need to be changed.”  

One sentence was: “Dinosaurs that ate meat are called carnivores.”

According to the answer key for the test, this sentence could not be rewritten as a reduced relative clause, and the correct answer was to just leave the sentence as it was.

However, according to the information contained in the student's workbook, (which is where the Impact textbooks hide their grammar explanations), it says (p.62), "If a relative pronoun is followed directly by a verb, it cannot be left out.  Sometimes we can use the verb in the -ing form or past participle instead: The scientists who study / studying ..."

This grammar point was fresh in my mind because I had just recently been teaching the same grammar point from Reflect Listening & Speaking 5 which also taught that if the relative pronoun is being used as the subject, it could be reduced by omitting the relative pronoun and changing the verb to the -ing form.  Here are some examples from the Reflect Listening & Speaking 5 book:

"The number of people who used public baths increased." becomes "The number of people using public baths increased."

"Almost half the people who saw the online advertisement clicked it" becomes "Almost half the people seeing the online advertisement clicked it."

So, by those rules, it should be possible to reduce "Dinosaurs that ate meat are called carnivores" to "Dinosaurs eating meat are called carnivores".  Except... "Dinosaurs eating meat are called carnivores" just doesn't sound right.  I can't put my finger on it, but there's something about that sentence that just doesn't sound right.

I discussed this sentence with a colleague.  She agreed with me that "Dinosaurs eating meat are called carnivores" didn't sound natural, but we couldn't figure out why.  She suggested that maybe it was because "Dinosaurs that ate meat are called carnivores" was in the past tense, so that is why we couldn't reduce it to the -ing verb.  I pointed to the two examples from the Reflect book (that I've quoted above) to illustrate that past tense verbs can also be reduced to -ing form: "The number of people who used public baths increased." and "Almost half the people who saw the online advertisement clicked it."  

(Actually my colleague wasn't entirely sure that sentences like  "Almost half the people seeing the online advertisement clicked it" sounded entirely natural to her, even though I pointed out to her that the Reflect book gave this as a correct sentence.  So we had some slight disagreement on our native speaker intuition.)

In the end, we never did figure it out.

I posted the question on our group chat at work to see if anyone else had any ideas.  Some people had various suggestions, but we never did reach a consensus.  I'll duplicate that chat below.  (All names are replaced by "X___")

I posted:

Okay, is everybody ready to put their heads together for a grammar question?  X___ and I were looking at this sentence from the Pre-Advanced B unit 6 quiz.  The instructions are "Write the sentences again with a reduced relative clause. Tick the sentence if it does not need to be changed."  Number 12 is "Dinosaurs that ate meat are called carnivores".  According to the answer key, this sentence cannot be re-rewritten as a reduced relative clause.

But... according to the information in the students' workbook (p.62), it says, "If a relative pronoun is followed directly by a verb, it cannot be left out.  Sometimes we can use the verb in the -ing form or past participle instead: The scientists who study / studying ..."

So, can the sentence be re-written as "Dinosaurs eating meat are called carnivores."  X___ and I both agreed that it didn't sound right.  But why?  What rule is being broken?

Is it because it's in the past tense?  Maybe.  But, looking in or other textbooks, in the Reflect series--Reflect 5 Listening and Speaking, p. 62--they give several examples of reduced relative clauses in the past tense  (e.g. "The number of people who used public baths increased"... "the number of people using public baths increased")

So is  "Dinosaurs eating meat are called carnivores" actually wrong?

X___ posted:

Is it about defining and non defining? (Haven’t delved deep into thinking about this, but just based on these examples)

I replied:

I'd been thinking about defining non-defining, but I can't seem to find a consistent pattern.  "Dinosaurs that eat meat" is, I think, defining.  But if we change it to a non-defining example, like "Simon, who eats meat, teaches English", then we would get "Simon eating meat teaches English"--which to me at least still seems a bit off.

X___ posted:

You mentioned past tense, and for me that is a part of reason it feels wrong. In the other example referring to the past, you have 'increased' to place it in the past. However, in the dinos sentence it really sounds like dinos are still around eating meat. 

I replied:

I wonder... I'm looking at other examples now from the textbook.  Reflect 5 Listening and Speaking, p. 62 also has "Almost half the people who saw the online advertisement clicked it", which they say can be reduced to "Almost half the people seeing the online advertisement clicked it".  But in this case as well, we still have the word "clicked" to indicate that it's in the past.  So is that they key?  We need another past tense verb somewhere in the sentence to make it sound right?

What about if we put it into the present tense and say "animals eating meat are called carnivores".  Does that fix the problem, or does it still sound a little off?  I want to say that it still sounds a bit off to me.

...Also, what if we changed "are called" to "were called"--i.e. "Dinosaurs eating meat were called Carnivores".  Does that fix it?

X___ replied:

On the last sentence, I would say no, as we call them carnivores now. 

 

Animals eating meat are called carnivores sits better with me, but it isn't how I would ever say it myself....

X___ posted:

Yeah I think it felt weird because we know dinosaurs are extinct (or are they?) But still the animals eating meat feels a bit off too because I start to think , well when they are not eating what are they called. So maybe it's the defining aspect? 

...and there you have it.  In the end, no clear consensus was ever reached.

I pulled down a couple grammar reference books from my shelf (The Grammar Book: An ESL/EFL Teacher's Course by Marianne Celce-Murcia and Diane Larsen-Freeman and Practical English Usage by Michael Swan) and did a quick search through those books for the rules on reducing relative clauses.  I didn't find anything.  (Possibly it's in those books, and I just missed it.  I don't know.)  So I'm going to give up for now.  If anyone knows the rule, please let me know in the comments.

Here are a couple Kahoots on Participle Clauses (Participle Clauses replacing Relative Clauses): Participle clauses and Participle Clauses

Garbage Man: Reduced Relative Clauses

(TESOL Worksheets--Reduced Relative Clauses)

Google: docs, pub

[For more information about Garbage Man, see HERE.  Many of these sentences comes from  Reflect Listening & Speaking 5.]

Take a look at the text that describes the benefits of using soap.

The number of people who used public baths increased.

He was looking for the document that was sitting on the printer.

Photos that are shared digitally cost nothing.

The man who is cleaning the dishes in the ad looks very unhappy.

Social media stars who are followed by a lot of people are often paid to post about a product.

All magazines now rely on money that is earned from advertising.

Almost half the people who saw the online advertisement clicked on it.

The advertisements that are aimed at children are very colorful.

The sofa that was made by my grandfather is very old-fashioned.

answers:

Take a look at the text that describes the benefits of using soap. Take a look at the text describing the benefits of using soap.

The number of people who used public baths increased. The number of people using public baths increased.

He was looking for the document that was sitting on the printer. He was looking for a document sitting on the printer.

Photos that are shared digitally cost nothing. Photos shared digitally cost nothing.

The man who is cleaning the dishes in the ad looks very unhappy. The man cleaning the dishes in the ad looks very unhappy.

Social media stars who are followed by a lot of people are often paid to post about a product. Social media stars followed by a lot of people are often paid to post about a product.

All magazines now rely on money that is earned from advertising. All magazines now rely on money earned from advertising.

Almost half the people who saw the online advertisement clicked on it. Almost half the people seeing the online advertisement clicked on it.

The advertisements that are aimed at children are very colorful. The advertisements aimed at children are very colorful.

The sofa that was made by my grandfather is very old-fashioned. The sofa made by my grandfather is very old-fashioned.

Reduced Relative Clauses / Participle Clauses (Participle Clauses replacing Relative Clauses)

(TESOL Ideas and Worksheets Subdivisions)

[Note: I've seen this same grammar point refer to in various ESL books as "Participle Clauses", "Reduced Relative Clauses" and "Reduced Adjective Clauses"]

* Relative Clauses: Grammar ESL Listening (specifically slides 87, 88, 89)

* Garbage Man: Reduced Relative Clauses

* LINK: 2 Kahoot games on Participle Clauses replacing Relative Clauses

* Dinosaurs eating meat are called carnivores: Grammar Questions I Couldn't Answer

* I used The Knight Who Was Afraid of the Dark to introduce Reduced Relative Clauses.  We read through the story together, and then I highlight some sentences like "long ago in a time known as the Dark Ages" and "his faithful electric eel wound round his arm." and "flinging her arms around Sir Fred" (this last one not a reduced relative clause, but a good example of an active participle clause.)

* LINK: Quizziz for reduced relative clauses 

* Reduced Relative Clauses Naruto PowerPoint Game

* Quizziz on Reduced Relative Clauses

See also Omitting the Relative Pronoun:

* Omitting the Relative Pronoun Worksheet

* Relative Clauses: Grammar ESL Listening (from slide 46 to slide 56)

* Kahoot for Omitting the Relative Pronoun