Basics. Reduced Relative Clauses: Participles and Infinitives
Reduced Relative Clauses: Participles and Infinitives
Reduced relative clauses allow you to make your writing more concise by shortening adjective clauses. For example, instead of writing "The book that was written by Jane," you can use a passive participle phrase: "The book written by Jane." Similarly, active clauses use present participles ("The man who is standing there" becomes "The man standing there"), and phrases with ordinals or superlatives often reduce to infinitives ("The first person who arrived" becomes "The first person to arrive").
This advanced challenge tests your ability to correctly form and identify these shortened structures. You will tackle active and passive reductions, handle tricky stative and intransitive verbs (like consisting and belonging), and apply infinitive reductions after specific phrases (such as the only artifact to survive). The scenarios are just as challenging as the grammar, featuring cursed museum artifacts, alien starships, scathing restaurant reviews, and frantic IT server meltdowns.
You'll work through 10 questions in a mix of single-choice, multi-choice, drop-down, and drag-and-drop formats.
Try the quiz to check your knowledge!
Clause
- I missed the bus. — ✅ independent clause (stands alone)
- Because I overslept. — ❌ fragment (dependent clause, can't stand alone)
- Because I overslept, I missed the bus. — ✅ dependent + independent = complete sentence
- I missed the bus, and I was late. — ✅ two independent clauses joined by and
A clause is a unit built around a verb with a subject. Independent = can stand alone. Dependent = needs an independent clause to complete it.
Test: does the group of words have a subject + verb AND can it be a sentence on its own? Yes → independent clause. Has a subject + verb but feels incomplete → dependent clause.
Complex sentence
- ✅ Because I overslept, I missed the bus. — dependent clause (reason) + independent
- ✅ The man who called is my uncle. — relative clause inside the sentence
- ✅ If it rains, we'll stay inside. — conditional dependent + independent
- ❌ Because I overslept. — fragment (dependent clause alone)
A complex sentence pairs an independent clause with one or more dependent clauses linked by subordinating conjunctions (because, although, if, when) or relative pronouns (who, which, that).
Pattern: independent clause = the main point. Dependent clause = the background, reason, or condition. Move the dependent clause around for emphasis.
Infinitive
- ✅ I want to go. — to-infinitive after want
- ✅ She can swim. — bare infinitive after modal
- ✅ Let me help. — bare infinitive after let
- ❌ I enjoy to read. — wrong (enjoy takes gerund, not infinitive)
The infinitive has two forms: to-infinitive (to go) after verbs like want, decide, plan, hope; bare infinitive (go) after modals and causatives (let, make, help).
Rule: after want, need, decide, plan, hope, expect, agree, refuse → to-infinitive. After can, will, must, let, make → bare infinitive. After enjoy, avoid, finish → gerund, NOT infinitive.
Participle
- ✅ a broken window — past participle as adjective
- ✅ the running water — present participle as adjective
- ✅ I have eaten. — past participle in perfect tense
- ✅ She is sleeping. — present participle in progressive tense
- ❌ I have went. — wrong (past tense, not past participle: use gone)
A participle is a verb form that also works as an adjective. Present (-ing): running, sleeping. Past (-ed or irregular): broken, written, gone. Used in progressive tenses, perfect tenses, passive voice, and as modifiers.
Trap: don't confuse past tense (went) with past participle (gone). After have/has/had → always past participle.
Phrase
- the red car — noun phrase (functions as one noun unit)
- on the table — prepositional phrase
- has been running — verb phrase
- very quickly — adverb phrase
A phrase is a group of words that functions as a single unit WITHOUT a subject + verb pair. Types: noun phrase, verb phrase, prepositional phrase, adjective phrase, adverb phrase.
Key distinction: a phrase lacks a subject-verb pair. If it has subject + verb → it's a clause, not a phrase. Phrases are the building blocks clauses are made of.
Relative clause
- ✅ The man who called is my uncle. — restrictive (essential: which man?)
- ✅ My uncle, who lives in Paris, called. — non-restrictive (extra info, commas)
- ❌ My uncle that lives in Paris — wrong (that can't introduce non-restrictive)
- ✅ The book that I read = The book I read — restrictive (pronoun optional)
Relative clauses modify nouns using who/whom/whose/which/that or where/when/why. Restrictive = essential, no commas, that OK. Non-restrictive = extra, needs commas, uses which/who (never that).
Rule: if you can remove the clause and still know which noun is meant → non-restrictive (commas). If removing it makes the noun ambiguous → restrictive (no commas).
Verb
- walk → walk / walks / walked / walked / walking (5 forms, regular)
- go → go / goes / went / gone / going (5 forms, irregular)
- be → am/is/are/was/were/be/being/been (8 forms)
- can → can / could (modal: only 2 forms, no -s, no -ing)
A verb is the one word class every English sentence requires. Carries tense (when), aspect (duration), mood (attitude), and voice (active/passive). Regular verbs add -ed; ~200 irregular verbs have unpredictable past forms.
Key insight: fix your verbs and most grammar problems disappear. Wrong tense, wrong agreement, wrong form — verb errors account for the majority of grammatical mistakes.
Passive voice
- ✅ The meal was cooked by the chef. — passive (action matters)
- ✅ Mistakes were made. — passive, agent hidden (evasive)
- ✅ Active: The chef cooked the meal. — stronger, clearer
- ❌ The report was being been written. — malformed passive
The passive = be + past participle. Object becomes subject. Use it when the doer is unknown, irrelevant, or obvious. Avoid when it hides responsibility or weakens prose.
Formula: find the active object → make it the subject → use be (matching tense) + past participle → optionally add by + agent.
B2 | Upper Intermediate
- ✅ If I had studied harder, I would have passed. — third conditional
- ✅ The report is being reviewed by the committee. — passive progressive
- ✅ Having finished the exam, she left. — participle clause
- ✅ He denied having taken the money. — complex verb pattern
These are B2 patterns — the CEFR upper-intermediate level. At B2 you handle mixed conditionals, all passive forms, participle clauses, and can argue a point clearly. This is the level most universities and employers require.
Marker: if you can write a structured essay and debate an abstract topic, you're B2.
Hard
- Had she not intervened, the situation would have escalated. — inverted conditional
- All distractors are grammatically plausible in other contexts
- Multiple rules interact (e.g., tense + aspect + modality)
- Context determines the answer — no single "rule" is enough
Hard marks upper-intermediate to advanced challenges: B2+, interacting rules, edge cases, plausible distractors, and contexts where pattern-matching fails.
Use "Hard" when Easy/Medium feel trivial and you want to test whether you actually understand a rule versus just recognising surface patterns.