Level 1 — Foundation · Spoken Clauses & Connected Speech
Drill 11: Describing People and Things with Relative Clauses
Add one relative clause — who, which, or that — to a spoken sentence live, without pausing to plan it first.
Learning Objectives
By the end of this drill, you should be able to:
- Add a relative clause to a spoken sentence without a planning pause
- Choose who/which/that correctly under time pressure
- Keep the sentence going instead of stopping to restart it
Introduction
Lesson 11 taught you to find a sentence's backbone and attach every clause to the noun it belongs to. Saying a relative clause out loud is harder than writing one — there's no time to plan where the clause goes, you just have to keep talking and drop it in as the sentence unfolds.
Shadow the Model
The driver who called this morning said the shipment would be late.
Listen once without speaking. Notice that "who called this morning" doesn't interrupt the flow — a fluent speaker says it as one continuous breath group, not as a separate, bolted-on afterthought.
Your Turn
Your Turn
You'll see a person or thing, plus one fact about them. When the timer starts, say one full sentence describing them using who, which, or that — e.g. "a colleague / sent the report late" → "My colleague who sent the report late apologized this morning." Pick your own colleague, place, or object and fact, and speak immediately.
Describe someone or something now — one sentence, no planning
Record Yourself
Say three different sentences, each with a relative clause, then record and compare your pacing.
Model Answer
Show a model answer
There's no single correct sentence — what matters is that you produced one continuous sentence with a relative clause attached to the right noun, spoken immediately, without a pause before or during the clause. Example: "The email that arrived this morning explained the delay."
Vocabulary in Context
colleaguenounneutral
a person you work with (সহকর্মী)
Often with a colleague from, work with colleagues, senior colleague
“A colleague from the finance team will join the call.”
apologizeverbneutral
to say sorry for something (ক্ষমা চাওয়া)
Often with apologize for, sincerely apologize, apologize to
“We apologize for the delay in releasing your container.”
Self-Check
Self-Check
- Did you speak immediately, with no pause to plan the sentence?
- Did the relative clause attach to the right noun, spoken as one continuous sentence?
- Did you avoid repeating the noun inside the clause?
Next: Speaking 12 — Conditionals & Hypothetical Thinking: answering a "what would happen if…?" question out loud, instantly, without translating the hypothetical from Bangla first.