How to Use Subordinating Conjunctions for Better English

Hey, E, you having a problem with complex sentences?

You don't know what they're for?

You don't know what they are?

Hi.

James from engVid.

This lesson is about subordinate conjunctions in complex sentences.

I know that's a big mouthful, but if you're an intermediate student to an advanced student,

you need to know this.

When we first learn English, or when you first learn English - me too, I guess, yeah - you

learn the simplest sentence ever, which is S-V-O, subject, verb, object.

I like ice cream.

He plays soccer.

It's a simple idea, one idea, and it's the basic...

The basis of the language, yeah?

But once you get bigger, you don't say "I like ice cream", "I play soccer".

You say more than that.

"I like ice cream because it tastes good", or "When I get home, I'll have some ice cream".

What?

Morse words?

Well, yes.

Because we have complex brains - complex sentence - we have complex sentences, which means it's

a sentence that has an idea and something that helps give you more information about

that idea.

So, we go from the subject, verb, object - very simple things, right?

Yeah?

And then we say "And here's some more information about that thing we're talking about", which

does two things.

It gives us information that we want to have, and it makes the sentences much more interesting.

As I said, "I like soccer", and "I eat ice cream", and "I live here", and "I go to school".

I want to shoot myself, okay?

But "I enjoy eating soccer while I'm watching something on the television", and I...

Also, "Whoa, what happened?"

Same thing.

Now it's interesting.

So, we want to think of a complex sentence which is a basic idea, you know, basic sentence,

subject, verb, object, and we add information to it.

Okay?

And today's lesson we're going to go through...

Well, this is E's idea.

He's got a concept.

A concept is an abstract or a general idea, and E's playing a game here to help you remember

all of the ways that we use subordinating conjunctions to make complex sentences.

These are special words that tell us which part of the sentence is adding information

to the basic sentence.

Are you ready?

Let's go to the board.

All right, so we're going to use one of my favourite people in the whole world as an

example on this one, Bitsy.

Hi, Bitsy.

Okay, so concept.

Concept, as I said, is a general idea, so we're going to say, "Well, what is the concept?

What is the general idea?"

Well, some of you have played this game, and my friend I work with went, "You know, most

of these people don't speak English, so they don't play this game", and walked out of the

room.

It was embarrassing.

He has a point, so hopefully you've heard of it.

It's a girl...

Girl.

It's a game called Scrabble.

We have this game, you know, in English-speaking countries where we take these pieces of wood

with letters on them, and we mix them around and we make up words.

When we make up the word, it's a real word, and you can get points and win the game.

In this case, we're using the Scrabble pieces to help you with this concept, and the concept

is subordinating conjunctions.

And let's get started.

"Con" in Latin means "with" or "together".

Okay?

"Sept" is our idea we're putting together, and the first, and we have C4 because there

are four things we want to talk about.

I'll just label them so you know which are the four, so we've got 1, 2, 3, and 4.

The four Cs will start with a reason or a cause.

Next, we use these words to show what we call the dependent clause.

Remember I told you "SVO" is the basic part of the sentence?

We would say that's the independent clause.

"I like ice cream" is a single idea, and we work from that and we can add.

"I like ice cream while I watch TV", that would be the dependent clause, and that's

when we're using the subordinating conjunctions.

So, in this case, when we have a reason why we're doing something, why something happened,

why it happened, we're going to use words like "because" or "since", and we're going

to use Bitsy as the person or the little girl we're going to use to help us understand it,

because Bitsy loves dessert, and carrots, meh.

Okay?

So, Bitsy got her dessert, and we're going to use this subordinating conjunction, because-and

this is the reason, this is why it happened-she ate her carrots.

So, because Bitsy ate her carrots, she got dessert, and Bitsy's very happy.

On the next one, we have a condition, and you might say, "What's a condition?"

A condition is a situation where something has to happen so something else can happen.

And now you can understand why we have this basic sentence, and the condition, or what

we call the dependent clause, remember?

It is needed to give you the information, like, what is it I have to do?

In this case, Daddy said, "Bitsy, you can't have your dessert unless you eat all of your

carrots."

So, Bitsy can't eat dessert unless, and this is the condition or the subordinating conjunction

that we have to use to give you the information.

What is it she must do?

She must eat all of her carrots.

Okay?

Now we're going to look at contrast.

"This" or these words, you notice I've listed them for you, these are some of the first

words in English language to teach people, because you have to know the word "despite".

I don't know "despite", okay, even though.

How about "though"?

I don't know the word "though".

But I'm not teaching that lesson today, but I will tell you contrast is to tell you if

you look at something and something happens or is able to happen, example, if it's raining,

you usually cannot play soccer because it's raining.

But if you say we play soccer although it was raining, we're saying this situation should

have stopped us, but we didn't.

The contrast is normally we wouldn't do it.

That's as simple as I'm going to get today, but we'll do a lesson on it, okay?

All right, so, contrast here we're using "although", "even though", and "while".

Uh-oh.

What's this for?

And what's this there for?

I think we're about to learn something interesting.

Hmm.

Okay, because Bitsy's not doing anything here, and Bitsy's probably going why am I not doing

anything?

Because we need to use one of these words, and here's something special.

If you have a subordinating conjunction at the beginning of a sentence, you have to use

a comma to let people know that this is not the important information, this is the additional

or extra information, and the special information is at the end of the sentence.

So, whenever you see a comma and one of these coordinate - sorry - subordinating conjunctions

at the front, you'll know that this is the extra information and the real information

is here.

And the one we're going to use right now is this, "although".

You could also use "even though" here, that would work as well, of the three that are

here.

"Comparison".

Well, "comparison" is when you look at two things and see what is the same and what is

different.

Okay?

We also use our subordinating conjunctions to use "comparison".

So, "He is taller than her", "She is as fast as he is" are examples for comparison.

But let's look at Bitsy again.

How is Bitsy being compared?

Well, Bitsy ate more dessert than anyone else.

So, everybody in the room was eating dessert and they all had four chocolate bars, and

Bitsy ate five.

She's getting bigger now, she's strong, so she can eat more.

Okay, so that is our comparison one.

And this is our C4.

So, when we look at C4 of concept, it is for cause, condition, contrast, and comparison.

And when you see these words, you will know that you are looking at subordinating conjunctions

that are adding information to the basic subject, verb, object sentence.

You like that?

We got more in this concept from E. All right, so E has nothing, zero, so there's no E in

this concept.

E, that's...

Why are you...

Oh, your name, E, you had to be...

Yeah, got it.

But he did put P. So, what is P?

Hmm, let's see P. What is P?

If we go over here, P is for purpose.

While this tells us why something happened, this is the reason why you do it to start.

Right? What is your reason for doing something?

And Bitsy ate all of her carrots when Mom and Dad said, "Why did you eat all of our

carrots?" She said, "I want the extra dessert.

I want dessert."

That was her purpose.

Now, here we can put...

Oh, this dot, dot, dot, oh, she's been eating dessert.

What did you think?

She was going to have breakfast?

Anyway.

So, Bitsy ate all of her carrots, all her carrots so that she could have her dessert.

Okay?

Pretty cool.

She's very consistent, this Bitsy.

One thing on her mind, just dessert.

I like that about her.

She's like me.

Okay, so the final thing that we would do, looking at our concept idea, is time.

Now, many students already know about time in complex sentences.

Yeah?

We've got "when", "while", you learn this in, you know, intermediate grammar.

What we tried to do here, or what I tried to do was to show you the other ways that

the subordinating conjunctions, and they're more than just time conjunctions, can be used

to help you give more information on a sentence to make it much more interesting to the other

person.

Yeah?

And help them understand.

So, the final one we're going to do is time.

Now, if you've, as I said, done this in basic grammar, you'll know these are "after", "before",

"when", "while", "since", "until", and you'll also have "as long as" and "as soon as".

And as soon as I ran out of room, I stopped writing it.

But at least I told you these are two more you may see that are subordinating conjunctions.

Now, what does it say for Bitsy?

"Bitsy had to eat all of her carrots."

Hmm, she could have dessert.

I have an asterisk or a special mark saying something, and I'm wondering what that is.

I remember now.

Although these are all time subordinating conjunctions, you cannot use all of them here.

You may have noticed that in a lot of the sentences I used very specific examples.

Yeah?

It's because I didn't want the lesson getting too long - it's probably long enough - but

I wanted to show you what example would fit in best, and also to give you the idea or

show you how the information was added to make it a richer sentence or a better sentence.

In this one, I wanted to make sure for sure you didn't think "I can put all of these words

in this place!"

You cannot.

Because this is a time subordinating conjunction, it must happen at a certain time.

Now, if we look at this, "Bitsy had to eat all of her carrots", something, have dessert,

all is in the past tense, so we're going to look at, well, the "something" has to happen

first.

"First" would be "before", right?

Something can happen before something else.

You have something before, then you have something else happen.

So, "Bitsy had to eat all of her carrots before she could have her dessert."

So, where are my carrots?

Carrots first, dessert after, and that's the order.

Okay?

Anyway, I hope you like this lesson on subordinating conjunctions.

It's a good lesson because I introduced the idea of comma to you, and understanding that

commas give you information.

Not just the words are written, they're telling you what is first.

Is it the important part or the added information?

Yes?

But then we started to notice that each time we use a subordinating conjunction, you're

giving information telling you which part of the sentence is what, you know, important

and what it's actually doing.

Is it telling you about cause, condition, contrast, or comparison, or is it telling

you about the purpose and the time that it's occurring?

Okay?

So, use this information to help you when you're reading.

It's a little harder when someone's speaking, but you start finding that once you can hear

these things, you will understand in a bigger and deeper way what people are trying to say

to you.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed this lesson.

I enjoyed teaching it to you.

Please go to www.eng as in English, vid as in video.com.

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Anyway, James from engVid, out.