Decoding complex academic sentences

Break long academic sentences down to their core: find the main clause, unpack nominalisations and reduced clauses, read inversions correctly, and use this to judge paraphrases and True/False/Not Given statements.

Level C1 25 min4 exercisesLesson 6 of 12 in Reading C1

Trains: IELTS Reading – True/False/Not Given, IELTS Reading – Multiple choice, TOEFL iBT Reading – Read an Academic Passage

What you'll learn

Find the subject and main verb of a long sentence quickly
Unpack nominalisations into plain statements of who did what
Recognise reduced relative clauses, participle clauses, clefts and inversions
Use sentence structure to judge paraphrases and True/False/Not Given statements precisely

Lesson content

7 steps · 4 exercises · 25 min total

1. Warm-up2 questions
2. LearnThe skill and the strategy
3. ModelSee how it's done
4. PracticeWhich sentence means the same? + 2 more
5. Exam tips3 tips
6. Key vocabulary10 words
7. SummaryReview and finish

Start lesson