Split a sentence in two to shine a spotlight on the one idea that matters most.
A normal sentence spreads its emphasis evenly: "My brother broke the window." But sometimes you want to highlight one part and push it into the listener's focus. To do this, English speakers split ("cleave") one idea into two clauses. The result is a cleft sentence, and it is one of the clearest signs of a confident B2 speaker.
This unit covers the three main patterns. The it-cleft (It was my brother who broke the window) fronts a person, thing, time or reason. The wh-cleft or pseudo-cleft (What broke the window was a stone) builds up to the focus with a what-clause. The reversed wh-cleft (A stone is what broke the window) flips it round. The single skill behind them all is knowing where to place the focus and which link word to use — that, who or what.
The it-cleft is the most common pattern. You start with empty It, add a form of be, then the word you want to stress (the focus), and finish with a relative-style clause introduced by that (for things) or who (for people).
| Focus type | Pattern | Example |
|---|---|---|
| a person | It + be + person + who/that | It was Tom who paid the bill. |
| a thing | It + be + thing + that | It is the noise that bothers me. |
| a time / place | It + be + time/place + that | It was in 2020 that we first met. |
The wh-cleft opens with a What-clause that behaves like a noun, then a form of be, then the focus at the very end. Because the stressed idea comes last, this pattern is perfect for building up to a point.
| What-clause (topic) | be | Focus (stressed) |
|---|---|---|
| What I really want | is | a quiet week off. |
| What surprised us | was | the sudden silence. |
| What the team needs | is | a clear plan. |
Here the order of the wh-cleft is flipped: the focus comes first, then be, then the what-clause. It sounds natural in speech when you name the important thing straight away and then explain it.
The What-clause is not the only way to build a pseudo-cleft. You can open with All, The reason, The place or The person to focus on exactly what you mean. Each one still ends with be + focus.
| Opener | Meaning | Example |
|---|---|---|
| All (that) | "the only thing" | All I want is a little peace. |
| The reason (why) | focuses on a cause | The reason we left is that it was dull. |
| The place / person | focuses on where / who | The place I feel safest is home. |
The it-cleft can front more than just a person or object. Use it to stress when, why or which one — and to correct a wrong idea with the frame not X but Y.
These are the errors B2 students still make with cleft sentences. Check your own writing against every row.
| Wrong ✗ | Right ✓ | Why? |
|---|---|---|
| It was Sam what won the prize. | It was Sam who won the prize. | use who/that in an it-cleft, never "what". |
| What I need are new shoes. | What I need is new shoes. | the verb agrees with the singular What-clause. |
| What she did was she left early. | What she did was leave early. | do not repeat the subject; use (to) + verb. |
| All what I want is quiet. | All I want is quiet. | after "All" use "that" (often omitted), not "what". |
| The reason is because it rained. | The reason is that it rained. | "The reason is that ...", not "is because". |
Two friends plan a surprise party. Read it twice and watch how each cleft moves the spotlight: a person after It was ... who, an idea after What ... is, a reversed cleft, and the emphatic It wasn't until ... that.
Choose the correct answer. — 10 questions, each one is marked instantly. Questions get harder as you go.
Learn the words, then use cleft sentences to put the spotlight on your real point.
Choose a topic you feel strongly about (e.g. your favourite place, the best thing about your job or town, a person who influenced you). Write 8 sentences that emphasise your opinions using cleft sentences. Use at least 8 of the words above.
Sentence starters (you can begin with these):
Değerlendirme öğretmenin tarafından yapılacak. (Your teacher will review your task.)
Read the text, then answer the questions.
Good readers prepare before they start. Before you read, think about these three questions (you do not need to write the answers):
Words to spot (from the Speaking section): striking · crucial · significant · matter · key · priority · highlight · remarkable
Every year, magazines promise a new secret to a long life: a special diet, an expensive supplement, or the perfect exercise plan. Yet what scientists have actually discovered is far simpler and far harder to sell. It is not one magic food that keeps people healthy into their nineties, but the whole shape of their everyday lives.
For most of the last century, the search for longevity was treated as a race for a single discovery. Laboratories tested vitamins, clinics sold detox programmes, and advertisers pinned their hopes on whatever ingredient sounded most exotic that season. The promise was always the same: buy this one product, follow this one rule, and the years will look after themselves. What that promise ignores, however, is the quiet, unglamorous evidence that has been building for decades. When demographers began mapping exactly where people live longest, they did not find clusters of expensive gyms or fashionable health-food shops. Instead they found ordinary towns and villages, often far from modern medicine, where reaching a great age was almost unremarkable.
A handful of these regions became famous once researchers compared them side by side. Communities on the Japanese island of Okinawa, in the mountains of Sardinia, and on the Greek island of Ikaria kept appearing at the top of the lists, along with a farming valley in Costa Rica and a close-knit religious community in California. What linked them was not a shared climate or a common bloodline; some were coastal, others were high in the hills, and their diets ranged from fish to beans to garden vegetables. It was their habits, rather than any single food, that the researchers kept returning to. In every case, long life looked less like a personal achievement and more like a by-product of how people had always lived.
Researchers who study the world's longest-living communities have noticed a striking pattern. In these places, people rarely "exercise" in the way we imagine. What keeps them moving is ordinary life — walking to a neighbour's house, working in a garden, climbing the hills where they live. It is this constant, gentle activity, not the gym, that protects their hearts.
Consider how differently a typical day unfolds in these places. Nobody drives three streets to a shop that they could reach on foot, and few people spend the whole evening sitting completely still. Bread is kneaded by hand, water is sometimes still carried, and steep paths are climbed several times a day without a second thought. This kind of movement is spread thinly across the hours rather than squeezed into a single, punishing session. What makes it so powerful is precisely that it never feels like training; it is simply the texture of daily life. Because it is gentle and constant, people keep it up for decades, long after a strict gym routine would have been quietly abandoned.
Diet matters too, of course. However, what these communities share is not a strict menu but a relaxed attitude to food: they stop eating before they feel full, and their meals are slow and social. It is the company around the table, as much as the food on it, that seems to matter.
The way these communities eat tells a similar story. Meals are rarely rushed and almost never taken alone. A lunch might stretch across two hours, filled with conversation, small glasses of wine and second helpings that are offered but never forced. Older people in Okinawa even have a phrase that reminds them to eat only until they are about eighty per cent full, a habit that keeps portions modest without any sense of being on a diet. Much of the food is plainly grown nearby — beans, greens, bread and whatever the garden provides — yet no single item is treated as a miracle. What protects these eaters is the rhythm of the meal itself: slow, shared and unhurried. The table is a place to belong, not merely a place to refuel.
Perhaps the most surprising finding concerns relationships. What predicts a long life most reliably is not wealth or even good genes; it is strong social ties. People who feel needed, who see friends daily and belong to a community, live measurably longer than those who do not.
Scientists now take this social side extremely seriously. Long-term studies that have followed thousands of people for decades keep reaching the same striking conclusion: loneliness can be almost as damaging to health as smoking, while warm, regular contact with others appears to protect both the heart and the mind. In the longest-living communities, nobody has to arrange friendship as though it were an appointment. Grandparents live near their grandchildren, neighbours drop in without warning, and a person who is unwell is quickly noticed and visited. One researcher described meeting a woman well past a hundred who still received callers every afternoon; when he asked for her secret, she simply pointed to the chairs around her kitchen table. It was the steady company of others, she implied, that had carried her so far.
None of these findings makes for an exciting headline, and that may be exactly why they are so easily overlooked. There is no product to package, no membership to sell and no dramatic before-and-after photograph to print. What the evidence keeps pointing to is a set of habits so ordinary that they are almost invisible: a short walk, a shared meal, an unplanned afternoon visit. It is the very plainness of these things, repeated day after day, that makes them easy to dismiss and hard to market.
None of this can be bought in a bottle. On balance, the real secret is almost disappointingly plain: move naturally, eat gently, and stay close to other people. It is these small daily habits, repeated for decades, that quietly add years to a life.
That, perhaps, is the hardest lesson of all. We are used to solving problems by buying something or by making one grand, dramatic effort, yet a long and healthy life seems to reward the opposite approach: small, patient choices that we barely notice ourselves making. It is not the promise of a miracle that these communities offer, but the quiet reassurance that the things which truly help us live well are already within reach — on foot, at the table, and among the people we love.
Choose the correct answer.
Are these sentences true or false, according to the text?
Complete each cleft sentence with ONE word from the text. Mind the grammar of the pattern (What / that / is / it).
Write your answer in your own words. These questions are not marked automatically.
1. According to the text, what keeps the world's longest-living people so active?
2. Why does the writer say the real secret "cannot be bought in a bottle"?
3. Do you agree that relationships matter more than wealth for a long life? Why or why not?
Find these cleft sentences in the text — each pattern appears at least once: an it-cleft (It is/was ... that), a negative it-cleft (It is not ... but ...), a wh-cleft (What ... is/was), and a reversed idea. Note them down, then check.
Aimee talks to Paul about the weeks he spent volunteering at a rainforest research station.
You will hear a conversation: Aimee asks Paul about volunteering at a rainforest research station in Australia — the invasive trees they controlled and the orphaned fruit bats they cared for. You will listen TWICE. First listen: answer questions 1-5. Second listen: answer questions 6-10. (Kaydı İKİ kez dinleyeceksin: ilk dinlemede 1-5, ikinci dinlemede 6-10.)
Write and submit an emphatic paragraph that uses clefts to spotlight your key ideas; your teacher will review it.
At B1 you stated ideas flatly: "I like this city." At B2, a strong paragraph uses the cleft family from this unit to put the spotlight on the idea that matters. The trick is choosing the right pattern and the right link word — that, who or what.
| Pattern | Use it to... | Example |
|---|---|---|
| it-cleft | stress a person or thing | It was the people that won me over. |
| wh-cleft | build up to your point | What I value most is honesty. |
| reversed wh-cleft | name the focus first | Honesty is what I value most. |
| It was not until ... | stress when something happened | It was not until later that I understood. |
| The reason ... is that | stress a cause | The reason I stayed is that I felt safe. |
| All ... is | stress "the only thing" | All I wanted was a fresh start. |
See the difference — the same facts, written two ways:
| Flat writing ✗ | Confident B2 writing ✓ |
|---|---|
| My town is quiet. The people are friendly. I like the market. I moved here for the calm. I feel at home now. | What I love about my town is the calm. It is the market that brings everyone together, and it is the people who make it special. The reason I moved here is that I wanted peace, and peace is what I finally found. |
An emphatic opinion paragraph has three parts. The skeleton stays the same — you change the content, not the structure:
| Part | What to write | Example |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Opening | Name your topic and state your main claim with a cleft. | What makes a good friend is not luck but effort. |
| 2. Body | Support the claim, using clefts to highlight the key points (It is ... that, The reason ... is that). | It is trust that holds a friendship together. The reason it lasts is that both people give something. |
| 3. Closing | Restate your view with a final, punchy cleft. | On balance, it is the small, daily kindnesses that matter most. |
Write an emphatic opinion paragraph about a topic you feel strongly about — for example: what makes a good friend, the best thing about your town, the person who influenced you most, or what really matters for happiness. Use cleft sentences to put the spotlight on your key ideas.
Değerlendirme öğretmenin tarafından yapılacak. (Your teacher will evaluate your writing.)
Mixed questions from the whole unit, then check what you can do.
14 questions: grammar + vocabulary + reading + listening. Each question is marked instantly.
Tick what you can do now. Honest answers help your teacher.
İşaretlemediğin madde varsa ilgili bölüme dönüp tekrar çalış — soldaki menüden her bölüme geri dönebilirsin.
Oturum kontrol ediliyor...