Move the preposition to the front, count with of whom / of which, and write with the polish of a formal report.
You already build simple relative clauses: the man who called, the book that I read. At B2 the goal is control in a formal, academic register — the English of essays, reports and serious articles. Three moves make the difference: putting the preposition before whom / which, using a quantifier + of whom / of which, and handling non-defining clauses with confidence.
These structures let you pack precise information into a single, elegant sentence, without the loose feel of everyday speech. Compare the two versions below and notice how the second one sounds measured and professional.
Fix the basic pronouns first, because every advanced pattern grows from them. Whom is the object form of who, and it is the form you must use after a preposition.
| Pronoun | Refers to | Example |
|---|---|---|
| who | a person (subject) | the girl who wrote the story |
| whom | a person (object / after a preposition) | the girl to whom we replied |
| which | a thing (and after a preposition) | the box from which it came |
| whose | possession (people or things) | the team whose captain left |
| where / when | a place / a time | the year when she moved away |
In everyday English the preposition often sits at the end: the way which we did it in → usually the way we did it in. In formal writing you lift the preposition to the front, in front of whom (people) or which (things). The clause instantly sounds more academic.
| Informal (end) | Formal (front) | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| the teacher I spoke to | the teacher to whom I spoke | bir öğretmenle konuştum |
| the box we took it from | the box from which we took it | bir kutudan aldık |
| the tool he fixed it with | the tool with which he fixed it | bir aletle tamir etti |
| the way she solved it in | the way in which she solved it | bir biçimde çözdü |
When you want to say something about part of a group, join the two ideas with a quantifier + of whom (people) or of which (things). This always appears in a non-defining clause, so it needs a comma before it.
| Two sentences | One clause |
|---|---|
| I have three cousins. All of them play football. | I have three cousins, all of whom play football. |
| She drew fifty pictures. Some of them were framed. | She drew fifty pictures, some of which were framed. |
| They tried two plans. Neither of them worked. | They tried two plans, neither of which worked. |
| We picked two goalkeepers. Both of them stayed. | We picked two goalkeepers, both of whom stayed. |
Whose replaces a possessive (his, her, its, their). Many learners think it is only for people, but it works for things and organisations too, which is very useful in formal writing.
A defining clause tells you which one — it is essential, so it takes no commas. A non-defining clause adds extra, optional information between commas. The choice changes both punctuation and the pronoun you may use.
| Defining (no commas) | Non-defining (commas) | |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose | identifies which one (essential) | adds extra detail (optional) |
| Example | The story that she wrote is on my desk. | The story, which she wrote last night, is excellent. |
| "that"? | allowed (that / which / who) | never "that" → use which / whom |
You can often drop the relative pronoun and the verb "be", leaving just a participle. This makes writing lighter, and it is common in formal descriptions.
| Full clause | Reduced clause |
|---|---|
| the man who is standing there | the man standing there |
| the bridge which was built in 1890 | the bridge built in 1890 |
| the people who were invited | the people invited |
These are the errors B2 students still make with relative clauses. Check your own writing against every row.
| Wrong ✗ | Right ✓ | Why? |
|---|---|---|
| The boy to who I spoke complained. | The boy to whom I spoke complained. | after a preposition, use whom, not who. |
| Berlin, that I love, is a great city. | Berlin, which I love, is a great city. | no "that" in a non-defining clause. |
| a diary, some which of was secret | a diary, some of which was secret | the order is quantifier + of + which. |
| the box which the marbles came from it | the box from which the marbles came | do not keep the extra "it" / "from". |
| the writer who's book won a prize | the writer whose book won a prize | whose = possessive; who's = who is. |
Two friends discuss the school science fair. Read it twice and watch the advanced structures: preposition + whom / which, quantifier + of whom, whose, and non-defining clauses set off by commas.
Choose the correct answer. — 10 questions, each one is marked instantly. Questions get harder as you go.
Learn the words, then describe an influential figure or place using relative clauses.
Write 8 sentences about a person, place or institution that has shaped you — a teacher, a family member, a school, a book, a city. 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): institution · legacy · distinguished · prominent · patron · oversee · recognition · devote
Few children at Maple Hill School realise how close their library came to never opening. The library, whose shelves now welcome every class in the school, was almost abandoned in the 1970s. The person to whom it owes its survival is Miss Deniz Aktaş, a dedicated teacher whose determination proved decisive.
To understand the problem, one must picture the school of that time, in which spending on books was among the first things to be cut whenever money grew tight. The old reading room, whose roof had begun to leak, held boxes of donated books that had waited years to be sorted. The head teachers to whom the matter was mentioned tended to shrug; a library, in their view, was a luxury for which the school simply had no money. Boxes of stories, atlases and picture books, most of which had been given years earlier, sat forgotten in a damp storeroom where no child could ever reach them. Some of the finest books, the value of which no one had even bothered to guess, were wrapped in old newspaper and stacked on broken shelves. It was against this discouraging background, in a decade during which many similar ideas were quietly dropped, that Miss Aktaş, then a young teacher, decided the school deserved a proper library worthy of the pupils who filled its classrooms.
Miss Aktaş had learned from several experienced teachers, many of whom doubted that a real school library could ever be built. Although the odds were against her, she gathered a team of thirty helpers, some of whom later became teachers themselves. The plan on which they eventually agreed was ambitious; moreover, it was expensive. Other teachers wanted a small shelf of books in each classroom, whereas Miss Aktaş insisted on a single bright room in which the whole world of books could be kept together.
The team, whose meetings often ran late into the evening, was far from united. There were helpers for whom caution was everything, and others who shared Miss Aktaş's love of bold ideas. One older teacher, whose doubts she never quite forgave, argued that a big library would cost too much to keep clean and warm, and warned that the children for whom it was intended would soon lose interest. Miss Aktaş listened to every objection, yet the argument to which she always returned was wonderfully simple: a school that hides its books cannot teach children to love reading. She went from classroom to classroom, giving talks to pupils some of whom had never once borrowed a book. She wrote letters to parents, to the mayor, and to anyone whose signature might help. Slowly the mood began to change, and the local paper, which had earlier ignored the idea, started to write about the teacher whose stubbornness refused to let it die.
The money, without which nothing would have happened, came from an unexpected source. A small local charity, the founder of which had once been Miss Aktaş's own teacher, offered a generous donation. The conditions to which the money was attached were strict; nevertheless, Miss Aktaş accepted them, since she had no alternative.
The talks through which the donation was finally agreed were exhausting. The charity's trustees, to whom every cost had to be explained, asked for a careful plan for the years ahead. 'We admire your dream,' one trustee told her across a long table, 'but a library that no one can afford to keep is not a gift; it is a burden.' Miss Aktaş, for whom failure was by now unthinkable, spent months preparing lists, budgets and repair plans, many of which she wrote out herself late at night. The rule on which the trustees insisted most firmly was that the library must stay free to every child for ever — a condition to which Miss Aktaş agreed without a moment's hesitation, since it matched her own deepest belief about who a library is really for. Only when every last form had been signed, and every promise on which the money depended had been made, did she allow herself to believe that the library about which she had dreamed for so long might truly open.
The carpenter chosen for the project, whose earlier work had won local prizes, built shelves admired to this day. However, the shelves were not finished on time; therefore, the opening was delayed by a year. Each of the sections, all of which follow a clear theme, guides readers from picture books to thick adventures. Miss Aktaş personally oversaw every stage and devoted a decade to the endeavour.
Building the library became a small adventure in itself. The corner on which the new room rose had once been a dusty yard, beneath which the builders soon found the old foundations of a garden wall. The work, which everyone had expected to take a single summer, stopped while these surprises were carefully recorded — a delay that, oddly, gave the school its own little piece of history to display. The carpenter, with whom Miss Aktaş talked almost every day, redesigned a whole corner so that the old wall could be shown where it stood, protected behind glass through which children now peer in wonder. There were months during which the funds ran alarmingly low, and moments at which even Miss Aktaş quietly wondered whether the doubters had been right. Yet when the doors at last swung open, the children for whom she had fought poured inside, and the same paper that had once dismissed her printed her photograph on its front page.
Miss Aktaş, who never sought recognition, retired quietly in 1995. 'A library,' she once said, 'is not the walls within which books sit; it is the children for whom those books still speak.' Her photograph now hangs by the door, yet few pupils know her name — a quiet legacy of which she would surely have approved.
Today the Maple Hill library is a place to which children come from every class, every single day. Its shelves, among which pupils sketch, read and whisper about stories, welcome more visitors in a single week than the old reading room had seen in a whole year. The older pupils who lead the youngest ones to their first book still repeat the story of the teacher without whom none of it would exist, and the words with which she ended her years at the school — about walls, books and the children for whom those books speak — are painted on a small sign beside her photograph. Children for whom the name Aktaş means nothing pause there all the same, drawn by a face whose quiet determination somehow still reaches across the years, and they leave knowing a little more about the teacher to whom the library owes everything.
Choose the correct answer.
Are these sentences true or false, according to the text?
Complete each sentence with ONE word from the text. Mind the relative structure (whom / which / on / of).
Write your answer in your own words. These questions are not marked automatically.
1. How did Miss Aktaş's idea differ from that of the other teachers?
2. Why did Miss Aktaş accept the charity's strict conditions?
3. What do you think Miss Aktaş meant by saying a library is "the children for whom those books still speak"?
Find these connectors in the text — each one appears at least once: however, therefore, nevertheless, although, whereas, moreover, since, yet. (You will use these same connectors in the Writing section.) Note them down, then check.
Combine short facts into elegant relative-clause sentences, then drill the grammar with 10 quick questions.
Below are short, separate facts about a made-up swimming coach, Miss Selin Kaya. Your job is to combine them into fluent sentences using this unit's relative clauses — preposition + whom/which, quantifier + of whom/which, whose, and non-defining clauses.
Sentence starters (you can begin with these):
Değerlendirme öğretmenin tarafından yapılacak. (Your teacher will review your task.)
10 quick questions on advanced relative clauses. Each one is marked instantly. Questions get harder as you go.
Write and submit your paragraph; your teacher will review it.
At B1 you linked ideas with and, but, so, because. At B2 you sound noticeably more advanced when you use formal, precise connectors. Combine these with the relative clauses of this unit and your writing will read like a polished profile.
| Connector | Use it to... | Example |
|---|---|---|
| moreover | add a stronger, extra point | She was a fine teacher. Moreover, she was a patron of our chess club. |
| therefore | show a logical result | No one would help; therefore, she built the treehouse herself. |
| whereas | contrast two ideas directly | Others sought fame, whereas she sought no recognition. |
| nevertheless | say "in spite of that" | The task was huge. Nevertheless, she persevered. |
| although | concede a point inside one sentence | Although she avoided the spotlight, her legacy is famous. |
| however | contrast between two sentences | I admire many people. However, one stands out. |
See the difference — the same facts, written two ways:
| Basic linking ✗ | Confident B2 writing ✓ |
|---|---|
| My grandmother was a teacher. She taught many students. They still respect her. She never wanted fame. I admire her. | My grandmother, whose patience I still remember, taught hundreds of students, many of whom still respect her. Although she never sought fame, her influence was enormous; therefore, she is the person to whom I owe the most. |
A "portrait of influence" paragraph has three parts. The skeleton stays the same — you change the content, not the structure:
| Part | What to write | Example |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Opening | Introduce the person or institution with a non-defining clause | The person to whom I owe the most is my old physics teacher, whose passion was contagious. |
| 2. Body | Explain the influence. Use preposition + whom/which, quantifier + of whom/which and whose, linked with B2 connectors. | He gave us projects, most of which seemed impossible; nevertheless, we finished them. |
| 3. Closing | A final comment about the lasting effect or legacy | It is a legacy for which I remain deeply grateful. |
Write about a person, place or institution that has shaped you, your studies or your community. Describe the influence, not just the facts. Use the relative clauses of this unit.
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. 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...