Relative Pronouns Educational Resources

Relative pronouns are important connectors in a sentence. A relative pronoun is part of a relative clause, which refers back to a noun that occurs previously in the sentence. Like reflexive pronouns, relative pronouns are considered anaphors, which means they are bound to and derive meaning from the word that occurs before them. Ample practice with Education.com exercises and worksheets will boost your students’ understanding of relative pronouns.

Relative pronouns play an important connecting role in sentences. They connect a subordinate clause to the main clause. They can also merge two sentences.

Because the list is relatively short, students may find relative pronouns easy to approach:

• Who
• Whoever
• Whom
• Whomever
• That
• Which
• When
• Where
• Whose
• What

Note: Students may find whom and whomever awkward. These rarely occur in American English, and are much more often represented by who and whoever.

When connecting two clauses, the relative pronoun modifies a noun. In this case, ‘who’ is a relative pronoun:

• Students who do their homework get higher grades.

‘Who’ referred to the students, indicating the ones who did homework were the ones to receive better overall scores.

Relative pronouns can also merge two short, but related sentences. In this example, ‘that’ is a relative pronoun:

The bus was yellow.
+
The bus went to the school.
=
The bus that was yellow went to the school.

In the example above, the two sentences both involved the noun ‘bus,’ but they were a little choppy when viewed together. By using a relative pronoun, the sentence structure is more fluid, while the meaning remains clear.

Students who practice multiple choice, fill in the blank exercises, like the one above, will soon understand how to properly employ relative pronouns. For more advanced study, quiz your students using the ‘Who’ versus ‘Whom’ worksheet, and they’ll soon be relative pronoun professionals.