English B1 – Intermediate

🎙️ Click to View Video Transcript

Below is the transcript of your Grammar Boost video. Watch your avatar explain how relative pronouns change depending on how they fit into a sentence:

“Welcome to your comprehensive Grammar Boost! Today, we are mastering relative clauses. You will see that pronouns like who or that can act as the subject or the object of a description. Pay close attention to when we can completely remove the pronoun from a sentence to speak even faster, and when we must keep it to remain grammatically correct!”

💡 Listening Comprehension Check: Did you notice that in casual conversation, native speakers drop the word “that” very often? Listen closely to find out exactly why that happens!

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Grammar Boost: Relative Clauses Using Who, Which, That, and Where to Define Things

The Complete Structural Guide for Fluent Descriptions

Your Skill Targets for Today

Grammar Baseline: Choose the correct relative pronouns to define people, things, and places.
The Omission Rule: Discover exactly when you can completely remove who, which, or that.
Active Reading & Speaking: Analyze real business text scenarios and read them with authentic native reduction patterns.

1. The Defining Blueprints: Choosing Your Tool

Think of relative pronouns as directional signs for your listener. They tell the listener exactly what category of information is coming next:

Pronoun	What it Defines	Workplace Example
Who	People (colleagues, clients, users)	“She is the manager who approved the budget.”
Which	Objects / Things (devices, software, reports)	“This is the application which crashed yesterday.”
That	People OR Things (Highly versatile/common)	“Where is the document that arrived this morning?”
Where	Places / Locations (offices, labs, platforms)	“Welcome to the room where we record our videos.”

2. The Grammar Architecture Matrix: Omission Rules

To use relative clauses like a proficient speaker, you must understand how these pronouns function mechanically inside a phrase. This determines if we can skip them to speak faster:

🔑 The Golden Rule of Omission: If the relative pronoun is followed immediately by a VERB, it acts as the Subject and CANNOT be dropped. If it is followed immediately by a NOUN or PRONOUN, it acts as the Object and CAN be completely omitted!

Scenario	Grammar Form	Full Sentence Example	Can you drop the pronoun?
Subject (Thing)	which / that + VERB	“I bought an app which crashed my phone.”	❌ NO. (Needs the pronoun to trigger the action)
Subject (Person)	who / that + VERB	“He is the guy who fixed the system.”	❌ NO. (“who” is the actor of “fixed”)
Object (Thing)	which / that + NOUN/SUBJ	“This is the app which I downloaded.”	✅ YES! “This is the app I downloaded.”
Object (Person)	who / that + NOUN/SUBJ	“She is the expert who you called.”	✅ YES! “She is the expert you called.”
Place	where + NOUN/SUBJ	“That is the office where we work.”	❌ NO. (Cannot omit “where” when establishing location context)

⚠️ Stylistic Rule: Are they always interchangeable?

While native speakers frequently use “that” as a quick substitute for both “who” and “which” in fast, casual conversations, they follow a strict line in professional environments:

In Formal Corporate Writing: Always use “who” exclusively for individuals and “which” for inanimate systems or equipment. Writing “The employee that discovered the error…” is considered less professional than “The employee who discovered the error…”.
The Core Rule: “That” is highly versatile in speech, but “Who” and “Which” ensure corporate precision.

📌 Important Scope Note: Please keep in mind that this lesson strictly covers defining relative clauses (sentences that give essential information to identify a noun). This lesson does not cover non-defining relative clauses (extra information separated by commas), in which who, which, where, and that behave differently and are not interchangeable. To see how these rules completely change when adding extra information with commas, scroll down directly to the Grammar Boost Part 2, right after this lesson!

3. Active Reading: The Omission Challenge

Your Task: Read the technical upgrade report below. Look at the relative pronouns in bold. Decide whether they are Required (Subject) or if they can be Completely Deleted (Object) to make the text sound more conversational.

📝 Project Update: Software Upgrade

“Yesterday, we updated the server ⁽¹⁾which supports our web traffic. The new design interface, ⁽²⁾that our design group created, is extremely user-friendly. We also hired a specialist ⁽³⁾who manages viral content. The modern media server room, ⁽⁴⁾where our hardware is kept, is now fully temperature-controlled.”

🔍 Click to Verify Your Diagnostic Answers

• (1) which supports: CANNOT BE DROPPED. (Followed by the verb “supports” – it acts as the Subject).

• (2) that our design group created: CAN BE OMITTED! (Followed by the noun phrase “our design group” – it acts as the Object. You can say: “…interface our design group created…”)

• (3) who manages: CANNOT BE DROPPED. (Followed by the verb “manages” – it acts as the Subject).

• (4) where our hardware is kept: CANNOT BE DROPPED. (We cannot omit “where” when establishing a physical place context).

4. Interactive Dialogue: Casual vs. Formal Phrasing

Observe how an experienced speaker automatically drops the pronoun during fast, natural water-cooler chat, while retaining it when the grammar structures demand it:

Colleague A: “Have you seen the laptop [that] the company gave me? I can’t find it.” (Object Omission)
Colleague B: “Is it the laptop which sits on the window sill over there?” (Subject – Mandatory)

Team Lead: “Where is the new programmer [who] we onboarded last Monday?” (Object Omission)
Colleague B: “He is looking for the lab where the servers are built.” (Place – Mandatory)

🎙️ Speaking Challenge: Shadowing Natural Omission

To speak authentic B1 English, you must practice reading sentences where object pronouns are completely missing without breaking your vocal rhythm. Let’s practice.

Step 1: Click the play button below. Notice how the speaker skips any pronoun inside the brackets [ ] completely, moving seamlessly from the noun to the next pronoun.

▶️ [Click Play to Listen to the Omission Flow Audio Track]

Step 2: Read the paragraph out loud alongside the audio track. Do not pronounce the words inside the brackets!

“The customer [who] I helped this morning loves the software [which] our company built. He told me it is the best tool that exists on the market today, and he wants to visit the office where our development team works.”

Step 3: Record your delivery. Listen closely to the transition in “The customer… I helped” and “the software… our company built”. Did your voice drop the pronouns smoothly without pausing?