#309 Emphasising with Cleft Sentences
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Hello everybody and welcome back to the Level Up English podcast. The best place to come to practice the English language, learn about the British accent and culture with me, your host, Michael Lavers.

I really do hope you're having a fantastic day today. I have a great podcast episode lined up for you today. That means planned for you today. In fact, I have a few good ones coming up this month. I'm quite excited about some of the topics I have and some of the ideas I've chosen. So hopefully it will be useful for you as well. And I hope you're having a great day today.

And you may know that I occasionally cover topics of grammar, but I do like to try to make them as interesting as I can. I don't want to be one of those boring lessons that just list the grammar rules and just explain how things work. I find, from my own experience learning languages, that showing works much better than telling, right?

Right. So that's what I'm going to try to do today. I'm going to be trying to explain some grammar called cleft sentences. I'm going to try to make it personal and use some of my own examples to talk about this as well.

and hopefully it's going to be fun and useful and interesting. You know, this is a question I get quite a lot, actually, about this grammar structure. And I've always found it quite interesting

hard to explain what this really is and how we use it. So I think it's quite nice that I was able to, when preparing for this episode, I was able to research a bit more and make my own knowledge a little bit more complete, we could say. And now I'm going to try my best to give that knowledge over to you as well, if you don't already know. So hopefully this will be a useful one for you.

And I will also say that I will not go too detailed on the grammar today. I think I could go really, really in-depth if I wanted to, but I think I'm going to try to stick to just two areas of the grammar and make it somewhat...

I don't want to say simple, but somewhat shorter, we could say, because this is fairly advanced grammar. So I want to make it as simple and easy to understand, easy to digest as possible. So we'll see how I do.

I've actually just noticed while I started recording that my eyes look super red today. So if you are watching the YouTube version, I apologise for my redness. I'm having some eye issues at the moment and in fact on Friday this week, probably by the time you hear this it will have already happened, but I'm going to have a

I think surgery sounds very serious. It's a minor, minor operation where they're going to inject something into my eyelid, which is really, really scary. It's not dangerous. It's not anything unusual, but I'm quite nervous about it just because the eye is such a sensitive area.

So hopefully my eye problems will get better soon. But yeah, if you are wondering, why does Michael look so tired? That might be why. But yeah, maybe I am also tired as well. But okay, anyway, enough of that. Let's get into the topic of cleft sentences. I am going to structure this episode in this way. I'm going to first explain why we use them.

I think that would be a good place to start, you know, why you need to know this structure. Then I'm going to explain two ways to structure this yourself. I'm going to explain the form of this grammar to you.

And then I'm going to answer some questions myself trying to use this grammar. And as I often like to do, I haven't prepared sentences in advance. So, in other words, I haven't got a list that I'm going to read because, in my opinion, it's a little bit boring. I'm going to try to think of something on the spot, which means in the moment without preparation beforehand.

And I think it's quite nice because I feel like we can do it together. So we can both think on the spot and see if we can both do the same thing. So let's get to that in a few minutes. First of all, cleft sentences.

The main reason a cleft sentence is used is for emphasis. It emphasises a specific part of the sentence and it also adds a bit more variety to your writing or your speech or whatever. It's very common in speech, I should say. So if you always use the same structure, like, I like food, I go to the shop, I buy food, I eat food, food is good.

It's all kind of the same. It's present simple, short sentences. You can tell it is quite boring, right? You can get your point across, but it's very boring to listen to. So if you add these cleft sentences, this is just one way you could make your sentences more varied and more interesting to listen to as well. They're usually introduced with either the word it, I-T, it,

or a clause beginning with what. A clause, by the way, is kind of like a sentence, but it's the essential parts of a sentence. So you might have two clauses in one sentence, but a clause could just be, I am Michael, right? So in a full sentence, that is full, but in another full sentence, we could say, I am Michael and I like potatoes.

So we've got I am Michael is one clause. I like potatoes is another clause. But those two clauses come together in one sentence with the word and connecting them. So that's basically what a clause is. But anyway, let's have a look at what I'm talking about here. So again, in a simple sentence, we could say I need a good night's sleep. You may look at my eyes today and say, Michael, you need a good night's sleep. Yeah, probably do.

And if you want to use a cleft sentence, you would say, what I need is a good night's sleep. So, what I need is. There's that clause. What I need is a good night's sleep. Okay, so see the structure's a little bit different. I need sleep. What I need is sleep. So, sleep comes at the end in both cases. But rather than saying I need, we say what I need is.

So, we're adding 'what' and then we're also adding 'is' afterwards as well. Interesting. Another example with 'it'. Now, I could just say 'John borrowed my bike', right? 'John borrowed my bike'. Or, with a cleft sentence, 'It was John who borrowed my bike'. Okay, 'It was John who borrowed my bike'. So, this one

Yeah, I don't know if it's easier, but it's similar, right? Rather than John Burrowed, it was John who...

It was John who. So we've got that relative pronoun who there. If that sounds confusing, don't worry. I will try to explain it all now. So here's a little bit more explanation about it cleft sentences. So I'll give you one more example. I want to make it really clear. I could say, you stole my wallet. You stole my wallet.

In this sentence, there's not really any emphasis. You know, we could emphasise with a tone like 'You stole my wallet!' So, there's emphasis there, but in the grammar, there's no special emphasis. It's just quite a simple, plain sentence. It's a statement of a fact, right? If I am maybe quite surprised that you did it and not somebody else, then I might use a cleft sentence and say

Oh, it was you who stole my wallet, right? It was you.

Another thing that I imagined in my head, if any of you have seen the cartoon Scooby-Doo, at the end of Scooby-Doo, they would always reveal who the bad guy was. They would take the mask off and it would reveal it's, you know, the mayor of the town or their old childhood friend. I don't know, someone usually quite unexpected. And it's, I think that is the key, it's unexpected. So we want to emphasise that this person is,

is doing it and that we're surprised. It was you who did this thing, right? So you're kind of expecting it to be someone else. And when you find out it is the person you don't expect, you can use a cleft sentence for emphasis. Oh, it was you who stole my wallet. How could you do that to me? Right?

So here's the structure. We can say 'it is' or 'was', depending on the tense. Let's use our present simple for simplicity. 'It is' and then we have the emphasised part, which could be 'you', 'the dog', you know, basically the subject goes here. 'It is you', emphasised part, 'that' or 'who', 'that', and then the rest of the sentence.

I think I'll put this on the screen, but also I'll put it on the review pages on the show notes or the members site as well. So it is you who or it was the dog that. Oh, it was the dog that ate my homework. Right. Ate my homework is the rest of the sentence.

Hopefully that makes sense. I'm going to do a lot more speaking about this in a minute. But again, if you do want to think about this more carefully, maybe you're the kind of person that learns better with reading. I will put these up on the website that you can click down below and review and you can have a think about it and see if you can copy my structure and make your own sentences as well.

Okay, next we'll do what cleft sentences. This is very common in spoken English. We use this all the time and I'll try to give another example here and explain it a bit more. So we could say, here's another example, what she enjoys is hiking. Or we might even add the word really as well to really emphasise it more strongly. What she really enjoys is hiking.

So I imagine this sentence could be said after maybe someone's trying to guess what she enjoys doing. So someone might say, I think that she enjoys reading. And the other person might say, you know, what she really enjoys is hiking.

So it's kind of like emphasising that hiking is above reading in her level of enjoyment, right? What she really enjoys is hiking. If you just said, no, she enjoys hiking, it sounds like she does not like reading, she likes hiking.

When we're using this structure, what she really enjoys is hiking. It sounds like maybe what you said is true. Maybe she likes reading, but she likes hiking more than anything. It's much more emphasised. Another one you might hear a lot, especially in the UK, I hear this all the time, from people who are fed up with their work. They will say, what I need is a holiday. What I need is a holiday, rather than simply, I need a holiday.

Again, the meaning is the same, but the cleft is more emphasised. What I need right now is a holiday. And to me, this sounds like it might be a new topic that's been introduced in the conversation. If you're already speaking about a holiday, you might say, oh yeah, I need a holiday, kind of agreeing with the other person.

But if no one has mentioned a holiday before, this could be a good way to introduce the topic with more emphasis on the topic of the holiday.

You're talking about how stressful your job is and you're trying to think about how you can solve this problem at work. And one idea you have is, you know what? What I need right now is a holiday. That would solve all these problems, right? How many of you can relate to that? Okay, hopefully that makes sense. So this structure, we have what and then we add the clause.

And then we have is or was and the emphasised part. So, for example, what the clause would be, she enjoys. She enjoys is the clause here, the subject and the verb she enjoys. Is, emphasised part, hiking. Hiking is emphasised. What she enjoys is hiking. What clause is or was, emphasised part.

Okay, again, I'll put that structure for you to review in writing. Okay, I may not have kept it as short as I planned. I hope you haven't stopped listening by now. If you're still here, obviously that means you haven't. So let's say goodbye to those who did. We can continue and make it more fun, hopefully, from now on. So I'm going to talk about a lot of reflections and memorable experiences trying to use these two structures in my answers.

And of course, I encourage you to do the same. So the first question here is, what was the most exciting adventure you've ever had?

Think back over your life. What's the most exciting adventure you've ever had? It could be something going abroad and doing some crazy thing abroad in another country. It could just be going for a walk in your back garden, in your neighbourhood, and discovering some interesting... It doesn't have to be so big. But...

Obviously, my trip to Taiwan came to my mind. But what I think really stands out to me was my trip to Corsica. It's kind of sad to say this now. Over 10 years ago, I was 19 years old.

And I went to Corsica, which is a French island, quite a big island in the Mediterranean, quite kind of in between France and Italy. Beautiful temperature, beautiful climate, and quite unique and interesting landscapes as well. Landscapes that I had never seen before. Very interesting. So yeah, if you noticed that, I said... Oh, I first mentioned one thing. I thought about Taiwan, but...

What stands out to me most is, what stands out to me most is, there's that structure, my trip to Corsica. And I don't know why it came to my head. I think it was very memorable because I had never done anything like that before, not really to that level. And it felt very adventurous, I think.

It was very exciting. And I do think it inspired me to do many similar things like that in the future. So hopefully I can do more of that kind of stuff. But just to explain briefly what it was, I did the GR20. You may know that GR is a list. It's kind of a series of long distance walking trails in Europe.

GR20 is said to be one of the more challenging walks. I don't think it was too difficult, personally. I'm not just saying that to boast, but it was a regular mountain walk. It wasn't too extreme.

But yeah, basically this was a two-week expedition. So two weeks in the mountains walking from the north of the island down to the south. Very memorable. I loved waking up in the morning and watching the sunrise out of my tent over the mountains with maybe some coffee or something. That was really nice memories there. So yeah.

That was memorable for me. How about you? Feel free to speak out loud. Let me know in a comment whatever way you think would be good to practice for you. Okay. I've got a lot of questions. I've got a list here of questions. I'm going to skip some of them. So there may be some awkward pauses between each one. I think we could try...

this one. I don't have an answer yet. I'm hoping that by the time I finish reading it, I'm going to have an answer ready, but we'll see. What was the best decision you made during your travels? The best decision you made during your travels. For me, I think it was deciding to travel to Japan for my first solo trip.

that really opened my eyes to another culture. And maybe that led to me still living in Asia today. Maybe it was some domino effect that led to that being the outcome. So yeah, just to say that again, it was first going to Japan that opened up my mind. We could say something like that. So it was doing this that did something else.

Yeah, I do think so. I think I was 21. I went to Japan for one month and it was a real eye-opening experience. Eye-opening means it really changes your perspective and allows you to see things that you haven't seen before in a transformative way, a way that changes you.

So I've mentioned that many times in past episodes. It was a challenging journey for me in many ways, but I was very young as well. But I do think it was an interesting choice to go to Japan alone for a month and just see how big and how different the world is. So that was a...

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Hope you find it useful. Thank you so much. Yeah, it's interesting because I'm struggling to say the best decision because it was quite challenging and difficult at the time. But in hindsight, which means looking back from the present and from now looking back in hindsight, it was one of the best decisions.

So maybe that's quite comforting as well to hear that even if you're going through a difficult time right now, maybe one day it may become something you're grateful for, just like this did to me. So I think that's a nice realisation to have as well. Okay, let's move away from travel just for a moment and talk about language learning.

What was the most challenging moment you faced during your language learning journey? For me, I could talk about basically every single day. There's new challenges. It's very humbling. It makes you realise how little you know about stuff and about languages. It's a big task, isn't it? So I know how you feel learning English. The most challenging moment...

Again, just in the interest of time and not having too much silence, I'm going to say the first thing that comes to my head. And again, it was that first trip to Japan because that was really the first time I had ever gone to another country after spending a significant amount of time trying to learn the language. And you may have heard this story before, but

I went there and I realised my speaking was just not very good. It wasn't up to scratch, which means it wasn't good enough. So what I struggled with the most was, I think, confidence. Confidence and...

the feeling that people would judge me. So there's my sentence. Like, you know, what I struggled with the most was my confidence level. And I know, you know, 99% of you are relating to me right now. If not, well done, you're very special. But I know this is a very common thing that that lack of self-confidence that you might be feeling. And yeah, I mean, I get, even just this morning, I've got emails, I've received emails about this and,

It's a question that I'm responding to all the time because it's such a common thing. So yeah, when I first went to Japan, I tried to speak as much as I could and I realised, even though I can understand quite a lot when I'm reading or even sometimes listening, speaking is a very different skill. It's very hard to find the words in my brain. I do think it comes to some people more naturally than others, but

But I also feel that it is possible for almost anyone, 99.999% of people, to overcome this problem. It just takes some work, some effort.

And I think it's not a really exciting answer, but I really do think practice is the key. The more you practice, the more comfortable you'll feel. It's just like anything else. Like the more I practice with podcasting, the more comfortable I feel doing this. If you're watching very carefully, maybe you've noticed I haven't made any edits. There's no cuts in the video.

in the last few minutes. And that's because I've practised. I've got a lot better at speaking and I don't have to think too long about it these days. Not as much as I used to anyway. And the same thing happens in another language as well. So, I'm still working on that in my Japanese after all these years. And I think you can work on that too.

But yeah, let me know what your most challenging moment was in your language learning journey. Let's have a look down this list. I'll try to go to another one. Oh, this one I like. You know, I love topics of motivation. This one is, what is one thing that has always motivated you to keep going, no matter the obstacle? No matter how hard it is, what motivates you to keep going?

And I think it really depends on what area we're talking about here. Also, I think there's more than one reason as well. I think it's understanding. So it is understanding that giving up can feel so horrible that has kept me motivated. So I'll say that sentence once again.

It's understanding that giving up can feel so horrible that has kept me so motivated. So there's my cleft sentence for you with it. And I think that's one key thing for me. I've given up on things before and no matter how big or small, it's a horrible feeling, right? I went to a language exchange event yesterday and I kind of left feeling a little bit disappointed in my ability and how many things I've forgotten. And...

Of course, that idea comes to your head that, should I just give up? It would be so much easier to give up. But then I know if I did that, I would feel so horrible. I'd feel like a failure all of my life. So because of that, I kind of end up being more motivated than I was before because I want to prove to myself that I can do this difficult thing. And that's how you get confidence. When you prove to yourself that you can keep going and improving, you build confidence at the same time.

I just another bonus point here. I wanted to say this as well. I also think that once you understand that challenges are part of the journey, it becomes easier to stay motivated to when you're

I think mountain climbing is such a perfect analogy, a perfect image to compare with language learning because it's very similar in some ways, even though mountain climbing is so physical. But when you're climbing a mountain, it's usually not just going straight up a mountain. Usually you go up and then down and up and then down. So in that sense, it's kind of like two steps forward, one step backward, kind of like that the whole way up to the top.

So you have to understand that whenever you're doing, you're building on a skill or working on a project, there's always going to be bits where you go down. But you have to trust that with work and perseverance, you will go up again in the future. So yeah, think about that mountain and let that image motivate you, hopefully.

What else could I cover here? Okay, we can do this one. What moment in your life made you realise you were capable of more than you thought? Very deep questions today. So once again, what moment in your life made you realise you're capable of more than you thought? I can give you a small example. And I think this is a really nice example

lesson in self-limiting beliefs, right? A self-limiting belief is where we say something like, oh, I'm not a language learner. I don't have a good brain for languages.

And often what we believe and what we say is more likely to come true. You know, I think the brain is very powerful. So if we keep saying that again and again, I'm not a language learner, right? I'm not a dancer. I'm not a sports player. These things become true. So we have to be really careful what we say to ourselves like that. So for me, I always said my whole life that I'm not the kind of person who can

build muscle, right? I think for about 10 years of my life, I was always the exact same weight. You know, from 18 to 28, my weight didn't change at all. I was always the same. And I was fairly active, but I didn't really go to the gym. I didn't do that kind of stuff. And then in the past year or so, I've been... Actually, let me not get too ahead and I'll try to use a cleft sentence before I forget. So...

It was when I started going to the gym that I realised I am capable of more than I thought. It was when I started going to the gym that I had this realisation.

Okay, so yeah, I think, you know, I'm not like super strong or anything like that, but I have noticed some changes in my muscle since I've been going to the gym. And that made me realise that my whole life I'd had this idea that I'm not the kind of person who can build muscle. My body is just not made for that.

And, you know, now I'm saying it out loud, it sounds really stupid. You know, of course, everyone can build muscle, right? If we work hard enough. So that's one thing that came to my mind, but let me know what yours would be for that one. Okay, maybe we'll do one or two more. I will...

do this one, I think. I'll try to cover a couple of different topics before we finish. What is the most rewarding thing you've done in your career so far, in your work? What's the most rewarding thing you've done? So rewarding is something that gives you that really happy and just warm feeling inside that you're so glad that you did that thing. And it might be...

I think it might have to be the podcast. I was thinking of the group classes because that's very rewarding to see face-to-face the students in the group classes. And that is for sure very rewarding. But I think it is the podcast itself that I find the most rewarding. So once again, it's the podcast itself that I find the most rewarding.

And the reason is not because it's more rewarding than group classes, but I think just because the audience is bigger, of course. There are more of you who listen to this than who join the group classes. And because of that, I get so many nice emails from you, nice comments, just saying you like the podcast or thank you or something like that, or just shaming.

sharing your English learning journey. And it's really, really, really nice. That's not a very good word, is it? But really heartwarming, as a better word, that our

Many of you take the time to reach out to me or leave a podcast review, and it's really exciting to feel or to think about the podcast reaching all of you from all corners of the world. That's a very exciting feeling. So for me, it's super rewarding, and that's exactly why I don't want to stop doing this podcast anytime soon. As long as there are a handful of you listening to this, I will keep going. So thank you. If I haven't said it already, thank you for listening.

Let me know what yours would be. The most rewarding thing you've done in your job. Let me know what that is for you. I think we'll do one more now. I'll try to make it interesting. Okay, I think we'll end with this one. Again, I don't want to delay too much, but we'll end with another travel-related question. So this is, what is one lesson you've learnt from your travels that you think everyone should know?

One lesson you've learned from your travels that everyone should know. So the question starts with what, what is, so we can probably answer with a what cleft sentence. So of course, travelling, whether it's domestic travel in your country or international travel all the way across the world, it's a very, let's say, use that phrase again, eye-opening experience. And you can learn many things while travelling around.

But I think what I've learnt the most is how diverse the world is and how restricted our own view of the world can be. So what I mean by that is

The more time you spend in one place in the world, the more your view of the world gets shaped by your own culture and the people around you. And I think for me, I've just really learned that there's so many different beliefs in the world. There's so many different ways of living, just different cultures and attitudes and

personalities. It's just so diverse. It's really incredibly varied that it makes me question my own beliefs, right? When you might have a really strong belief that I think this political view is correct. If anyone disagrees, they're stupid, right? Or something similar to that. But I think the more you see other people and other cultures and other views, the more you question that. And you kind of, I can say for myself, I kind of get to the point where I am

I have a belief. It's not saying I don't believe anything anymore, but I have one belief, but I'm not holding it too tightly. So I might feel like I really believe in this problem, but I'm also open to the possibility that I might be wrong or maybe there's a better solution to this. I'm not going to be too close-minded. So I think in summary, I just mean that travelling has helped me open my mind a bit more.

So what I've learned most from traveling is to have an open mind. We can summarize it with that cleft sentence. Hopefully this has been useful and hopefully these questions have prompted you, given you some ideas on what you could say and maybe even helped you get the hang of this grammar a little bit more as well. So hopefully it has. Let me know. Be happy to hear and answer any more questions you might have.

But as always, I want to end today with one review on Apple Podcasts. I just have one today. So if you want yours read out on the next podcast, please leave a review. You don't need to listen on Apple Podcasts to leave a review. But if you could, that would mean so much to me. And this one is not from Joe Rogan. It's from John Rogan.

in South Korea. And they said, good podcast. Your voice is really good and helpful for English learners. So thank you very much. That's very kind of you to say. I think I'm going to just leave you with a quote now from Epictetus. This is a really nice one. And you might notice some cleft structure here as well. And this is, it's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.

I think that could be another great lesson learned from travel, right? It's not what happens to you, but it's how you react that matters. That's what's really important in, yeah, just in life, right? I think that's a great quote to end on. So hopefully you like that one as well. Thank you so much for listening. Really hope you enjoyed this one. I will see you next time for a super fun, hopefully super fun episode. Have a good week. Bye-bye.

You have been listening to the Level Up English podcast. If you would like to leave a question to be answered on a future episode, then please go to levelupenglish.school forward slash podcast. That's levelupenglish.school slash podcast. And I'll answer your question on a future episode. Thanks for listening.