Nominal Clauses
Whole clauses that behave like nouns — sitting in subject, object, and complement positions to let you express abstract, complex ideas with precision.
When a clause becomes a noun
A nominal (or noun) clause does the job of a single noun: it can be the subject, the object, or the complement of a sentence. Mastering them lets you package a complete idea and slot it neatly into a larger one — the backbone of academic and abstract English.
Watch one clause fill different noun roles: Subject: What she decided shocked everyone. Object: Nobody knew what she had decided. Complement: The real question is what she will do next.
Where you'll meet them: essays, reports, formal speech, and CPE Use of English. Nominal clauses are how you turn events and opinions into things you can talk about.
The main nominal clause types
Five patterns. The first two are everyday; the subjunctive that-clause (type 5) is the classic C2 marker.
That-clauses & extraposition
Use it to: name a fact or idea. A fronted that-clause subject sounds heavy, so English usually extraposes it with dummy it: "It's clear that…". As an object, that is often dropped.
Nominal relative (wh-) clauses
Use it to: mean "the thing(s) that / the person who". Unlike a normal relative clause, it has no separate antecedent — the wh- word contains it. Use these (not that) after a preposition: "proud of what you achieved".
Whether / if-clauses (embedded yes/no)
Use it to: embed a yes/no question. Use whether (not if) as a subject, after a preposition, before a to-infinitive ("unsure whether to go"), and directly before "or not".
Embedded wh-questions (indirect questions)
Use it to: report or soften a question. The embedded clause keeps statement word order: no subject–auxiliary inversion and no added do/does/did. This is the single most common error to police.
The subjunctive (mandative) that-clause
Use it to: express demands, suggestions, and necessity formally. After demand, insist, suggest, recommend, propose, request and adjectives like essential, vital, crucial, use the base form. British English often prefers should + base ("insist that he should resign").
Common C2 pitfalls
The errors here are about word order and the choice between near-synonyms.
Practice & score yourself
Ten questions in three formats. You get instant scoring and a full explanation for every answer — especially when you get one wrong.
Part A — Choose the correct clause
Teaching techniques for this point
Approaches that make abstract clause grammar concrete and productive in a C1–C2 classroom.
Slot substitution
Draw three labeled slots — SUBJECT, VERB, COMPLEMENT — and have students drop different nominal clauses into the subject and complement slots of one frame ("___ is ___"). Seeing clauses occupy noun positions makes the core concept click immediately.
Direct-to-indirect question relay
One student fires a direct question ("Where do you live?"); the next must embed it ("She asked where I live."). Fast rounds drill away the inversion and 'do' errors that dominate this area.
Opinion stems
Give sentence stems — "What surprises me is…", "Whether… remains to be seen", "The fact that… is worrying". Students complete them about a current topic. The stems force authentic production of each clause type.
Formal notice rewriting
Provide casual requests and have students rewrite them as mandative subjunctives for a formal memo ("Please be on time" → "It is essential that staff be punctual"). This anchors the subjunctive to a real register need.
Whether-or-if sorting
Students sort gapped sentences into "only whether" vs "either" piles (after prepositions, before to-infinitives, as subjects). Sorting by environment builds the rule inductively rather than by memorized list.
Extraposition makeover
Show heavy front-loaded subjects ("That he lied to everyone repeatedly is shocking") and have students lighten them with dummy 'it'. Comparing both versions teaches why English prefers extraposition.
The one rule to remember
A nominal clause is just a noun in disguise — so it can be a subject, object, or complement. When you embed a question inside one, strip out the inversion and the 'do': statement order always wins.