Getting Started

As well as featuring in the Reading and Use of English parts of your exam, cleft sentences are a very useful tool for emphasis in your Speaking and, in particular, your Writing where you can’t use stress and intonation to focus on a particular part of a sentence.

Cleft sentences allow for a single message to be divided (cleft) into two parts, and for you, as the speaker, or writer, to introduce or build up to what you want to emphasise.

There are a number of ways in which you can form a cleft sentence which will all be covered in this lesson but let’s start things off by introducing some of these in context. Below are some examples where cleft sentences are formed by two separate parts. Match the cards on the left with those on the right. Below the exercise, we have provided some useful dictionary links to any language from the exercise which you may not know.