Tense system + Embedded Qs — When a Language Dies, Who Decides?
Grammar: Embedded Questions
Free ESL grammar exercise on tense system + embedded qs themed around when a language dies, who decides?. Printable worksheet from EnglishPlans.com.
What's on this worksheet
A Level 5 (advanced) ESL grammar exercise on education, practising embedded questions. The worksheet has a short reading excerpt, a grammar reference and graded practice items.
From the reading
Of the roughly seven thousand languages spoken on Earth today, linguists estimate that around half will have vanished by 2100. The Endangered Languages Project has so far catalogued over three thousand languages at risk — each entry a kind of last act of witnessing.
Grammar: Embedded Questions
- Embedded question
- I wonder what the linguist was recording. — statement word-order after the main clause
- Mixed tenses: why it
- She has always spoken Yawuru, but her children are growing up in English. — tense choice signals permanence vs change
Sample items
- I wonder why so many minority languages ______ faster in the digital age.
- Could you explain to me how Cornish ______ declared extinct in 1777?
- By the time the linguist arrived, the elder ______ for six hours.
Subscribe to access the full exercise
View Plans