Inversion & Clefts — The Fastest Game on Grass
Grammar: Advanced passive constructions, cleft sentences, inversion
Free ESL grammar exercise on inversion & clefts themed around the fastest game on grass. Printable worksheet from classplan.ai.
What's on this worksheet
A Level 5 (advanced) ESL grammar exercise on sport, practising advanced passive constructions, cleft sentences, inversion. The worksheet has a short reading excerpt, a grammar reference and graded practice items.
From the reading
Hurling is said to be the fastest field sport played on grass. Had the GAA professionalised decades ago, many believe the local loyalty that defines the sport would have been lost.
Grammar
- Negative adverbial inversion
- Auxiliary comes before the subject after words like rarely, never, not only. Example: Rarely does a sport combine two scoring systems. Used for formal emphasis in writing and speech.
- Conditional inversion
- Had/Were/Should replace if and invert with the subject. Example: Had the GAA professionalised, loyalty would have been lost. Common in formal, written register.
Sample items
- Gaelic football ______ a mix of rugby and soccer. (passive report)
- ______ does a match finish without a dramatic late score.
- ______ the GAA accepted sponsorship money, the sport would look very different today.
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