Reason clauses

Reason clauses

In your written and spoken assignments you will often need to answer the question ‘Why?’. When you want to explain why something happens, you can use a reason clause introduced by the conjunctions because, as or since.

• As she wanted to practise her spoken English, Carrie regularly took part in the ELC’s Big Mouth Corner.
• Mark joined the English Drama Club because he wanted to improve his intonation.

Don’t use so in sentences beginning with since, as or because. Here is a common mistake:

• Since he was interested in movies, so David joined the PolyU International Film Society.

You can also use the prepositional phrases because of and on account of to express reason.

• We were unable to carry out the experiment on account of a malfunction in the computer.
• We were unable to carry out the experiment because the computer malfunctioned.