However, there is no reminder or description of independent and dependent clauses, like in Azar's Noun Clause chapter.

They become more complex as it goes along, including noun clauses in embedded questions, which is a useful thing to know.

As far as actual real world context goes, we know that noun clauses are used often in academic writing with reporting verbs.

We looked at newspapers and found the types of noun clauses that are used in authentic English writing.

"Ms. Haley emphasized that a large part of the state still faced problems." - This is a noun clause as an object of a reporting verb

"Rejecting the pact might mean that the rules of Pacific trade would become Beijing-centric, and it's highly unlikely that China would as vigorously protect workers..." - This is a noun clause being used as an adjective complement.

"Prosecutors contend that the ruling too narrowly defined what constitutes insider trading and could impair the government's ability to bring charges..." - Noun clause being used as a reporting verb containing "that" and also another noun clause being used as a object of what the prosecutors defined, and starts with "what."

"It is unclear how the Great Chicago Fire started." - Noun clause starting with "how" which is a "it + be + adj + noun clause" construction.

"I don't think [that] I could explain the amount of excitement in our family when my father could be there..." - "That" is often omitted and is an important rule for students to learn.

It's difficult to find examples with "if" or "whether", which means that they don't show up as often in newspaper discourse, so this could potentially mean that these forms are not as common as the other forms, and can give teachers an idea of what to focus on.

The students can practice the small exercises to make sure they understand the individual grammar points within the larger idea of noun clauses before they move to the next grammar point.

One example of exercises that is not in context is exercise 15 below, which makes the student reconstruct the sentences. It might be good for form, but isn't a good activity for use.

However, in Exercise 22, there are some discourse level sentences, but not as large of a discourse as in Focus on Grammar 5, which has story and paragraph level examples.

The examples are simple and clear; however there aren't as many as in Focus on Grammar.