By the end of this exercise, you can shorten a long relative clause into a participle clause — so that “a photo which was posted in 2019” becomes “a photo posted in 2019”.
Free Year 9 English practice: how news and fake news are made, with participle clause exercises, self-marking gap-fills and a news report writing task.
Read the text and choose the word that fits each gap. The bold phrases show you participle clauses at work.
Every story you read online begins in the same way: somebody notices something. A reporter working for a local paper hears that a school will close, makes a few phone calls and writes 300 words. Within an hour the story can appear on a national 1.
Before that happens, an editor checks it. Facts taken from social media are especially 2, because a photo posted in 2019 can easily appear again in 2026 under a completely different 3. Good newsrooms therefore have one simple rule: two independent 4 for everything.
Headlines written in a hurry cause most of the trouble. A headline has to be short, so it leaves words out — and readers who only look at the headline often 5 the story completely. One study found that six out of ten people share articles they have never even 6.
None of this is new. Newspapers printed in the nineteenth century 7 too. What is new is the speed: a false story travelling through social media reaches millions of people before anybody can 8 it.
The -ing form says the noun does the action (the reporter writing the story). The -ed form says the action is done to the noun (the story written by the reporter).
1. The reporter the story about the school won a prize.
2. A story by two sources is usually reliable.
3. The students in the library are writing the school paper.
4. Photos on social media are often several years old.
5. The journalist from Delhi described the floods.
6. A headline in a hurry can change the whole meaning.
7. Anybody for a second source needs patience.
8. The documentary last year is about fake news.
Each sentence has been shortened. Choose the form that keeps the meaning. Items 5 and 6 come back from earlier units — reported speech (Great Barrier Reef) and the second conditional (Canada).
1. The man who is standing at the door → The man at the door is our editor.
2. The article which was published yesterday → The article yesterday was wrong.
3. People who use only one source → People only one source often get the facts wrong.
4. The photo that was taken in 2019 → The photo in 2019 appeared again last week.
5. “We checked every fact,” the editor said. → The editor said that they every fact.
6. If people the whole article, they would share fewer lies.
7. where the picture came from, the editor did not print it.
8. by millions of people, the video was still a fake.
Something happened at your school last week — a sports day, a fire drill, a concert, a strike. Write a news report of 6–8 sentences for the school website, for students and parents who were not there. Use at least three participle clauses.
• Students waiting in the yard did not know what was happening.
• The concert, organised by Year 10, started at seven.
• Money collected on the day went to a local charity.
• Teachers standing at the gate counted everybody twice.
Review your answers below, then send them to your teacher.
Click the button below to send your answers directly to your teacher.