Prepositions are the words found before nouns, pronouns, or other substantives to form phrases functioning as modifiers of verbs, nouns, or adjectives.
They give us more information on where, when and why things happen.
Using the wrong preposition is a common mistake made by English learners.
Choose the best preposition in each sentence:
The past perfect tense is used to express action completed in the past:
"She had eaten is an example of the tense."
The past perfect tense represents action that occurs BEFORE another past action:
"My boss had gone before I had the chance to see him."
The past perfect tense uses had + the past participle of the main verb
"She had never tried surfing before she visited Australia."
Use the simple past tense to talk about actions that have already finished. It doesn't matter when in the past they happened or how long they happened for.
Take a look and compare the present tense verbs with simple past tense verbs in these two sentences.
Present:
I take my young brother to the park and buy him an ice-cream. We kick around a football, laugh and talk for hours.
Use not enough and too when something is inadequate.
When the amount of something is more than needed/wanted we can use too + adjective. It is only used in negative situations.
It's too cold in this room, close the door.
I'm too tired to play football tonight.
She said she was too old to go to nightclubs.
Take a look at these ten sentences, there is one mistake in each one. Can you find all of them? Write your correct sentences in the comments area.
Adverbs modify other words apart from nouns and pronouns. For example:
He was driving.
He was driving dangerously. - here the adverb modifies driving and gives us more information about the action.
These are the five types of adverbs:
Adverbs of Manner:
She sings beautifully.
We ran quickly.
In English, the verb we use in a sentence depends on its subject. How the verb changes is called a conjugation.
There are six object 'persons'.
I am British.
I speak English.
You are British.
You speak English.
He is British.
He speaks English.
The following sentence contains a singular noun.
They keep their car in the garage.
The following sentence contains a plural noun.
They keep their cars in the garage.
Plural nouns indicate there is more than one of something.
When a noun the ends in s, x, ch, or sh, add es to the end:
There is a an old church in the village.
There are two old churches in villages.
A pronoun takes the place of an unknown noun.
David returned the shirt David bought last week.
Instead of using David twice in a sentence, we can change the second use to the pronoun he:
David returned the shirt he bought last week.
Personal pronouns refer to specific persons, places, or things.
They love football.
I am Spanish.
She called me lazy.
In English we can use more than one verb to describe what's happening.
This sentence shows three things Donna (the subject of the sentence) did yesterday.
Yesterday Donna watched a movie, cleaned her apartment and was making lunch.
When two or more verbs have the same subject the verbs must be parallel. Parallel verbs mean the verbs used in a sentence should all be the same tense.
Read the sentence about Donna again. Is it grammatically correct? If not, why not?
