Compare these two sentences:
1) 'Could you close the door?'
2) 'Close the door.'
You probably think that the first sentence is more polite than the second – and you are right.
1) is a request. We are asking someone to do something.
2) is an instruction. We are telling some what to do.
'The car is my favourite invention.'
Many English learners get confused over when to use the. Here we give you some of the basics.
We use the when we want to talk about something there is only one of: 'the moon; the sun; the north pole.'
The is used with specific things. Compare these two sentences:
By is a versatile preposition which can be used in a number of situations. Today we take a look at some of its basic uses:
We use by to show how something is done:
We send a postcard or a letter by post.
We contact someone by phone or by email.
'The woman climed over the wall.'
It's about time that we took another look at some prepositions, isn't it? Here we have a list of all the major prepositions used in English. As prepositions can have more than one meaning it would be impossible to explain them all here.
There is a quiz for you to try at the bottom.
'They love it' or 'They are loving it'?
When a verb describes a state and not an action we do not use the continuous tense. For example, 'play' is an action so we can say 'playing' whereas 'be' is a fixed state which does not change: 'To be, or not to be'.
‘It gets hectic around here at lunchtime’ Is 'hectic' a verb, noun or adjective?
English speech can be separated into eight basic categories:
'It's my brother who lives in Brighton.'
We use relative clauses to give extra information about something. We can get more information into a sentence without the need to start a new one.
There are two types of relative clauses: defining and non-defining:
"We all love English grammar...don't we?'
Today let's review your understanding of verb tenses. The best way to do this is to practise! Read through the sentences below and choose the correct form.
If you have any questions about this exercise please add a comment and we'll help.
Good luck!
'I wish I had studied harder in school'
To regret means that we now feel sorry for something which happened (or didn’t happen) in the past
For example:
