Read the following paragraph about the wedding I went to over the weekend and pay attention to the words in blue. Do you know what they mean?
Umpteen is used for a relatively large amount or number. We use it when we want to show that there are very many / a lot of something when we don't know the exact number. It is a casual / informal word that is used in spoken English.
"I've met him umpteen times and I still can't remember his name."
"She's given me umpteen reasons why she couldn't do her homework."
Many people learning English find modal verbs confusing, especially their specific meanings. Here's a basic introduction to some modal verbs with examples.
Can is used in three ways. It is used to show that something is possible:
"You can come to the party if you want."
Can is also used when making a request or when asking for permission:
We won! All of us at EC are in a great mood at the moment because we won an award for one of our English courses. You might, or might not know, that apart from offering daily English lessons on this site, EC is also a chain of English schools with schools in London, Brighton, Cambridge, New York, Boston, San Diego, Cape Town and Malta. We're always working our hardest to give our language students the best experience we can. This means offering the highest quality English lessons, great accommodation options and a fun activities programme. The whole package.
Make a mistake? Do a mistake? Take a mistake?
Which is the correct verb to use with 'a mistake'. I hope you said 'make'. But why is that right? Well, the fact is that the verb and noun combination just sounds right in English.
The difficulty for English learners is that these 'collocations' must be learned, usually without any rules to help them remember. Collocations are best understood and learned through practice.
Read these ten sentences. Are they OK? Do they have any mistakes? There are some, but how many? When you think that you have found all the mistakes click on Show Answers (below) for a full explanation.
1 - I have a lot of informations to remember.
2 - She speaks English good.
3 - Have you ever drank German beer?
4 - In the summer we always go to swimming.
5 - Each of these chocolates are tasty.
In English there are a number of words that share a pronunciation but have a different meaning. For example:
"I can see the sea."
In the above sentence see and sea have different spellings and meanings, but have the same pronunciation. They are examples of homophones.
Take a look at these ten sentences. Decide which is the correct word to complete the sentence. Each of the words have the same pronunciation.
Prefix: an placed before a base or another prefix, as un- in unkind, un- and re- in unrewarding.
Post-: a prefix meaning after or later than
Here are five examples of prefixes using post-:
Prepositions: small words that cause big problems!!
Let's see how good you are with them. Read through these ten sentences and correct the correct preposition.
That's it...nothing else to say!
So, way back in 250 BC, a very clever person invented the world's first ever computer. Some people believe that the name of this very clever person was Archimedes, purely because the design of this first computer very closely resembled some of his other designs...
