“The use of the present simple”


Stage 5 Stage 6 Stage 7 Stage 8 The present simple is most commonly used for regular actions – habits; things we do often. For example: ~ I drink coffee every day. ~ Mark plays football at weekends. ~ We study English on Mondays and Wednesdays. It isn’t necessary to state the frequency of the …

“The Past Simple and The Past Continuous”


Stage 5 Stage 6 When we are speaking about the past, it is quite often that we are able to use both the past continuous and the past simple in the same sentence. This is usually when there was one action happening when a different action interrupted it or crossed over it. For example – …

“Punctuation”


Stage4 Stage 5 Stage 6 An often overlooked part of English and language in general is punctuation. Not only is punctuation important for making your writing look nice and neat, it can also dramatically change the meaning of a sentence if it is used incorrectly. So, let’s have a look at making your writing look …

“The Difference Between Two, To and Too”


Stage 4 Stage 5 Stage 6 For many students, one of the most difficult parts of learning English is the pronunciation. It is not a phonetic language, which means we can’t simply look at a word we’ve never seen before and know how to pronounce it. This becomes especially complicated when it comes to homophones, …

“Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s an adverb!”


When readers analyse a new text, they sometimes try to determine which lexical category particular words correctly belong to. Adverbs are usually considered as a last resort in this endeavour; only once the more glamorous categories of nouns, verbs and adjectives have been eliminated do lowly adverbs get their fifteen minutes of fame. This may …

“There, They’re and Their”


As we saw in this week’s Tip of the Week, we’re discussing the word “there” and how it sounds like other words with different meanings. What part of speech is “there”? How do we pronounce it and use it in a sentence? Well, the difficulty comes from the fact that the word “there” is a …

“Present Perfect vs. Past Simple”


Stage 4 Stage 5 This week we’ll be looking at a part of English grammar that many students find confusing. At a certain stage of our English studies, we start learning a variety of verb tenses to talk about actions related to time. We use them for the past, present and future. Today we’ll go …

“Tail Questions”


This month’s blog is about tail questions. I always pick a topic to write about based on student reactions in the classroom. If I find that some students find certain things difficult to understand, then I write about them in the blog. Tail questions are sometimes difficult for some students. A tail question is basically …

The Present Perfect Tense


Stage 4 Stage 5 El Present Perfect es una combinación de presente y pasado, es decir, expresa acciones ocurridas en el pasado que continúan teniendo relevancia en el presente. Su estructura es sencilla, como ejemplo citamos tres piezas musicales que utilizan este tiempo verbal en su letra:

The Past Continuous


The past continuous – also known as the past progressive – is formed by using the verb ‘to be’ in the past tense, plus the ‘–ing’ form of a verb (known as the present participle). For example: running, writing, eating, watching, etc. The past tense of the verb ‘to be’ changes, depending on the person …