“Quantifiers”


Stage 1 Stage 2 This week’s blog is about the words ‘many’ and ‘much’ and ‘few’ and ‘little’. These words often cause confusion because a lot of students have difficulty remembering when to use one or the other.
We use ‘many’ and ‘few’ for things we can count, such as tables, chairs, people etc… We use …

“The Emphatic Do”


Stage 6 Stage 7 This week’s blog is about the “emphatic do”. The emphatic do is when we use the auxiliary verb ‘do’ in order to be emphatic. In general we use the auxiliary verb ‘do’ in questions and in negative sentences but not generally in positive sentences. For example we say “do you play …

“Adverbs of Frequency”


Stage 7 Stage 8 If there’s one thing students learning English know, it’s that the position of words within a sentence is important. Getting this wrong is often an immediate giveaway that the person speaking isn’t a native speaker. Sometimes it’s just hard to know where the words go! In this blog entry we’ll be …

“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 …

“Relative Pronouns”


Stage 7 Stage 8 In this week’s blog we are going to look at relative pronouns. I am going to speak about the relative pronouns ‘what’, ‘whom’ and ‘whose’. It is first of all important to understand what a relative clause is. A relative clause is a clause that we use to describe a noun. …

“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, …

“Delexical Verbs”


Stage 7 Stage 8 Generally, verbs are words that describe actions. Run, play, talk, learn, sit, go, read, eat, watch, stand, choose, drink, etc. are all action verbs. They tell us what somebody is doing. Sometimes, however, verbs rely on the nouns that accompany them for their meaning. When this happens, we call such verbs …

“Primary Auxiliaries And Modal Auxiliaries Verbs”


Stage 6 Stage 7 This week’s blog is based on auxiliary verbs. In English there are two types of auxiliary verb, primary auxiliaries and modal auxiliaries. The three primary auxiliary verbs are ‘be’, ‘have’ and ‘do’. There are ten common modal auxiliary verbs and they are ‘can’, ‘could’, ‘will’, ‘would’, ‘shall’, ‘should’, ‘may’, ‘might’, ‘must’ …

“Word Order”


Stage 7 Stage 8 Non-native English speakers often have difficulty deciding where words should be placed in a sentence. This can create problems, as word order is extremely important in English. Unlike ‘free word order’ languages like Latin, English does not rely heavily on inflection to create meaning. In Latin, words can be moved around …

“Phrasal Verbs with ‘Put’”


Stage 9 Stage 10 Stage 11 Phrasal verbs: the two words that are guaranteed to strike fear into the hearts of English students everywhere. But phrasal verbs, although they can seem difficult, should cause you no fear, and should be treated just like any other vocabulary word we learn. Let’s break it down first. Download …