Conjunctions


Stage 7 Stage 8 Conjunctions are words that we use to join two clauses together to make longer sentences. There are many words that we use for this purpose. However, the three most common are ‘and’, or ‘and’ but.   Download Exercise   We use the word ‘and’ to link two ideas together. These can …

The Structure Not…either


Stage 7 Stage 8 Remember that the words “also”, “as well” and “too” mean the same thing. The only difference is how we use them in a sentence: “as well” and “too” go at the end, and “also” goes after the first auxiliary verb, or before the main verb. But an important feature of these …

“Christmas Idioms”


Stage 7 Stage 8 Stage 9 As we are in Christmas mode at the moment, I thought it would be a great time to look at some Christmas and Christmas inspired idioms that are in common use. Not all of these are only for use around Christmas time, but some of them can be used …

“Dependent Clauses”


Stage 7 Stage 8 This week we are going to look at two very common types of dependent clauses. But first, let´s just revise what a clause is. A clause is any group of words with a subject and a main verb. We have two types of clauses – Main clauses and Dependent clauses. A …

“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 …

“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 …

“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. …

“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 …

“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 …