Stage 7

When you are doing a composition you should plan it beforehand and then take your time when writing it. One of the biggest mistakes you can make is to rush through it and not pay enough attention to what you are writing. Remember that you are learning a new language and it is quite different …

SUBJECT + HAVE/HAS + PRESENT PARTICIPLE (ING) So an example sentence would look like this: Lola has been working at this company for 6 years. Lola started working at the company 6 years ago, and is still working there now. However, we can also use the construction of the present perfect and say ‘Lola has …

  I remember my first exposure to modal verbs: at primary school, whenever I asked the teacher ‘Can I go to the bathroom?’ the teacher would invariably reply ‘I don’t know. Can you?’ This was done to demonstrate that the polite way of making a request like this is to use the modal ‘may’, instead …

Before I go into detail I should give you the full list. The words ‘myself’, ‘yourself’, himself’, ‘herself’, itself’, ‘oneself’, ‘ourselves’, ‘yourselves’ and ‘themselves’ are both emphasising pronouns and reflexive pronouns. Although we use the same words for both sets of pronouns, they are used in very different ways. Let us first talk about reflexive …

  Think of the expression ‘snowed under’, for example. We don’t literally mean that someone is completely covered by snow, as if an avalanche has coated them. But the figurative meaning is easy to understand from this visualization. ‘Snowed under’, often used in a workplace, means that one has so much work to do and …

As referenced in this week’s edition of Tip of the Week, we’ve started our overview of a subject that leaves even some native English speakers confused: who vs. whom. Here’s a quick recap before we move on: There’s no questioning that ‘who’ is the more commonly used of the two, especially in questions. For example: …

It is estimated there are about 25,000 idioms in the English language. Before you decide to give up on your quest to learn them, remember that not all of these will be frequent in day to day use, and many will be hugely outdated – just the same as vocabulary. The average person on the …

First, we’ll look at adverbs of frequency. Some common examples are: sometimes, often, usually, never, always, occasionally…the list goes on and on! These adverbs normally go after the first auxiliary verb (if there is one in the sentence). For example: ~He can always hit that note when he sings. ~She has never been to Moscow. …

When writing a letter, the sender’s address always goes in the top right-hand corner of the page. For an email this is not necessary. Underneath our address, we put the date in full form. This means we don’t write ‘3/05/2015’, but ‘3rd May 2015’. On the other side of the page, we put the recipient’s …

The next pair of words we’ll look at is ‘anymore’ and ‘any more.’ As one word, ‘anymore’ has a meaning related to time and is almost always used in negative sentences when referring to something that you no longer do or something that no longer happens. For example: ~ I don’t play basketball anymore. ~ …