Stage 07

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 …

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. …

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 …

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’ …

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 …

Stage 7 Stage 8 This week’s blog is about the difference between reflexive pronouns and emphasising pronouns. I have chosen this topic because it is one that a lot of students seem to easily get confused about. Firstly we must understand when to use a reflexive pronoun and when to use an emphasising pronoun. We …

Stage 7 Stage 8 The word ‘mind,’ like the word ‘settle,’ has many different meanings. Therefore it’s a good word to be comfortable with, as there are many different situations in which you can use it.  The first is as a noun, and it refers to the element of a person that allows them to …

There are two basic classifications of auxiliary verb, Primary and Modal. There are three Primary auxiliaries and ten Modals. But before we get started, what’s an auxiliary verb? In a sentence, we always have a main verb. For example, if we can only find one verb in a sentence, then we know it’s the main …

This week we are going to look at family pets and how they have infiltrated our daily lives. The first thing we should look at is that every animal, whether it be a pet or a wild animal, has a different name for their young. For example, a baby dog is called a puppy. A …

Stage 6 Stage 7 Stage 8 In the beginning, it is said, was the word (to paraphrase a biblical line). If so, that word — whatever it may have been — soon multiplied exponentially. Presently, words begat phrases; phrases begat clauses; clauses, eventually, begat sentences. Before long, homo sapiens was able to engage in phatic …