Grammar

For some, playing with the English language may not be your cup of tea, but I love it. One of my favourite parts of speech is the difference of meaning between gerunds and infinitive verb forms. While some verbs change meaning completely, others remain more or less the same. But knowing which ones change and…

Collocations are a great idea, really. No need to think too hard, and they make it so simple to become just another one of run of the mill. Some of the all-time favourite collocations include ‘completely satisfied’, ‘excruciating pain’, ‘burst into tears’ and ‘vaguely remember’. Then there are the colourful such as ‘red Ferrari’, ‘a…

My recent post gave you a small example of what is expected of an advanced learner of English. So today I thought I would up the difficulty level by giving you a sample of the expectations of the proficiency level. So have fun seeing how good your English really is. For questions 1-15, read the…

One of my favourite Cambridge examination components is key word transformation . It truly is a test of a student’s knowledge of English at both First Certificate and Advanced levels. However it is also a great exercise for accomplished writers. I still love doing them as it fine tunes my writing skills by having to…

By far, the most useful and beautifully flexible part of speech just has to be the wonderfully versatile adverb. It can not only describe a verb and an adjective but even another adverb. How incredibly super cool is that? How can a part of speech do something to itself? Look at the complexity of adverb…