A conjunction (also known as connector or joiner) is a word used to join words, phrases, or clauses together to show their relationship in a sentence. There are 3 main types of conjunctions in English. Coordinating Conjunctions Coordinating conjunctions always...
A phrasal verb is a verb and preposition which together mean something different from the individual parts. For example: The little boy was racing along the corridor when he ran into his teacher. In this example the boy was running and he literally ran into his...
Often in English we need to join two verbs together in the same sentence. When we do this, we can use different verb patterns depending on which verb comes first and here you'll find some of the more common verb patterns. In a TEFL class you probably wouldn't...
Pronouns are a closed group of words which can be used in place of nouns in a sentence. We replace nouns that are repeated with pronouns so instead of saying: William took the ball and then William kicked the ball. We say: William took the ball and then he kicked...
This article introduces at the 3 main verb forms a verb can take: the infinitive, the present participle and the past form. The Infinitive The Infinitive is the base form of a verb. These are infinitives: love, eat, walk, be In English, the infinitive is nearly always...
As the word suggests (indefinite = unspecified, unknown, indeterminate, undefined) Indefinite Adjectives give general information about the noun they refer to. Some common indefinite adjectives are: All Any Each Every Few Many Some Though indefinite pronouns and...
A Gerund is a special form of a verb. It's also known as a Verbal Noun and more informally, the -ing form. We use it when we want to use an action verb as the subject or object of a sentence. So essentially, it's a verb which acts like a noun (hence the name verbal...
Adverbs of degree (sometimes also referred to as adverbs of quantity) describe to what degree, level or extent something is done. In other words, how much. almost nearly quite just too enough hardly scarcely completely very extremely Like all adverbs, we can use...
An adverb modifies a word, phrase, or sentence. It tells us more about them and changes the meaning slightly. Often we say it tells us how something happens: They are waiting for the metro. They are waiting patiently for the metro. In this example above, the adverb...
The Present Simple is usually one of the very first verb forms to be taught in English. We use it mainly to talk about situations which are always the same or at least consistent for a long time. This includes habits, facts and so on. My name is Joe and I am from...
The Present Perfect Simple verb form is used to talk about a past event which has very strong meaning and connection with the present. As you might imagine, it is sometimes difficult to define well as there are many exceptions to its use; different people will use it...
A Past Participle is a verb form which indicates a past or completed action or time. If you see some, you'll recognize them: walked frozen done watched typed cleaned Quite often you'll hear people talking about the past participle as the -ed Form. This is because with...
We use the Present Continuous (also called Present Progressive) in three ways in English: 1. to talk about a situation that is happening right now as we speak. What are you doing? I am reading 50 Shades of Gray! Why is he in bed? He is not feeling well today. Can...
Parts of Speech (often abbreviated to PoS and sometimes known as Word Classes) are the different categories of words in English. They refer to the way in which those words are used grammatically. For example, if you look at the following sentences you can see that...
When we want to talk about what the subject of a sentence does, we use a verb. Verbs tell us about an action; they are sometimes called doing words or action words. Verbs describe what is happening. Here then are some simple verbs: drink, eat, rest, dunk As with...
The past simple verb form is used to talk about events in the past; it's often used to tell a story. He walked into the room and looked around. There was a knock on the door. He opened it and saw... I woke up. I got out of bed. I dragged a comb across my...
Prepositions are a closed word class. This means there are only a few of them and no new ones are ever added to the group. This article introduces the main groups of prepositions in English. A preposition joins nouns, pronouns and phrases with other words in a...
A Noun is one of the major parts of speech. A good, general, definition of a noun is that it is something which is used to name an object or thing. car, door, elephant... There are literally thousands upon thousands of nouns in English and we regularly add new...
Adjective order concerns the order in which adjectives are used in a phrase. They usually follow this order: age color origin material purpose a new red Swiss plastic army knife We can have other types of adjectives which we put before the age. These are general...
Adjectival phrases are phrases that function as adjectives. They consist of the adjective(s) that modifies a noun and any adverb(s) or other elements that modify that adjective. Adjectival phrases always occur inside noun phrases. They always have a house full of...
There are three types of Articles in English. Put simply, we use articles to let people know what kind of noun we're talking about. Take the word, fly, for example. If I just use the word on its own I'm speaking very generally. These flies are annoying me. If I put...
https://youtu.be/_TESli89qsw Timelines are a teaching aid we use to help explain how different verb tenses are used. They are a visual representation of the passage of time. This is an empty timeline: Here, the timeline shows an event in the past (last...
An adverb modifies a word, phrase, or sentence. It tells us more about them and changes the meaning slightly. Often we say it tells us how something happens: He paints. He paints wildly. In this example wildly is an adverb which tells us how he paints. Regular Adverbs...
Adverbs are known as a kind of 'catch-all' class of words in English and there is a lot more to them than meets the eye. To begin with, however, we can say that adverbs give us more information about other words and clarify usage. Adverbs can give us more...
Modal verbs are used to express ideas such as ability, necessity, permission, and possibility. There are not many modal verbs: can, could, dare*, need*, may, might, must, shall, should, will, would. There are also modal constructions: be able to, ought to, be allowed...
Note: descriptions of verb forms and tenses vary. Here we present a simple overview of the tenses and forms of English which is useful for the classroom. In grammar a tense (from the Latin tempus) is a form of a verb used to indicate roughly the time when the action...
A noun is the name of a person, place or thing. A singular noun refers to 1 only; a plural noun refers to 2 or more. There are two things to note about singular and plural nouns. The first is that they change their form depending on whether they are singular or...
There are different ways of classifying nouns and one of the most important, grammatically speaking, is to classify a noun as Count or Non-Count. (Also known as Countable and Non-Countable; count nouns are sometimes also known as Mass Nouns.) Most nouns are countable;...
Adjectives are words we use to describe a noun. They usually come before it: {1 or more adjectives} + {noun} big, red, boring book The noun in this phrase is book and the adjectives tell us what size it is (big), what color it is (red) and what we think of it...
Look at these sentences: James Bond drives an Aston Martin. Bond is chasing the killer! 007 kissed the beautiful Russian agent. In each one the subject has been highlighted. The subject is the main theme of the sentence; it is what the sentence is all about. It is,...
