1. Education

Common Mistakes

There are a number of common mistakes in English that learners face. Each common mistake page is followed by a quiz to help you check your understanding.

Key Mistakes
English as 2nd Language Spotlight10

Changing Just a Word

Tuesday May 22, 2012

Paraphrasing sentences by using synonymous words, phrases and constructions is a great way to improve your writing and grammar skills. One type of exercise is to change the sentence with one key word provided. Take the word and complete the sentence with no more than five words.  Another type of exercise is to complete the sentence with a change provided.

Verb Conjugation

Wednesday May 16, 2012

Verb conjugations follow distinct patterns in English whether the conjugation occurs in the present, past or future. Learning these verb conjugation patterns can help understand the logical of tenses in English. Another helpful way of learning tense conjugation in English is to use visual tense charts. You can find resources for each of the major tenses in English to find detailed explanations, as well as quizzes and lesson plans focusing on the specific tense.

Guides to Grammar

Monday May 14, 2012

Here on the site there are a wide variety of resources for major grammar points including explanations, exercise sheets, quizzes, and lessons. To help use these resources, there are a number of guides to grammar that provide basic grammar explanations, as well as pointing to appropriate worksheets, quizzes and lessons to further study the resources.

Guide to Present Tenses
Guide to Past Simple and Past Continuous
Guide to Past Perfect and Past Perfect Continuous
Guide to Future with Will and Going To
Guide to Comparative and Superlative
Guide to Reported Speech
Guide to Conditional Forms

Double Comparatives - Right or Wrong?

Wednesday May 9, 2012

Double comparatives, like double negatives, are generally considered incorrect English. For example, the phrase

He is more taller than John.

contains a double comparative "more" and "taller". However, many grammar books and English teachers teach a different type of double comparative which is perfectly good English. These double comparatives show cause and result as in these phrases:

The more time you spend on your studies, the better your scores will be.
The more interesting the topic is, the more effort students will make.

This guide to double comparatives helps clear up issues around when to use double comparatives - which are good and which are bad.

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