By Jacqueline SchaaljeTom Coates I’ve put some old quizzes on the website about adverbs and adjectives, which you can do here and here. In case you need the explanations, start reading here. In this article we’ll clear up when you should use well instead of good, and some more things. First I have a question.… Continue reading You Look Well, Babe. Adverbs: well, good, badly, etc.
by Jacqueline Schaalje Eric Chan In my earlier article about adjectives and adverbs we said that adjectives say something about a noun, while adverbs say something about a verb or other adjective. So far so good. I also said that adverbs often have “-ly” at the end of the word. But if you did the exercise, you… Continue reading Problematic Adverbs – The town is far or farly?
An adjective describes a noun. Nouns are words that denote things, people, concepts etc. Examples of nouns are: tree, pianist, teapot, man, woman, telephone, luck, happiness, etc. So an adjective is the word that describes this thing, person or concept. The Place of the Adjective Often, the adjective will come before the noun, but it… Continue reading Adjective or Adverb? – The difference between beautiful teapot and drawing a teapot beautifully
A reader asked me to write some TOEFL practice. TOEFL is an English exam that many American universities require students from abroad to pass. It’s advanced level. The following article is suitable for intermediate and expert level students. One of the requirements of the TOEFL test is to know how to compare and to contrast. Compare… Continue reading TOEFL Practice: Compare and Contrast
Alex Gaylon A student of mine is going to teach American students this summer. She wanted to know some subjects that she can talk about with her students, or ways to start talking. Although her English is okay, she feels pretty unsure about it. Sounds familiar? I could give her a list of subjects, but… Continue reading Conversation Starters – Ask Questions to Easily Start Small Talk with People who are New to You.
This week I discovered Pinterest. Cool app!!!! I know, I know, Pinterest already exists a thousand years, but I thought that it was mainly used by mothers who want to show ideas for children’s crafts or yet other mothers who want to share recipes. Turns out that it has evolved and there are now also… Continue reading English with a Smile Pinterest
The use of commas (,) follows a set of rules. They seem hard to apply, because whenever I see a student essay or email, there are often a few mistakes with commas. I’ll show you some examples afterwards. But first: what are the rules? Rebecca Wilson 1 Use a comma before a connecting word. For… Continue reading Some Pointers for Commas – How You Should Use Commas
by Jacqueline Schaalje Watch the video about less and least here, and then try the quiz. Quiz You can do this quiz online if you follow this link. Choose less or least. 1 Dr Seuss is ___________ difficult to read than Dr Zhivago. 2 Africa is ____________ developed than Europe. 3 Which country is the… Continue reading Less and Least – Easy! With video and quiz
Mike Fernwood by Jacqueline Schaalje You’ve got to follow this Tip to make you sound like a native speaker of English. Verbs with an Object Some verbs need to have an object after the verb. If they don’t have an object, the sentence is grammatically incorrect. To native ears such a sentence will sound strange. They’ll… Continue reading Verbs that Must Have an Object
by Jacqueline Schaalje Warning: this is not for beginning students of English. Let’s take a difficult tense. It may be the first time you see it. It’s a combination of the future with “will” and the present perfect with “have + V3.” V3 means the third form of the verb. Have a look at this… Continue reading Future Perfect – Time to learn some more tenses!
English with a Smile 