Helping English language learners
Adjectives usually appear immediately before a noun. Examples: A large table. Daniel’s blue book. Her new clothes. The thirsty horse. These are called attributive adjectives. They tell us about the attributes of something. Sometimes...
An adjective adds more information about a noun or pronoun. Adjectives are sometimes called ‘describing words’. More technically, an adjective is a word that ‘modifies’ or ‘qualifies’ a noun or pronoun. Examples: An old...
A shoehorn is a device used to help someone put a shoe (particularly a tight shoe) on to their foot. So ‘to shoehorn something in’ is an idiom about putting something (or someone) into...
‘Recognise’ and ‘recognize’ are both correct spellings. ‘Recognise’ is mainly used in British English. ‘Recognize’ is used in American English. Many people say that ‘recognise’ is the correct spelling in British English, but other...
Most English verbs are regular verbs. They follow a standard pattern for the infinitive, third person singular, present participle, and past participle. Examples: Infinitive Third person singular Present participle Past participle Stop Stops Stopping...
Verbs express actions or states of being. They are often described as ‘doing words’, but they are more than this.
A noun phrase consists of a noun joined with one or more other word. Together they can act as the subject, object or complement of a sentence. Examples (with the noun phrases underlined): The...
A compound noun is formed by joining together two words. Sometimes these words remain separate. Examples: washing machine coffee cup fairy tale Sometimes they are hyphenated (joined together by a hyphen). Examples: holiday-maker hold-up...
Gender has very little place in English language, and no place at all in classifying nouns. There are some nouns that specifically relate to male people or creatures and some that relate specifically to...
Most nouns in English can be said to be either singular or plural. The most usual way of forming a plural noun from a singular is to add –s. Examples: dog/dogs boy/boys desk/desks Most...