weekly posts on literature, languages, and learning
The Weekend Listener is a monthly list of noteworthy podcasts and radio recordings, old and new, curated for your listening pleasure. For more listening tips please search the website for previous instalments. LANGUAGE Language Carries More Than Words This episode of the On Being radio series is a wonderful interview with the writer David Treuer. …
In response to a recent question from several of my students, here’s a grammar post about two confusing verbs: lie and lay. (Actually, it’s three verbs, but we’ll come to that later.) TO LAY ‘To lay’ means to put something down. It is followed by a direct object, i.e. it’s a transitive verb—after it we …
In this post we’ll look into the basic differences between two English tenses that students often confuse: Present Simple and Present Continuous (also known as Present Progressive). If you are in a dilemma about which tense to use, ask yourself the following: I. Are you talking about something PERMANENT or TEMPORARY? For something permanent or …
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The Weekend Listener is a monthly list of noteworthy podcasts and radio recordings, old and new, curated for your listening pleasure. For more listening tips please search the website for previous instalments. LANGUAGE How language affects thought Photo by David Cassolato on Pexels.com Do people who speak different languages think differently? Is there evidence for …
Please email me for further information. To reach the post office, walk farther down the street. Further, farther… What’s the difference? Is it just two different spellings of the same word? The answer is yes—and no. Please read on for some explanation. Both ‘further’ and ‘farther’ are irregular comparative forms of the same adjective (and …
A while ago I posted a lengthy grammar article about the conditional sentences in English, and in this post we’ll read a poem by Rudyard Kipling that can be used to illustrate conditional clauses. It has some great vocabulary, too. (Not to mention lofty ideas!) Rudyard and John Kipling Titled “If—”, Kipling wrote this poem …
In this grammar post we’ll be discussing different types of conditional sentences in English: how to structure them and which tenses to use. At the end, you’ll find an online grammar quiz on this topic. We have a lot to cover, so pour yourself a nice cup of coffee and let’s get started! CONDITIONAL SENTENCE …
This post has been written with ESL / EFL students in mind, intermediate level and above. The verb ‘to use’ is a key element in several widely used grammatical structures that students sometimes confuse or don't use properly. In this post we’ll go through them, explain their meaning and, finally, practise a bit. USED The …
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[This post has been written with ESL/EFL students in mind, CEFR level B1 and above.] Are you bored or boring? Was the last film you saw interested or interesting? There are many adjectives in English that can be used with the endings -ed and -ing, and students sometimes confuse them. If you are unsure when …
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In a recent grammar post I wrote about personal pronouns in English, but one thing I deliberately omitted there was the presentation of the archaic forms of the 2nd person singular. Those are thou / thee / thy and thine, which you may have come across in literary or religious texts. Let's first see what …
grammaticus 