Grammar practice

The single most common tense mistake in English.

Articles are tiny and carry almost no meaning, which is exactly why they are hard: there is nothing to hear.

Conditionals are just an if-clause plus a result clause.

Some verbs must be followed by -ing, others by "to".

The passive moves the thing affected to the front.

Relative clauses let you add information without starting a new sentence.

Modals are how English expresses how sure you are and how strong a rule is.

English word order is fixed, which is why breaking it deliberately is so noticeable.

Prepositions rarely translate directly from another language, so they have to be learned as part of the phrase rather than as separate words.

English decides for you which nouns can be counted, and its choices are not always logical.

When you report what someone said, the tense usually shifts one step back into the past, and time and place words change too.

The verb has to agree with its true subject, not with whatever noun happens to sit closest to it.

Comparing two things or picking out the top of a group follows fixed patterns based on how long the adjective is, plus a handful of irregular words to memorise.

When a question sits inside a bigger sentence, it stops behaving like a question.

Direct questions in English move a verb before the subject.

Many verbs are followed by a fixed preposition that does not translate logically from another language.

English has no single future tense — the choice of form signals whether something is a plan, a spontaneous decision, a fixed arrangement or a timetable.

Both describe repeated things from the past that no longer happen, but only one of them can describe a past state — the difference trips up even confident learners.

A tag question checks or confirms information by adding a short question to the end of a statement.

These two adjective forms come from the same verb but describe opposite roles: one causes a feeling, the other experiences it.