Latest Articles from ELB
When to use past participles with perfect tenses
Past participles have a number of uses, though mainly they are used for forming grammatical structures such as perfect tenses (We had discovered a key.) or as an adjective form of a verb (We took the discovered key.). In the perfect tenses, past participles come after...
Bare infinitives in the past simple – with exercise
Following on from the exercise testing understanding of the bare infinitive in the present simple, this article tests understanding of how it is used in the past simple. In the past simple, verbs change forms with +ed for regular verbs, or in a variety of ways with...
Spelling rules for verb tenses and participles
As with most areas of the English language, forming different tenses from verbs has some basic rules which can be frequently broken. With irregular verbs, there is often there is no easy way to know how a verb should be spelt in its present or past forms, or as a past...
Identifying the bare infinitive – exercise
Understanding what the bare infinitive is, how we use and when we use it is a very important building block for effective English grammar skills. My article on the bare infinitive (from The English Tenses Practical Grammar Guide) should give a solid understanding of...
6 Christmas Songs for practising English listening skills
Just a few Christmas-themed posts from me this year – we’ve had the big fat vocabulary list, now it’s time for some listening practice. At Christmas time, the English speaking world is drowned in the sounds of numerous Christmas carols and pop songs trying to reach...
When to use the Past Simple or Present Perfect (with exercise)
The past simple and the present perfect can both be used to show actions or events that were completed in the past. In many cases, they can demonstrate the same event – so how do we choose which tense to use? This article explains, very briefly, the fundamental...
Christmas Vocabulary – a list of words to bring you joy
It’s fast approaching what the English speaking world sometimes call the most wonderful time of the year (as in a classic Andy Williams Christmas song). We are already in advent, the 24 days leading up to Christmas itself – so it’s time to brush up on some Christmas...
The complete guide to present continuous uses
As the present simple has complex uses, often relating to timeless facts, the present continuous is the main tense we use for talking about what is happening now. It can describe temporary actions that are happening (ongoing) now, processes of change, habits, and,...
7 quick tips to effectively learn and retain English language skills
Following neatly from my tips for mastering English, this article gives more specific tips on retaining what you learn. There are many ways to learn a language, and you have to find the method that is best for you. However, there are general points that can affect the...