Latest Articles from ELB
The English Tenses’ 10,000 Book Journey
It has finally happened: The English Tenses Practical Grammar Guide has reached 10,000 global sales and I could not be happier! 10,000 is an arbitrary number, admittedly, but it’s a high one, and was always a personal target of mine. I thought, if I reach that, then...
English Idioms & Sayings: Exercise 2
This is a continuation of my Idioms and Sayings exercise series, which I started last month. As a reminder, I’ve put together a list of 45 interesting, popular sayings which I’m putting into 3 short exercises, with the third one to come soon. Check the first exercise...
Reading Exercise: Classic Horror
For today’s reading exercise, I’ve taken an extract from a creepy old horror story by M.R. James. James was an accomplished scholar who wrote ghost stories heavy with real mythological references. He wrote in a “visceral” way, creating strong feelings/reactions, but...
Popular English Idioms and Sayings: Exercise 1
I’ve had a few requests recently for exercises relating to idioms and sayings. This is an interesting topic to get into because the language used for idioms, proverbs and other popular expressions in English is commonly used but the meanings can be difficult to...
Support ELB For More, Better Content!
A while ago, I set up a Patreon for ELB to try and gain some additional support to help me keep the site going. It was overcomplicated and did not get much interest (though I'm lucky to have had a couple of subscribers who stuck with me!). I've decided to relaunch the...
Reading Exercise & Analysis: Novel Opening 2
As my last post going into detail analysing the opening to a novel proved popular, I’ve put together another reading exercise looking at a different style of novel. This one is modern and from my more recent writing, so let’s see if we can spot some interesting...
Reading Exercise & Analysis: Novel Opening 1
I’m trying something new today with a reading analysis exercise, taking an extract of writing and picking out particulars of language that might be interesting. I’ve provided questions below to help you think critically about the English involved. The answers follow....
Future Tenses Exercise II: choosing from mixed future tenses
Given the popularity of this future tenses exercise, I thought it would be good to expand on that with another in the same format. As before, in the following exercise, complete the sentences choosing the correct future tense form for the verb in brackets. The future...
Understanding Present Perfect States Without Times
I had a question recently asking about how to use the present perfect without durational adverbs, such as “for” or “since”. There are some examples of this in The English Tenses Practical Grammar Guide, but I thought it would be useful to expand on the concept....