Content words

Be careful not to part of speech/ word class errors.

- We use adverbs to describe verbs, instead of using adjectives to describe verbs. For example: X
She sang beautiful (adj.) -> She sang beautifully (adv.)
- X This sport requires strong and balance. strong (adj.) -> strength (n.)
- X I feel very confidence (n.) -> confident (adj.)

Nouns
- Some nouns in English are countable – we can use them in singular and plural forms. The
plural forms can be achieved usually by adding the suffixes –s, -es, or –ies.
- Some are uncountable – they only have one form, e.g. staff, advice, furniture, knowledge,
information. The writer cannot add –s.

Verbs
- Main verbs are the most important and meaningful verbs in the sentence. They show the action
or state of being of the subject. Examples: open, revise, cook, change, jump, think
- Auxiliary verb/ helping verbs are added to main verbs to make them work in other forms, such
as questions, negatives, and other times. Examples: ‘do', ‘have' and ‘be'.
 Question form: Do you drive a car? (do: auxiliary verb in question)
 Negative form: I do not drive a car. (do: auxiliary verb in a negative sentence)
- Copular verbs/ linking verbs are followed by either a noun or an adjective. Examples:
be/is/am/was/were, become, appear, seem

Adjectives: attributive and predicative positions

- Most adjectives can be used in two positions: before or after the noun they describe.
- When they are used before the noun they describe, they are called attributive adjectives: a
white dog.
- When they are used after the noun they describe, they are called predicative adjectives: the dog
is white.
- There are some adjectives that can only be used in one position or the other.
 Predicative: alone (X I saw an alone boy. -> The boy was alone.)
 Attributive: main (X The reason is main. -> The main reason is …)

Present and past participles as adjectives

A lot of adjectives are made from verbs by adding -ing or -ed:
- The present participle (-ing form of the verb) refers to something or somebody that causes the
feeling: The breeze is refreshing. (The breeze causes this feeling.) The past participle (-ed
form of the verb) is used to express how a person is affected by something: I feel refreshed. (I
am affected by the freeze.)
 More on verbs
Gerund after prepositions
- She is good at painting.
- She avoided him by walking on the opposite side of the road.

Infinitives
- If infinitives (or gerunds) are not used, many sentences would have two main verbs. This is a
major source of mistakes.
- X I expect him come. X He admits steal.
- (I expect him to come.) (He admits stealing.)
- Some verbs are followed by the to-infinitive, e.g. decide to go, want to swim
 Verbs of thinking and feeling: choose, decide, expect, forget, etc.
 Verbs of saying: agree, promise, refuse, etc.
 Other verbs: manage, attempt, arrange, tend, try, want, etc.
 Some verbs are followed by a noun and the to-infinitive, e.g. ask him to send, want his
friends to come
 Verbs of saying: advise, ask, encourage, ask, etc.
 Verbs of wanting or liking: expect, intend, would, prefer, etc.
 Other verbs with this pattern are: allow, enable, force, etc.

Bare infinitive
- After certain verbs, use the bare infinitive (base form of the verb, without to-infinitive or –ing)
- Certain verbs: make, let, bid, see, hear, dare
- X makes you to cry X let you to use (make you cry, let you use)

Phrasal verb = verb + adverb/participle

- A phrasal verb is a verb that is made up of a main verb together with an adverb or a particle.
- Technically speaking, that second component is an adverb or a particle, not a preposition.

Grammatical words
Personal pronouns
Note the terminology: ‘I’ is a first-person singular pronoun, etc.
Subject pronouns are used as subjects, e.g. I like her.
Person Singular Plural

1st I we

2nd you you

3rd he/she/it they

Other types of pronouns: THIS PAGE IS QUITE IMPORTANT
Members of the Usage
Pronoun Type Example
Subclass

mine, yours, his, demonstrate ownership

Possessive The white car is mine
hers, ours, theirs

myself, yourself, as a direct object when

himself, herself, the object is the same
itself, oneself, He injured himself playing as the subject of the
Reflexive
ourselves, football verb
yourselves,
themselves

Relative A relative pronoun is

used to connect a
clause or phrase (in this
case: ‘you gave me’) to
a noun or pronoun (‘the
that, which, who, book’). The clause
The book that you gave me
whose, whom, (‘you gave me’)
was really boring
where, when modifies, or describes,
the noun (‘the book’).
The most common
relative pronouns are
who, whom, whose,
which, and that.

this, that, these, Pronouns that point to

Demonstrative This is a new car
those specific thing/things

Determiner
- A determiner is a modifying word that determines the kind of reference a noun or noun group
has, for example a, an the, every.
- Plural count nouns do not have a determiner when they refer to people or things a a group,
e.g. computers (X a computers)
- Definite and indefinite articles
 We use the definite article ‘the’ in front of a noun when we believe the hearer/reader
knows exactly what we are referring to.
 We use the indefinite article, a/an, with single and countable nouns when the
hearer/reader does not know exactly which one we are referring to.
 Sentence structures and patterns
Subject-verb agreement
- Subjects and verbs must AGREE with one another in number (singular or plural). Thus, if a
subject is singular, its verb must also be singular; if a subject is plural, its verb must also be
plural.
- The dog chases the cat. The dogs chase the cat.
- Special case:
 Singular indefinite pronoun subjects take singular verbs. Each, either, neither, one, no
one, nobody, nothing, anyone, anybody, anything, someone, somebody, everyone,
everybody, everything: considered singular. E.g. Someone takes my wallet. Each and
every one of enjoys the party.

Inversion in questions
- A statement has the subject (s) before the verb (v), but to make question word order, we
invert the subject and the verb, with an auxiliary (aux) or modal verb (m) before the
subject (s):
- Normal word order: She sings. (S + V)
- Question: Does she sing? (auxiliary verb + subject + main verb)

Inversion in negative sentences

- When we use an adverb with negative meaning (e.g. never, only, seldom, rarely, scarcely,
hardly) in front position for emphasis, we invert the subject(s) and auxiliary verb/modal
verb:
- Normal: I have never seen such naughty students!
- Inverted: Never have I ever seen such naughty students! (have = auxiliary verb)
- Normal: He changed his hairstyle only recently.
- Inverted: Only recently had he change his hairstyle.

Noun clauses
- Noun clauses begin with words such as how, that, what, whatever, when, where, whether,
which, whichever, who, whoever, whom, whomever, and why. These words are called noun
clause markers (not interrogative pronouns).
- Examples of noun clauses:
 Tell me where you come from (your origin).
 Tell me what you want. (your desire)
- Word order in noun clause is not the same as in a question. There is no need to invert the
subject and verb in a noun clause).
- X Tell me where do you come from. X Tell me what do you want.
Relative clauses/ adjective clauses: defining and non-defining
- Relative clauses start with who, that, which, whose, etc. These words are relative pronouns.
 Defining clause:
 The woman who visited me to the party was very kind.
 The umbrella that I bought last week is already broken.
 Non-defining clause:
 My mother, who is 86, lives in Paris.
 Sam Chan, whose office is next to mine, is an author.
- Defining and non-defining clauses are different.
 A defining clause tells us which specific person or thing we are talking about in a larger
group. (in the above examples: which woman, which umbrella)
 A non-defining clause is not used to specify which person or thing we are talking about
because it is already clear (in the above example, I am not saying that I have more than
one mother and I specify the one who is 86)
 In non-defining clauses, that cannot be used. Instead, which should be used in a non-
defining clause. (X Elephants, that are the largest…)

Participle phrases or relative clause can add information to a sentence.

- Present participle phrase (active voice): The man reading the book is cute. (X The man read
the/ book is cute. Double verb)
- Relative clause: The man who is reading the book is cute.
- Past participle phrase (passive voice): The man robbed of his bag has reported the case to the
police. (X The man robbed his bag has reported the case to the police.)
- Relative clause: The man who is robbed of his bag reported the case to the police.

Active and passive voices

- Keywords: actor and recipient vs subject and object (positions)
- In a sentence in the active voice, the subject is the actor.
- In a sentence in the passive voice, the subject is the recipient.

X make something become

Punctuations
Run-on sentences
- A run-on sentence is a problematic sentence in which two or more main or independent clauses
(/sentences) are joined without a word (like and, or, but, so) to connect them or a punctuation
mark (full stop ‘.’ or semicolon ‘;’) to separate them.
- X The sun is high, put on some sunblock.
- The sun is high. Put on some sunblock. OR The sun is high; put on some sunblock. OR The sun
is high, so put on some sunblock.