Grammar guide

Do not be too quick to judge this website by its simplistic layout: it is an absolutely wonderful reference tool for everything you ever wanted to know about English grammar. It also contains some rather handy quizzes and a hilarious section on the solecisms of George W. Bush,
President of the United States. Great fun!

Sentence Investigations

It is a strange coincidence that, just as DNA has only four bases and yet accounts for the vast diversity of humanity, prose is made up of only four types of sentence and covers everything from a child’s first scribblings to Solzhenitsyn.
Teaching students about the four types of sentence is good practice in English teaching [...]

Beautifuler and gorgeousest

So why is that title wrong? What is the rule for making comparatives and superlatives in English? When do we use ‘er/est’ and when ‘more/most’ to form these words?
The resource below promotes an investigative approach to this grammatical question. If you download it you will find a set of cards and a sheet which will [...]

Test frames for word classes

If you are teaching grammar with your students, you will probably want to examine the common word classes at some point.
One word of advice, avoid trying to define these classes by their roles. It is still commonplace for many of my students to say, “Oh a verb, that’s a doing word.” Hmm. One immediate problem [...]

Preposition Poetry

A while ago I was fortunate enough to attend some training for English teachers on grammar. The course was led by Adrian Pymm, School Improvement Adviser in Doncaster and self-confessed grammar geek. It was one of those times where so many ideas ‘clicked’ into place. This posting is part of a series that shows how [...]

It’s not just food…

So begins the rather irritating tag-line of a series of TV advertisements for a well-known supermarket’s line in groceries (whose initials might be M and S). In case you haven’t seen them, the advertisements are an object lesson in noun modification. Yes, yes, I know, I should get out more…
In grammatical terms this is a [...]