Archive for the ‘English Grammar’ Category

Position of adverbs of frequency

August 18th, 2011 in English Grammar

Adverbs of indefinite frequency say how often something happens.

Examples are: always, ever, usually, normally, often, frequently, sometimes, rarely, seldom, never etc

Adverbs of indefinite frequency usually go in mid-position.

Gerund and infinitive

August 14th, 2011 in English Grammar

Gerunds and infinitives are often interchangeable, both as subjects and objects of verbs. Compare:

Smoking is injurious to health.
To smoke is injurious to health.

Joining two sentences using a participle

August 7th, 2011 in English Grammar

Study the following sentences.

The thief heard a noise. He ran away.
Hearing a noise, the thief ran away.

Using quite

August 3rd, 2011 in English Grammar

When used with gradable adjectives (e.g. good, bad, tired etc), quite means ‘fairly’ or ‘rather’.

The film was quite good, but it could have been better.

Relative clause

August 1st, 2011 in English Grammar

A relative clause is a type of subordinate clause which is attached to a head noun within a noun phrase. There are two types of relative clauses – restrictive (or defining) and non-restrictive (or non-defining). A restrictive relative clause is required to identify what is being referred to.

Every one, everyone and everybody

July 10th, 2011 in English Grammar

Every one

We use every one of before a pronoun or a determiner (the, my this etc).

Every one of the children was happy. (NOT Every one the children was happy.) (NOT Every of the children was happy.)

Verb patterns with have

July 8th, 2011 in English Grammar

In this structure have means ‘experience’. The usage is rather informal.