Listen to the author reading this blog post.
by Liz Walter
My last post looked at three very common non-standard uses of grammar in English. It is important to be aware of them but also to be clear that they are not suitable in situations where formal English is required, and certainly not in English exams. Today I look at some more common non-standard grammar forms.
Continue reading “I would of done it: understanding non-standard grammar forms (2)”
Listen to the author reading this blog post.
by Liz Walter
One of the best ways to learn a language is to go to a country where it is spoken, or to interact with speakers of the language in other ways. However, you are likely to come across some non-standard grammar. Some of these forms are very common, so it is useful to be aware of them. However, they are not considered correct, especially in formal contexts, and you will lose marks if you use them in exams. This post and my next one will look at a few such grammar points.
Continue reading “We was hungry: understanding non-standard grammar forms (1)”
Listen to the author reading this blog post:
by Liz Walter
It is common to see confusion between the words ‘worse’ and ‘worst’, so in today’s post, I am going to explain the difference and also talk about some useful phrases which contain these words. Continue reading “Worse than or worst of all? How to use the words ‘worse’ and ‘worst’”
Listen to the author reading this blog post:
by Liz Walter
In my last post, I discussed the importance of learning verb patterns. In this post, I will look at a few slightly more advanced points.
I’ll start with verbs of perception, such as feel, see, watch and notice. These are most often followed by -ing verbs, but bare infinitives (infinitives without to) are also possible:
I felt the sun warming/warm my skin.
We watched the children playing/play in the park. Continue reading “Forget doing it or forget to do it? Avoiding common mistakes with verb patterns (2)”
Listen to the author reading this blog post:
by Liz Walter
Look at these two English sentences:
I agreed to pay for the damage.
He denied stealing the money.
You will see that each sentence has two verbs, but that the form of the second verb is different. In the first sentence, it is an infinitive with to (to pay), and in the second, it has an -ing form (stealing).
So how do you know which form to use? Continue reading “Infinitive or -ing verb? Avoiding common mistakes with verb patterns (1)”
by Liz Walter
According to the Cambridge International Corpus, we use the word way 848 times in every million words, making it extremely common (by contrast, method comes up 65 times per million). Continue reading “Is this the way? Using the word ‘way’ (1)”
by Liz Walter
My last post looked at the basic building blocks of first, second and third conditionals. This post gives a little bit more detail about common variations we can use. Continue reading “Unless you leave now… : Using conditionals (2)”
by Liz Walter
We use conditional sentences to talk about what will, might or could happen in various circumstances. There are three main conditionals which we call first, second and third. This post is intended as a brief reminder of how we choose which conditionals to use, and how we form them. Continue reading “If I had a million dollars: Using conditionals (1)”
by Liz Walter
My last post introduced the topic of adding words to uncountable nouns so that they can be used in a countable way. In that post, I concentrated on food words. Today, we will look at some other topics. Continue reading “An article of clothing and a ray of sunshine: making uncountable nouns countable (2)”
by Liz Walter
You probably already know that you can use many uncountable nouns in a countable way with words such as piece or bit:
I ate a small piece of cheese.
Why don’t you add a bit of cream?
However, we can also use more interesting and specific words. Today’s post will look at how we do this with food and my next post will look at other topics such as weather and emotions.
We often use the names of containers when we talk about amounts of food. These might be items of crockery or cutlery, for example bowl, plate, cup, glass, tablespoon or teaspoon, or items of packaging such as packet, bottle, can, carton, tub or tube:
I ordered a bowl of soup.
Add a teaspoon of salt.
She ate a whole tub of ice cream.
It is also common to use words that indicate the shape of an amount of food, for instance slice, sliver, hunk, chunk, lump or slab:
The soup contained large chunks of beef.
I used a whole slab of chocolate in the dessert.
The words portion or serving indicates an amount sufficient for one person. We use mouthful for any food or drink. We also use sip, slurp, gulp and swig for amounts of liquid we swallow at one time:
There are four portions of stew in the pan.
The recipe makes four to six servings.
He ate a few mouthfuls of rice.
I only had a sip of tea.
With foods that consist of many very small parts, such as rice, sugar or salt we often use grain, while for liquids, we often use drop. Other words are more closely linked to specific liquids, for instance a dash (UK)/splash (US) of milk or a glug of oil:
Use a fork to separate the grains of rice.
I like a dash (UK)/splash (US) of milk in my tea.
Other words that are usually used with specific foods are a pinch of salt and a knob of butter:
Add a pinch of salt to the boiling water.
He fried the fish in a knob of butter.
Several words that make uncountable foods countable relate to the action you use with them. For example, we can talk about a squeeze of lemon juice, a grind of pepper, a sprinkling/dusting of icing sugar (UK)/confectioner’s sugar (US), cocoa powder, etc. and a drizzle of olive oil, honey, etc.
Give the risotto a few good grinds of pepper.
Serve the figs with a drizzle of honey.
Finally, there is a group of nouns that describe single parts of a type of food. For instance we talk about cloves of garlic, sweetcorn (UK)/corn (US) kernels, orange/grapefruit segments and coffee beans:
Chop two cloves of garlic.
The sweetcorn (UK)/corn (US) kernels add a lovely texture to the salad.
Food is such an enormous topic, there are probably many more ways of talking about amounts of it, but I hope this post has covered the main ones and helped to explain the idea of how we can use uncountable nouns in a countable way.