by Martin Burke | Oct 23, 2020 | This is how we say it
In a recent conversation, a student told me that she had ‘passed’ her holidays in Corsica. To a native English speaker, this sounds incorrect. When French learners of English want to translate ‘passer le temps’ into English, they need to know that there are two...
by Martin Burke | Oct 15, 2020 | Everyday grammar
One of my English language learners recently said to me that she was ‘waiting for’ the return of homeworking (French – télétravail) due to the current health crisis. Her use of the expression ‘waiting for’ gave me the impression that in some way she had decided to...
by Martin Burke | Oct 6, 2020 | Everyday grammar
Students of English will already be familiar with the modal verbs. They will already know that, for example, they have no infinitive form but that they belong to other verbs, in the case of ‘may’ and ‘might’, the verb ‘to be able’, and that they express not a simple...
by Martin Burke | Sep 28, 2020 | Everyday grammar
A student recently said to me ‘It was raining a lot, so I told my children that they don’t have to go outside’. ‘So’, I asked her, ‘did you give them a choice?’ ‘No!’, she insisted, ‘they wanted to go outside but I refused to let them go outside!’ That’s when I...
by Martin Burke | Sep 21, 2020 | This is how we say it
In conversations with my English language students I often hear them using the adjectives ‘much’ and ‘many’ in positive sentences. For example, ‘’I have many friends in this town’’, and ‘’I have much time with my family’’. Grammatically, there is nothing wrong with...
Recent Comments