ENGLISH GRAMMAR, speed test.

ENGLISH GRAMMAR, speed test.

Grammar

How quickly can you answer these questions?

Watch out for the timer at the bottom of the page.

Welcome to your English grammar, speed test.

Are you preparing for an English language test? If so, most of you will know many of the pitfalls of English grammar, but the question is .......how fast are you ???

If you are a new learner take your time to think about your answers but if you are a more advanced learner  you can give yourself an extra challenge by setting a  time limit. Start by allowing yourself 2 minutes to answer these 15 questions (that's 8 seconds per question which is the usual amount of time you should allow yourself in language tests such as the TOEIC® and TOEFL®) and then try again getting faster and faster. 

Before you start, have you every wondered about the origin of the word "grammar"?

The word grammar is derived from Greek γραμματικὴ τέχνη (grammatikē technē), which means "art of letters", from γράμμα (gramma), "letter", itself from γράφειν(graphein), "to draw, to write".

You can see the influence of this in words such as telegram, diagram, hologram and many, many more.

The first English grammar book was published in 1586 by the printer William Bollokar who wanted to show that the English language was just as structured, therefore just as important, as Latin, the main scholarly language of the time. The 18th century saw the publication of many grammar guides, in particular Samuel Johnson's A dictionary of the English Language which had a section devoted to English grammar. 

However, the standard for all modern grammar books is A Dictionary of Modern English Usage written by Henry Fowler in 1926 and it has become so influential that it is known simply as "Fowler's".  The success of this book was Fowler's direct, vigorous writing style and his opinions in which he firmly advised against convoluted sentence construction, the use of foreign words and phrases, and the use of archaisms. He opposed pedantry, ridiculed artificial grammar rules and encouraged natural English usage. He set the standard for where to place a preposition in a sentence, where the word "only" should be placed  and the rules distinguishing between which and that.

So are you ready ......GO !!!!

 

 

 

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So how did you do ?

Keep tuned to the EFL PODBLOG for news of an exciting new site devoted to improving your English grammar, vocabulary and listening skills..... in short, how to get a better score in all your language tests.



Know your adjectives (i)

Know your adjectives (i)

Grammar, Language Learning

What do you know about adjectives ?

Firstly, in English the adjective is often placed before the noun (It is a serious problem, I have brown eyes etc), but it is placed after the verb to be (The food is terrible here).

Secondly, there are many different endings;

– able  comfortable
– ous  serious
– ive  protective
– ent (-ant)  confident
– ful  careful
– less  careless
 – ic  specific

Now try the quiz. 

 Do the quiz several times and try to do it in 2 minutes.

Adjectives(i)

Know your adjectives

Phrasal Verbs with Across, down and get

Phrasal Verbs with Across, down and get

Grammar, Language Learning, Quizzes

Phrasal Verbs with Across, down and get

Phrasal Verbs with Across, down and get

A phrasal verb is an idiomatic phrase consisting of a verb and another element, typically either an adverb, as in break down, or a preposition, for example see to, or a combination of both, such as look down upon.

They are notoriously difficult for foreign language learners to grasp and to learn, usually because second language learners do one of two things, both of which are futile :

  1. They try to translate the phrasal ver back into their own language.
  2. They try to look for some form of logic or pattern in phrasal verbs.

The term phrasal verb is commonly applied to two or three distinct but related constructions in English: a verb and a particle and/or a preposition co-occur forming a single semantic unit.

This semantic unit cannot be understood based upon the meanings of the individual parts in isolation, but rather it can be taken as a whole.

In other words, the meaning is non-compositional and thus unpredictable.

Phrasal verbs that include a preposition are known as prepositional verbs and phrasal verbs that include a particle are also known as particle verbs.

Additional alternative terms for phrasal verb are compound verb, verb-adverb combination, verb-particle construction, two-part word/verb, and three-part word/verb (depending on the number of particles), and multi-word verb.

In this crossword, we will be looking at Phrasal Verbs with Across, down and get – you may also find some alternative meaning to some of the phrasal verbs in the crossword – if you do, why not post your definitions in the comments?

EFLPodBlog Crossword

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