fear – English Grammar Profiler

Leave a Comment / C2, phrases / By English Grammar Pro

Here’s an example of a C2 phrase in the English Vocabulary Profile that means: worry that something very bad will happen or that something very bad has happened We fear the worst. TED A search for collocates of ‘fear the worst‘ in the NOW corpus: 1 COME 126 2 YET 114 3 BEGAN 59 4 EXPERTS 31 Experts initially feared the worst. …

fear the worst Read More »

Let’s analyse questions that have relative clauses to give emphasis.  So usually, we would say something like: What do we want to ask?  What are we trying to find out here? You can see the normal auxiliary verbs ‘be’ and ‘do’ get removed and relative clauses are added in the EXPERT EXAMPLES: What is it that we want …

WHAT IS IT YOU WANT? (relative clause question) Read More »

In the English Grammar Profile, B1 Point 48 in the category of ADJECTIVES is defined as: noun phrases with a range of determiners before a superlative adjective. *This should include a range of nouns because at A2 it is a limited range.  One can guess that ‘my’ ‘your’ can still be B1 if the noun …

determiner + superlative + noun (range) Read More »

Here is another example of overlapping grammar points in the English Grammar Profile. B1 Point 37 in the category of NOUNS/phrases is defined as: NOUN + ‘OF’ + POSSESSIVE PRONOUN Which overlaps the more specific B1 point 47 in the category of PRONOUNS: possessive pronoun ‘yours’ after noun + ‘of’. It would be very beneficial …

noun + OF + MINE | YOURS Read More »

This is another overlapping B2 grammar point found in a few different places in the English Grammar Profile. Point 47 in VERBS is defined as semi-modal auxiliary verbs, ‘dare’ and ‘need’. The two examples are both in the negative. And the comments in the EGP are very interesting for this point: LOW FREQUENCY ITEM. There …

dare not Read More »

Leave a Comment / phrases, PREPOSITIONS / By English Grammar Pro

In this post, we investigate 11 ways ‘for’ is tagged by the claws 7 tag set.   1 FOR (IF) 140146366 preposition 1 . FOR MORE INFORMATION 77314 2 . FOR THOSE WHO 22531 3 THE CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL 19815 4 THE REASON FOR THIS IS 19424 5 . FOR ME , 18503 6 …

FOR Read More »

Leave a Comment / B2, MODALITY, NEGATIVE / By English Grammar Pro

Something that is not needed can be expressed with ‘need not’.   For example: But while we are determined by history,  it is my personal belief that we need not be trapped by history,  and we need not be the victims of history. TED In the English Grammar Profile, B2 point 126 in the category of MODALITY is: need NEGATIVE However, in the English Vocabulary Profile, this is listed at A2 with the following example: You needn’t bring any food. iWeb search for need …

need not Read More »

Let’s look at what intermediate students can do with indefinite pronouns. In the English Grammar Profile, B1 point 44 in ADJECTIVES/position is defined as: adjective or adjective phrase after pronouns like ‘something’, ‘nothing’, ‘somewhere’, ‘nowhere’ Point 29 in NOUNs is defined as: phrases with an indefinite pronoun + adjective or clause. We have crossed out …

‘nothing wrong’ (indefinite pronoun + adjective | clause) Read More »