we – English Grammar Profiler
In this post, we put common lexical bundles that French EFL students use in their writing, through our GRAMMAR PROFILER. Magali Paquot wrote a paper about Lexical bundles. Here are the significant forms found in the ICLE – FR: Here are our expert examples: You‘ll be tempted to tear it off. listen They may never be considered as such by religion, but they are just as important as the ones in your textbooks. listen Kaleb‘s art can be viewed as deeply rooted in the pop minimalism of Aureur or Baer. …
English lexical bundles and their most frequent equivalent forms in French Read More »
We love the English Grammar Profile, however, there are often times when many grammar points should be one grammar point. For example, there are many points dealing with basic pronouns at the A1 level. 1 ‘I’, ‘you’, ‘he’, ‘she’, ‘it’, ‘we’ and ‘they’ in the subject position before a verb in statements. I like it here, but I don’t like the name. …
basic pronouns in English Read More »
At A1 in the category of MODALITY, there are two points: affirmative question form. ‘can’ to make a request. and in the category of QUESTIONS: a limited range of modal verbs + subject + main verb to form ‘yes/no’ *Because these points clash with higher levels, the main difference to note is that all the …
Can you | we ? (QUESTION) Read More »
Let’s look at how ‘hoped’ is used to make requests and orders less direct. Even if we would usually say I hope + something happens, we can push the verb ‘hope’ into the past tense not to refer to time. We often do tense shifts in English to express modality. In this case, to express …
hoped + CLAUSE (polite) Read More »
C2 English Grammar Profile point 38 in the category of PRESENT/continuous is defined as: POLITENESS: with verbs that are not usually used in this form to make statements and requests sound less direct. EXAMPLES: I am asking us to use our power to choose. I am asking us to level up. TED We are asking businesses not to produce and consumers not to go out and consume. TED An iWeb search for I|We am|are asking|wanting * …
I am asking | wanting (polite) Read More »
The English Grammar Profile C1 point 10 in the category of FOCUS is defined as: ‘What’ + noun or pronoun + verb phrase as subject + ‘be’, for focus. Note that Pearson lists this point: GSE 59 B2 clauses with ‘What …’ to emphasise the topic or main point. For example: What we need now is a good night’s sleep. What I said was that I don’t need your help. …
‘What you see is what you get.’ (CLEFT CLAUSE) Read More »
Here are 2 examples of post-modifying a superlative adverb phrase with a clause containing an ellipted modal verb: I do the best I can with what I have. I go about my business, make money, help society the best I can and try to promote free trade in this world. listen You know, I did the best I could with what I had. listen C1 English Grammar Profile point 118 in the category of CLAUSES is defined as: ‘the best’ as a superlative adverb + pronoun + ellipted ‘can’ or ‘could’. …
the best + PRONOUN + can | could Read More »
The modal verbs: Will / Shall are often used with the pronouns I and we to show our intentions and to make promises with future simple. In the mid-position, the adverbs: ‘always’ and ‘never’ can make it quite clear that these statements are intended to be true for a long time. For example: This is a day we shall …
will | shall + always | never (long-term intention) Read More »
B2 point 90 in the category of PRONOUNS / generic is defined as: ‘we’ and ‘us’ to refer to people in general. This is a point that requires manual searching in the corpora for the ‘usage’ definition to be met. A search for we|us in iWeb is not possible because they are such common words. The …
WE | US (people in general) Read More »