Vocabulary – the words which make up our language.
This category of articles is all about these words and how we use them and sometimes how they affect the way in which we teach English.
In English every sentence starts with a Capital Letter (or Uppercase) and usually ends with a period or full stop. For example these are all wrong: * the film has finished. * where is she? * in 1492 Columbus sailed off into the sunset. * an asterisk at the beginning […]
A root is the very simplest form of a word without any affixes or changes. It cannot be made any smaller and is sometimes known as the base word. For example, take the word important. This consists of 3 parts: im (a prefix) + port (the root) + ant (a […]
What is the past form of pay? This often causes problems for students. The verb pay means to give money to someone and it is usually an irregular verb. I pay $15 each month for my internet connection. Last month I paid $15 for my internet connection. I have paid […]
An adverb modifies a word, phrase, or sentence. It tells us more about them and changes the meaning slightly. Often we say it tells us how something happens: He paints. He paints wildly. In this example wildly is an adverb which tells us how he paints. Regular Adverbs In most […]
A compound word is a word made up from two or more other words joined together. They are often created to describe a new concept or idea and are thus neologisms. As a simple example, take the words foot and ball. These were brought together to describe the game: football. […]