English words of German origin
English is a Germanic language, which means it is in the same family as German. Because of this many words are very similar or the same in both languages. This article is not about those, it is about words that came to modern English from modern German. We also have other posts about words from […]
American and British spelling differences (part 2)
Last time we wrote about our/or, ise/ize and yse/ize. This time we are continuing with spelling differences between American and British English. RE vs ER: theatre and theater This is probably the best known difference between American and British spellings. Most words that end in an unstressed -er in British English are spelt with -re […]
The passive voice in English
The passive voice is one of those things that really confuse students, not because it’s hard but because you first need to understand some grammar words and ideas that we don’t really think about in daily life. But once you understand those, it’s actually quite easy! You probably have seen complicated diagrams like the one […]
Reported speech
Reported speech or indirect speech is a tricky part of English learning because there are many things to think about, and it gets used a lot so there’s no way to avoid it. Even if you do try to avoid it, you will hear people using it and if you don’t understand how it works […]
