I am reading higher than normal alcohol levels in your bloodstream, sir. listen to the pronunciation “higher than normal” refers to the alcohol levels in the bloodstream being above the standard or average range. This could be due to recent consumption of alcohol. The exact range for “normal” can vary, but typically, a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of 0.08% is considered legally impaired in […]
comparative + THAN + adjective Read More »
Suffixes are letters added to the end of a word to change its meaning or grammatical function. When words end in ‘ized‘ they are past simple verbs, past participle verbs or adjectives. If we look at the clearly tagged words below: (jj): 22 adjectives (vvn): 17 past participles (vvd): 9 past simple Here are iWeb
BE + adjective + NEWS FOR expresses an opinion or a reaction to some information. For example, you might say, “It’s good news for the environment that the government banned plastic bags.” The adjective describes how the speaker feels about the news, and the preposition FOR introduces who or what the news affects. For example,
BE + adjective + NEWS FOR Read More »
The phrase “return to normal” means to go back to the way things were before a change or disruption. It can be used in a variety of contexts, such as: After a natural disaster: “The city is slowly returning to normal after the hurricane.” After a pandemic: “We hope to return to normal soon after the pandemic
lexical verb + preposition + NORMAL Read More »
The 13 most common B2 adjectives found after the definite article are: actual, appropriate, current, entire, global, major, official, overall, potential, primary, royal, standard, ultimate A search in iWeb for: the _JJ 1 THE BEST 4698241 2 THE OTHER 3603343 3 THE NEW 3566930 4 THE ONLY 2604971 5 THE FOLLOWING 2598260 6 THE RIGHT
Are you allowed to say that?
Are you attracted to me?
Were you born in a barn?
What’s it called?
passive questions VS questions with adjectives Read More »
LEAVE ME ALONE
TAKE IT EASY
GET IT RIGHT
DRIVING ME CRAZY
lexical verb + noun phrase + adjective Read More »
We are interested in finding the most common noun phrases after ‘open to‘ that complete more abstract ideas such as willingness to consider something or something is likely to happen. In the English Vocabulary Profile: open to discussion/suggestions, etc. = C1 willing to consider a discussion/suggestions, etc. open to abuse/criticism, etc. = C2 likely to
OPEN TO ( adjective + prepositional phrase ) Read More »
In this post, we explore long complex noun phrases in the object position after the verb ‘have‘. Here is a search in the iWeb corpus for: _VH _A _JJ _NN of 1 HAS A LONG HISTORY OF 12459 C1+ Huff Hoyle has a long history of bad business practices. listen 2 HAVE A WIDE RANGE OF 9459 B1 You have a wide range
HAVE + article + adjective + noun + OF Read More »
The CLAWS tagger does not always tag the difference between adjectives and past participles perfectly, so we do a search in the iWeb corpus with the query: _VB *ed to_II 1 IS COMMITTED TO 117911 C2 adjective It‘s true, I could use someone who is committed to putting an end to Mr. White. Live by Night 2 BE ADDED TO 115128
BE + *ed + to PREPOSITIONAL PHRASE Read More »
1 A MEMBER OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY
2 A HELL OF A LONG TIME
3 THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
article + noun + OF + article + adjective + noun Read More »
In this post, we search for the most common adjectives found before the noun ‘order‘. For example: Now, that might sound pretty good, but ask yourself what would happen under our current economic and political order? TED A search in the NOW corpus for _J order_N 1 PUBLIC ORDER 37962 2 RESTRAINING ORDER 35066 3 STAY-AT-HOME ORDER 21381 4 NEW ORDER 20398 5 MIDDLE ORDER 16531 6 INTERIM
self-driving self-employed self-esteem self-determination
SELF-word (hyphenated prefix) Read More »
The following grammar pattern does not have an entry in the English Profile. It relates to questions with stranded prepositions which are generally pegged at B2. It also relates to either A1 possession or ownership = have got or A2 modality = have got to do something. The overall complexity of this pattern is at least
What + HAVE + PRONOUN + got to be Read More »
Here are the most common adjectives ending in -ful found in the NOW corpus: *Note, 60% of them are not included in the English Vocabulary Profile. The twelve most common adjectives that end with the suffix -ful all have positive meanings: 1 SUCCESSFUL 1589851 2 POWERFUL 1151163 3 BEAUTIFUL 1091675 4 WONDERFUL 595077 5 USEFUL
FUL adjective suffix Read More »
At A2 level in the English Vocabulary Profile, the adjective ‘own’ is used with a possessive to emphasize ownership or belonging. This usage is common in advanced phrases, sometimes in C1 adverbial phrases describing the manner in which something is done. ‘Own’ can also function as a pronoun, referring back to a noun phrase. Additionally, ‘own’ can mean ‘alone’ at B1 level.
Examples of usage include sentences like “The least you could do is allow me to live here in my own way,” emphasizing personal ownership, and “Feel free to use our pool, but use it at your own risk,” indicating individual responsibility. Moreover, phrases like “on their own” and “of their own” are frequently used to express independence and ownership.
Furthermore, ‘own’ can be part of idiomatic expressions such as “mind your own business,” which means to tell someone in a rude way not to inquire about something private.
possessive determiner + OWN Read More »
In the English Vocabulary Profile, come in useful|handy are C2. A search in iWeb corpus for: COME IN _JJ . 1 COME IN HANDY. 9001 2 COMES IN HANDY. 4142 Huh, comes in handy on the cash register. listen 3 CAME IN HANDY. 660 4 COME IN USEFUL. 257 All these moves will come in useful in real life when she grows up. listen 5 COMES IN BLACK. 116 This structure
COME IN + adjective Read More »
In the English Vocabulary Profile: values = B2 the beliefs people have about what is right and wrong and what is most important in life, which control their behaviour A search in NOW corpus for: _JJ values_N 1 DEMOCRATIC VALUES 11972 Give a full and detailed account of who supports you, where your arms and supplies come from and that your aim is the overthrow of established democratic values. listen 2 SHARED VALUES 10229 3 MORAL VALUES 8609 4 CULTURAL VALUES
adjective + VALUES Read More »
While searching for structures in the English Vocabulary Profile, we sometimes find structures we are not sure why they are listed at a certain complexity. For example: walk NOUN A2 a journey that you make by walking, often for enjoyment a short/ten-minute, etc. walk = B2 a journey that takes a short time/ten minutes, etc.
hyphenated time words Read More »
Why say “is of interest” instead of “is interesting“? ‘is of + noun‘ is more formal and in academic writing, we use the noun form of a word more often. More importantly, ‘of+noun’ functions as a noun in this position. Therefore, it can often collocate correctly with modifiers. For example: “greatest interest” is much more
BE + of NOUN PHRASE Read More »
