go

wild

A search for nouns collocating with ‘wild‘ in the NOW corpus: 1 CARD 41920 This most common collocate is unlisted in the English Vocabulary Profile.  A google definition of ‘wild card‘: a playing card that can have any value, suit, colour, or other property in a game at the discretion of the player holding it. …

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nowhere else

In the English Vocabulary Profile at B1, the adverb ‘nowhere‘ means ‘not anywhere’.  At A2, ‘else’ means ‘in addition,’ ‘different’ or ‘other’.  Together the words means ‘no other place‘ Collocates of ‘nowhere else‘ in the NOW corpus: 1 GO 5041 There was nowhere else to go after Australia. TED 2 THERE 3063 3 FOUND 1726 4 WORLD 1399 5 BECAUSE 1190 …

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English lexical bundles and their most frequent equivalent forms in French

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. …

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DO | GO + adverb

Let’s look at two of the most common verbs in English followed by adverbs. In the English Vocabulary Profile at B1: go badly/well, etc. = develop in a particular way do badly/well = to be unsuccessful/successful For example: When things go wrong, do you think they‘re gonna be there for us? listen You do not do well in school, that is because you are too clever. listen An iWeb search for: DO _RR _I 1 DO SO IN 30223 2 DO …

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GO + verbING

Listed at A2 in the English Vocabulary Profile: go + verb-ing to go somewhere to do a particular activity For example: If you guys aren’t doing anything, we‘re all gonna go surfing. listen An iWeb search for: GO _VVG 1 GO SHOPPING 15263 ‘GO SHOPPING’ is listed at A1. Yeah, that‘s a good idea, because I was gonna go shopping for a wheelchair anyway. 2 WENT MISSING 12104 ‘GO MSSING’ is not an activity, …

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CAN | WILL (affirmative declarative clause)

A1 point 1 in the category of CLAUSES is defined: affirmative declarative clauses with modal verbs. The English Grammar Profile examples include: ‘can’ and ‘will’.  Future simple modality is also covered here. Here are STUDENT EXAMPLES: A lot of farmers can read and write, but they didn’t complete high school. PELIC Chinese female level 3 writing class.   I will go to New York on Thanksgiving day. Korean female level …

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VERB + ADVERB + PREPOSITION ‘go directly to’

B2 English Grammar Profile point 51 in the category of VERBS/prepositional is defined as: adverb between the verb and the preposition For example: George says the piston’s going to go right through the block any minute now. listen   Alex, maybe if everything goes well with the paintings, Victor and I will tour and we could visit you in New York. listen An iWeb search for _VV *ly_R _II 1 GO DIRECTLY TO 17903 We‘re gonna go directly to the airport and get a plane. listen 2 BASED SOLELY ON 13229 We can’t work based solely on rumour, can we? …

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suggest | recommend | insist + present simple

C1 English Grammar Profile point 62 in the category of FUTURE is defined as: present simple after speech act verbs expressing suggestions and obligation. For example: l cannot recommend that you go heliskiing. listen   But remember where we left off because I insist you finish later. listen This is not easily located formally in corpora but we can start with a search in iWeb for the speech act verbs …

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BY phrases

In this post we explore the ways ‘by’ is tagged in large corpora such as iWeb and NOW. 1 BY (II) is clearly most commonly found to be a simple preposition. What we think happened,  but we don’t know for sure,  one killed the other,  either on purpose or by accident. And then took his own life, drowned himself. Cassandra’s Dream 2 BY (II31) (complex prepositional phrase) 1 BY WAY OF 81460 C1 Second, the other sentences which make up the body of the paragraph should support the topic sentence  …

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really ought to

In the English Grammar Profile, C1 point 180 in the category of MODALITY is defined as: ‘ought to’ with ‘really’ to add emphasis. A search on iWeb for clusters with lexical verbs: 1 REALLY OUGHT TO KNOW 254 2 REALLY OUGHT TO GET 136 3 REALLY OUGHT TO GO 76 4 REALLY OUGHT TO CONSIDER …

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