We raised her to speak her mind. listen The phrase “speak her mind” means to express her thoughts and feelings honestly and openly, even if they are not popular or may upset others. It is a phrase that is often used to describe people who are not afraid to speak their truth, even if it means going against the […]
lexical verb + possessive determiner + noun Read More »
C2 example: Our country owes its creation to a man they declared insane. listen C1 example: And he will do his damndest to put your mind at rest. listen An iWeb search for: _VV _APPGE _NN to_II 1 MAKE YOUR WAY TO 9604 B2 Please make your way to the nearest exits. listen 2 MAKE THEIR WAY TO 6953 3 MADE THEIR WAY TO 6103 4 CHANGED ITS NAME TO 5283 B2 possessive determiner
lexical verb + possessive determiner + noun + TO prepositional phrase Read More »
A search in the iWeb corpus for: at _APPGE _NN 1 AT HIS HOME 25665 *Although this is basic grammar, it often reports the locations of crimes such as murder. For example: A man has been shot dead at his home in Sydney’s eastern suburbs last night. listen 2 AT YOUR FINGERTIPS 24481 C2 What’s it like to have such power at your fingertips? listen 3 AT YOUR DISPOSAL 17599
preposition + possessive determiner + noun Read More »
The text discusses the use of interjections in language, which are words that express sudden feelings and emotions such as pleasure, anger, disappointment, shock, surprise, and excitement. These words often come with punctuation marks and are usually inserted between sentences.
The text also presents a search result from the NOW corpus for the frequency of interjections. The most frequent interjections are ‘YES’ and ‘NO’, which are sometimes classified as interjections but do not always express emotion or act as calls for attention. They are sometimes classified as a part of speech in their own right: sentence words or word sentences.
The text provides examples of how ‘YES’, ‘NO’, and other interjections like ‘OH’, ‘YEAH’, ‘HEY’, etc., are used to express various emotions. It also notes that there is no entry in the English Profile or Collins dictionary for ‘yes’ used to express emotion, suggesting this is not an A1 cando. However, ‘Yeah’ is listed at A2 as an exclamation, and ‘No’ as an exclamation is listed in the Collins dictionary at A2.
The text concludes with a list of the top 100 most common interjections according to the NOW corpus, with ‘YES’, ‘NO’, and ‘OH’ being the top three.
interjections & other sentence words 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 at B1: not believe/understand/hear/say, etc. a word = anything A search in iWeb corpus for: _XX _VV a word 1 N’T SAY A WORD 1726 Don’t say a word against my father. listen 2 NOT SAY A WORD 756 3 N’T UNDERSTAND A WORD 608 It was brilliant, even though I didn’t understand a word of it. listen 4 N’T BELIEVE A
In this post, we give examples of 7 different ways the noun ‘world‘ is used in English. In the English Vocabulary Profile at A2: your world = your life and experiences A search in NOW corpus for: _APPGE world 1 OUR WORLD 67437 This may be literally our planet. 2 THEIR WORLD 33865 Note that ‘their’
A1 point 9 in the category of DETERMINERS is defined:
possessive determiners ‘my’, ‘your’, ‘his’, ‘her’ and ‘our’ before nouns.
my | your | his | her | our + NOUN Read More »
In the English Grammar Profile, A2 point 3 in the category of PREPOSITIONS is defined:
‘JUST’ + to modify prepositions.
JUST + preposition Read More »
When a quantifying determiner and a possessive determiner are used together before a noun, they indicate the quantity of something that belongs to someone or something else. For instance, in the sentence “For most of my life, I was terrified of ghosts,” the phrase “most of my” signifies a large portion of the speaker’s life. Similarly, in “All of our fathers enter our doors feeling hopeless,” the phrase “all of our” refers to every father associated with a certain group. In “Many of his senior team thought he was crazy,” the phrase “many of his” denotes a large number of a specific group associated with a person.
quantifying determiner + OF + possessive determiner + noun phrase Read More »
The formation of noun phrases using ‘my’ or ‘your’ + superlative adjective + noun in English grammar.
A noun phrase acts as a noun and describes a noun, while a superlative adjective compares a noun to the rest of a group and indicates the highest degree of a quality.
For instance, in the sentence “That’s your biggest mistake,” ‘your biggest mistake’ is a noun phrase where ‘biggest’ is the superlative adjective and ‘mistake’ is the noun.
The text also provides examples of such phrases commonly used in English, such as “your best bet,” “my best friend,” “your best friend,” and so on. It mentions that using A2 vocabulary or higher in this structure will probably be considered B1 context.
MY | YOUR + superlative + noun Read More »
In the English Grammar Profile, B2 point 55 in the category of DETERMINERS & possessives is defined as ‘s after a noun phrase with ‘of’ to indicate possession. There is no mention that there must be no following noun after ‘s However, there is a C2 point that covers an ellipted following noun. For example:
