weather

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. […]

wild Read More »

determiner + noun phrase (increasing range)

Here’s a student example of a determiner + uncountable noun: My teacher told me “enjoy the music and you will dance naturally.” PELIC Taiwanese female level 3 writing class A2 point 18 in the category of  NOUNS is defined: form simple noun phrases by pre-modifying nouns with an increasing range of determiners. A2 point 24 in the category of NOUNS: form

determiner + noun phrase (increasing range) Read More »

BE + sure | certain + to INFINITIVE

In this post, we explore modality with two adjectives followed by infinitives. Here is an imperative example of telling someone with emphasis not to forget or fail to do something: Be sure to check the weather  before you go to the airport. listen And here is an extremely advanced modification of an assertion, a bit like a negative superlative comparison:   There’s nothing more certain to ruin a beautiful relationship than marriage.

BE + sure | certain + to INFINITIVE Read More »