Image by master1305 on Freepik hrasal verbs are special phrases made by combining a verb (the action word) with one or more little words called particles. These particles can be prepositions or adverbs, like "up," "down," "in," or "out." When we put them together, we get new meanings that aren't always easy to guess.
Phrasal verbs are very common in spoken English wherein we often use shorter, more casual expressions to express ideas more efficiently, which is crucial in fast-paced conversations. Below are some of the phrasal verbs that are frequently used whenever we are talking about how we relate to other people. 1. Get along (with someone) - To have a good relationship or rapport (pronounced as /ra-pawr/) with someone.
2. Make up (with someone) - To reconcile or resolve a conflict with someone.
3. Break up (with someone) - To end a romantic relationship with someone.
4. Fall for (someone) - To develop strong romantic feelings for someone.
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1. Fall apart: To disintegrate or break into pieces.
This phrasal verb can also be used figuratively to describe when people break down or lose control of their emotions.
2. Fall down: To collapse or fall to the ground.
3. Fall for: To be deceived or tricked by someone or something.
4. Fall in: To collapse inward or cave in.
6. Fall out: To have a disagreement or argument with someone which ends the relationship.
7. Fall over: To lose balance and tip or roll over.
8. Fall through: To fail to happen or materialize as planned.
9. Fall under: To be categorized or included in a particular group or classification.
10. Fall back on: To resort to something as a backup or alternative plan.
Idioms are already a confusing part for any language learner. Adding to this perplexity are idioms that sound very much alike such as, "to run circles around someone" and "to run around in circles." They might sound similar at first, but they hold distinct meanings and are used in different contexts. In this article, we'll untangle these idioms and provide examples to illustrate their differences. 1. "To Run Circles Around Someone" When someone is said to "run circles around someone," it means that they show a remarkable level of skill, competence, or ability in comparison to another person. This idiom underscores the superiority or dominance of one individual over another in a specific skill or activity. It is often used to highlight the vast difference in capability between the two parties. Examples:
2. "To Run Around in Circles" Conversely, "to run around in circles" describes a situation where people or activities appear to be busy but lack purpose, direction, or progress. It conveys a sense of aimlessness, confusion, or inefficiency. When individuals or groups are said to be running around in circles, they may be doing or talking about the same thing without achieving meaningful results. Examples:
In summary, while both idioms involve the concept of "circles," they convey entirely different meanings and are used to describe distinct scenarios:
"To run circles around someone" praises exceptional competence and skill, highlighting one person's superiority over another in a particular area. "To run around in circles" depicts a state of disorganization or aimlessness, where people appear busy but make little or no progress. Understanding the nuances of idiomatic expressions like these can greatly enhance your ability to communicate effectively in English. So, next time you hear these idioms, you'll be able to run circles around any potential confusion regarding their meanings! What are phrasal verbs?Phrasal verbs are phrases consisting of a verb and another element such as an adverb or a preposition, or both, and has a meaning that differs from the meaning of its separate parts.
Phrasal verbs are very commonly used in spoken language and presents a challenge for many non-native speakers, especially since many phrasal verbs use the same verb but only change the particle (the preposition or adverb) and then mean something totally different. Additionally, phrasal verbs, just like normal words, can have more than one meaning. Here is a list of common phrasal verbs used in the workplace as well as related phrasal verbs that can be confused with them: 1. to take on (something) or to take (something) on Meaning: a. to accept a job or responsibility, especially one that is challenging or difficult Examples:
b. to fight or compete against someone or something
2. to look into (something) Meaning: to examine or carefully consider the facts about a situation, problem or idea
3. to turn (someone/something) down Meaning: to reject or say no to someone; to refuse someone's offer or request
4. to get ahead Meaning: to be successful in the work that you do, or in society in general; to make progress, especially more than others have done
5. to step down Meaning: to give up a job or position; to resign from a position, usually in order to let someone else take their place
6. gear to/towards; to gear (something) to/towards/for somebody or something; to be geared towards (passive verb) Meaning: - to design or organize something so that it is suitable for a specific purpose, situation, or group; - designed in order to achieve a particular purpose
7. to squeeze (somebody/something) in Meaning: to manage to do something even when you are very busy or don't have enough time;
8. to cut something back / to cut back (on) something Meaning: to reduce something; to spend less, use less, or do less, of something
9. to wrap up something / to wrap something up Meaning: - to complete something successfully; - to settle the final details of a job or an agreement in a satisfactory way; - to conclude or bring something to an end;
10. to sell off something/to sell something off Meaning: - to sell something cheaply in order to get rid of them or because you need the money - to get rid of remaining or unsold items by selling them at especially low prices - to sell all or part of an industry or company
When we're asked to give an adjective, we may likely go for words like beautiful, good, bad, or happy. However, adjectives ending in -ing and -ed are just as commonly used in everyday language and they are often a source of confusion among English learners. For example, we have the pair interesting versus interested, or disappointing versus disappointed, and a very commonly confused pair, bored and boring. Sometimes you might hear somebody say, “I’m boring” but what they actually mean is “I’m bored”. He or she is feeling bored. So first, let’s understand the difference between -ing adjectives and -ed adjectives.
Let’s have more examples for –ing adjectives:
Now let’s try to take a look at two sentences with errors regarding adjectives ending in –ing or –ed. 1. I'm interesting to know how you accomplished that.
Now that we’ve talked about when to use –ing and –ed adjectives correctly, let’s have more exercises! I will explain the answers to the first two items in this exercise, but you’ll have to answer the rest. Then you can check your answers at the end of this article. 1. The professor was [ annoyed/annoying ] with the students who did not follow her safety instructions.
2. My grades were really [ disappointed/disappointing ] last semester so I vowed to work harder this term.
3. The sudden increase in the number of infections is [ worried/worrying ]. 4. She got [ worried/worrying ] when the team did not call her for a few days. 5. Jessie is just not [ interested/interesting] in sci-fi movies. She prefers romantic comedies. 6. It was my first time to experience such a strong earthquake. It was [ terrified/terrifying ]. 7. We were all [ surprised/surprising ] when she said she was quitting her job. 8. I had high expectations for this movie and I was not [disappointed/disappointing ]. 9. The test was quite difficult. It’s [ amazed/amazing ] that I passed at all. 10. The plot twists in the story are quite [ confused/confusing ]. 11. That horror movie shows a lot of [ frightened/ frightening ] scenes. 12. After checking the quality of the products, I was quite [ satisfied/ satisfying ] with them. 13. It’s my first time to travel abroad so I’m really [ excited/exciting ]. 14. My friend likes to try exotic and weird foods that some might find [ disgusted/disgusting ]. 15. On my second week just staying at home, I started to get [bored/boring]. 16. I liked the video but the soundtrack was a bit [ irritated/irritating ]. 17. His habit of being late to meetings is really [ annoyed/annoying ]. 18. I just had a very [ satisfied/satisfying ] meal at the restaurant you recommended. 19. I think this color combination is very [ pleased/pleasing ] to the eye. 20. She gave incomplete instructions so now I’m a little [ confused/confusing ]. That’s the end of our drills on adjectives ending with –ing and –ed. I really hope you found these exercises useful. As you may know, when it comes to correct grammar, you have to train your ear to listen for the correct patterns and word usage so you may want to do the drills a couple of times until you get all the answers correctly. Answers: 3. worrying 4. worried 5. interested 6. terrifying 7. surprised 8. disappointed 9. amazing 10. confusing 11. frightening 12. satisfied 13. excited 14. disgusting 15. bored 16. irritating 17. annoying 18. satisfying 19. pleasing 20. confused Today, let us have some sentence correction practice with the following seven sentences:
What is the common error among all of them? You would be right if you said that they are missing the preposition 'to'. Let's have the first one: 1. I've been listening his music for five years.
The second sentence is still about the verb 'listen': 2. I'm always listening 70s and 80s music.
To hammer home this point, let's have one more sentence, still using the word 'listen': 3. I've just started listening Post Malone.
The fourth sentence is about a movie that is familiar to many: 4. He came Marty's house from the future to warn him about something.
Let's have a few examples from the book, 'The Hobbit': At the beginning of the book, the dwarf Gloin says: "In fact, if it had not been for the sign on the door, I should have been sure we had come to the wrong house." Bilbo answers: "I am quite sure you have come to the wrong house." Besides that conversation, here is another sentence from the book that uses 'come to': "The dwarves then noticed that they had come to the edge of a ring where elf-fires had been." (On a side note, and in case you are curious, 'dwarfs' was the standard plural form of the word dwarf. It was J.R.R. Tolkien, the author of the book the Hobbit, who popularized the plural form 'dwarves'.) Let's move on to the fifth sentence: 5. There are no masks to export other countries.
For example:
How about you try using 'export to' by answering the question:
The next sentence shows a very common mistake that it deserves a video of its own: 6. It's my first time to go a concert.
As mentioned at the beginning, we also use 'to' to state a destination. Examples: We go to a shopping mall. Someone goes to a wedding. People will go to the beach. To practice this pattern, how about answering this question:
We have reached our 7th and last sentence for today which is this one: 7. I have not replied her message yet.
We reply or respond to a message, a letter, an email and so on. We reply to somebody or something. This means that we are giving a spoken or written answer. For example: Do you reply or respond to emails as soon as you read them? I sometimes don't because I tend to think too much. How about you? Anyway, we also reply or respond to questions, comments, compliments, and criticisms. Practice by answering the following questions:
All right, that's the end of our sentence correction for today. Kindly note that 'to' is not the only preposition that we use with these verbs. There are lots of other prepositions used with these same verbs that would definitely change their meaning. We just have to practice a lot to remember which prepositions are used with which verbs. However, below is a short list of common verbs that are used with 'to'. There are more verbs followed by to than what you can see in this list but these are some of the most common ones. We have seen some of these verbs in the sentence corrections above. Let's briefly run through this list and have simple examples for each one. Common verbs followed by the preposition to: Go to - I go to the gym every weekend. Come to - Will you come to my birthday party? Drive to - Let me drive you to the airport. Journey to - The journey to the Arctic was not easy. Point to - He pointed to a house across the street. Turn to - The lady turned to the man on her right. Give to - Please give this letter to his assistant. Offer to - The manager offered the job to someone who deserved it. Send to - I will send these flowers to my mother. Adapt to - The new employee has adapted to the system quickly. Add to - Do you have anything to add to my proposal? Belong to - This jacket belongs to the man who just left. Consent to - The patients have to consent to this procedure first. Devote to - He devotes his weekends to gardening. Happen to - What happened to your car? Lead to - This situation often leads to bad customer experiences. Listen to - I tried talking to him but he won't listen to me. Explain to - The mayor explained the new rules to his staff. Object to - He objected to being called a traitor. React to - Everyone reacted to the news with shock. Refer to - Please refer to page 90 on your manual. Reply to - Please reply to this email on or before Friday. Respond to - How do you want me to respond to their invitation? Speak to - May I please speak to the manager? Talk to - I wanted to talk to the staff before the party. Say to - She always knows what to say to guests to make them comfortable. Apologize to - You should apologize to that lady. Agree to - I did not agree to that plan at all. Write to - I was told to write to the manager about this complaint. I hope these examples have given you some practice material in terms of using the preposition 'to' when it's needed. Repetition is, of course, key to getting grammar structures right. I will be posting more videos of sentence corrections showing common errors among EFL learners. If you find these tips useful, please subscribe and hit the notification bell so that you'll get notified if I have a new upload. Which sentence is correct between these two:
If your answer was b, you got it right! So what's the difference? Advice /ədˈvɑɪs/ or /ad-vahys/ is a noun that means a recommendation or suggestion about what to do or how to handle a situation. Advice is something that we get from friends, bosses, or lawyers. Advise /ədˈvɑɪz/ or /ad-vahyz/ is a verb that means 'to offer an opinion or suggestion' or in other words, to give advice to someone. Advise is something that we do. Note that they also sound a little differently. Advice is pronounced with an /s/ sound, as in “ice,” while the verb advise is pronounced with a /z/ sound like the “-ize” in "size". Regarding their different forms: Advice is uncountable so we would never say 'advices'. We can, however, say pieces of advice. Advise, on the other hand, is a regular verb with the usual past, present and future tenses: advised, advise, will advise. Let's have some examples and common expressions: 1. People run away from her at parties because she's always giving unsolicited advice. Unsolicited advice refers to advise that is being given without being asked, and is therefore usually unwanted. 2. I usually avoid telling people that I'm a lawyer because people always try to ask for free legal advice. 3. His manager advised him to accept the terms being offered in the contract. 4. Please advise your students to upload requirements through the official website. 5. That's dangerous. I wouldn't advise you to do that. Exercises: Advice or advise? 1. She took the trip against her doctor's __________________. 2. The team manager should ________________ his team members about the appropriate steps to be taken. 3. I will ask Prof. Norton to ____________ us on how to proceed. 4. I could always count on him for good _____________________. 5. Experts _____________ that hours spent by kids in front of a screen should be limited. Characteristic of the English language, we have certain expressions that are paired only with specific words or structures. Below is the list of special expressions that are used with verb-ing or gerunds. Gerunds are verbs ending in -ing, such as running, skydiving, and cycling, that function as nouns. For example, in the sentence "Skydiving is a very expensive hobby", the word skydiving is a noun, not a verb, that refers to an activity and is used as a subject.
1. 'have' expressions a. have trouble + verb-ing - I had trouble getting the car to the garage. b. have difficulty/have a difficult time + verb-ing - The students have difficulty understanding your instructions. c. have a problem + verb-ing - She said she was having problems finishing her manuscript. d. have a hard time + verb-ing - I told the boss I had a hard time marketing the product to new customers. e. have fun + verb-ing - Did you have fun taking pictures at the theme park? f. have a good time + verb-ing - I hope the children are having a good time visiting their cousins. 2. spend (one's) time + verb-ing expressions Examples: He spent the summer catching catfish near the lake. Did you spend the whole morning playing video games? I spent time at the park just watching the cherry blossoms shed their petals. 3. waste (one's) time + verb-ing expressions The professor told us not to waste our time reading this paper. Annie wasted no time in preparing for the long trip. They say the boss often wastes thirty minutes lecturing the group at the start of every meeting. 4. stand, sit or lie + expression of place + verb-ing I must have stood there looking silly in my costume. We would sit on that hillside painting quietly for hours every day. He lay low on the grass hoping he wouldn't be seen. 5. find or catch + noun/pronoun + verb-ing They caught him trying to sneak out company property. The found the children frolicking dangerously close to the swollen river. I came by this sentence today while doing an edit:
You see, the expression [to have difficulty] is one among a special group of expressions that are followed by a verb-ing or a gerund. A gerund is a noun formed from an -ing verb which usually refers to an activity (ex. swimming, hiking), process (ex. aging, weathering) , or state (believing, loving). We then have the structure:
Here are examples:
Note though, that we can also use the preposition "in" when using this expression, as in:
Applying this rule about using gerunds with 'have difficulty', we can then go back to our sentence earlier:
If you are interested in this special group of expressions used with gerunds, find more examples in the following blog post: Feel free to practice writing your own sentences with the expression [have difficulty + verb-ing in the comments below! Do you sometimes have trouble with uncountable nouns? Watch our short video below or read through this lesson to learn about uncountable nouns and how to minimize your mistakes when using uncountable nouns. So what are uncountable nouns anyway? The Macmillan Dictionary defines it as:
The Cambridge Dictionary says that an uncountable noun is:
In other words, uncountable nouns refer to abstract things and substances that we cannot count because they don't have separate elements. The thing is, it may be easier for an English learner to imagine abstract things as uncountable nouns but there are tricky nouns as well in English that refer to concrete things but are still uncountable, like for example, the noun 'garbage'. You will encounter some nouns like this in our list. The two definitions of uncountable nouns mentioned above give us an idea of what we need to remember with regard to uncountable nouns, also called non-count nouns or mass nouns. Let us review these points below:
10 Commonly Confused Uncountable Nouns Let's us now look at our list of ten commonly confused uncountable nouns. Please note that these ten words are just a few of the many uncountable nouns that cause errors among English learners. For this reason, it is likely that there will be a follow up of this video presenting another list of problematic uncountable nouns. 1. information - Even when you are talking about boxes and boxes of files and data, we should still say "information" and not "informations." Examples:
2. equipment / machinery - Somebody who has a roomful of tools, or even a yardful of tools, has plenty of equipment or machinery, not "equipments" or "machineries". Examples:
3. research - Journals, books, all sorts of academic papers, interviews, experiments -- all of these can be classified as research, but not "researches." Examples:
4. trash/garbage/rubbish - We unfortunately generate too much trash that one day, the earth may drown in trash, but when that happens, we would still not refer to it as "trashes", just trash. In American English, 'garbage' and 'trash' are usually used while in British English, 'rubbish' is the more common word to refer to things that are thrown away. Examples:
5. evidence - The Oxford English Dictionary notes that "In general English, evidence is always uncountable. However, in academic English, the plural evidences is sometimes used such as in the sentence, 'The cave contained evidences of prehistoric settlement.'" Since we are mostly talking about everyday English, then we would use evidence as uncountable 99% of the time. We would, for example, say pieces of evidence, a lot of evidence, or little evidence. We would never say two evidences or many evidences. Examples:
6. advice - There is bad advice, terrible advice, as well as prudent advice that we don't want to listen to because we just want to do something our own way. There are people who give unsolicited advice and there are likely more who don't want to be on the receiving end of it. Whichever kind of advice you are getting, remember never to say "advices". Examples:
7. stuff - What kind of stuff do you collect? Clothes? Vintage toys? Handbags? Art? Memories? There are many things that fall under the definition of stuff, which is a word we use to refer to things, abstract or concrete, without mentioning the thing itself. No matter how much stuff you have, we will always use the singular form "stuff" and not "stuffs". Examples:
8. furniture - You'd think that furniture is a countable noun given that we can count individual pieces of chairs, tables, beds and couches, right? Unfortunately, that's not the case. Think of furniture as a word that collectively refers to all the furnishings in a house and thereby, we cannot say one furniture or even ten "furnitures". Examples:
9. luggage - Do you travel light or do you usually bring the kitchen sink? However way you like to travel, everything you bring with you will simply be called luggage, never "luggages". Examples:
10. jewelry - Just like 'furniture', jewelry seems to refer to individual pieces but whether you are talking about just one ring or a chest full of treasures, both will be referred to simply as jewelry and not "jewelries". By the way, jewelry is the American spelling while the British spell it as 'jewellery'. Examples:
Please feel free to leave a comment if you have questions and share this lesson if you found it useful. Image credits: trash - photo created by jcomp - www.freepik.com luggage - Photo created by jcomp - www.freepik.com |
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