I wish and if only - Lesson and exercises

Revise I wish and if only - Lesson and exercises

Random quiz - Articles

Practise your articles with these short texts.

Even advanced students can have problems with English articles, especially if their own language, like Polish for example, doesn't have them.

Random quiz - Confusing words

Sort out those tricky confusable words with these quizzes.

Is it affect or effect? lay or lie? rise or raise? When do we use he, she and when do we use him, her etc. All this and more.

Random quiz - Prepositions

Practise your prepositions with nearly 200 example sentences.

Random quiz - Dependent prepositions after nouns

This quiz is based on a list of around 60 nouns with their dependent prepositions.

Random vocab quiz - Cooking verbs

This multifunctional quiz is based on a list of nearly 60 verbs related to cooking and food preparation.

Random quiz - Prepositions after verbs

This quiz is based on a list of over 250 verbs followed by prepositions and includes dependent prepositions and phrasal verbs.

Random quiz - Dependent prepositions after adjectives

This quiz is based on a list of around 100 adjectives with their dependent prepositions.

Political vocabulary on YouTube from the UK parliament's user channel

The UK parliament has its own YouTube channel. Perhaps of most interest to advanced learners is this series of short educational videos. These are, I imagine, aimed at young people in Britain, but they have subtitles and are quite light-hearted, so could be also be used by learners as the source of some vocabulary related to government and politics etc.

Verbs ending in -en based on adjectives

There are a small number of verbs made from adjectives (or occasionally nouns based on adjectives) with -en added, meaning to make something more of that quality the adjective describes.

These verbs fall into certain categories:

• Dimensions and shape - lengthen, shorten, straighten etc
• Light and colour - brighten, darken, whiten etc
• Density and composition - harden, soften, thicken etc
• Others - freshen, ripen, sweeten etc

These are ergative verbs, which means they can be transitive or intransitive, and where the object of the transitive verb becomes the subject of the intransitive verb.

• The hot summer ripened the fruit earlier than usual.
• The fruit ripened in the sun.

For more on ergative verbs see my post - Ergative verbs? What on earth are they?

Here are three short exercises based on -en verbs