Song lesson - Nicest thing by Kate Nash

Practise I wish constructions with this song and and a couple of exercises

Random-ise: Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, -ize and -ise verbs

This is part of an investigation I've been doing into the use and spelling of -ize suffix verbs and their spelling (-ize or -ise) in British English. For more details, related posts and the methods I've used, see the -ize / -ise page.

Random-ize: The King James Bible, -ize and -ize verbs

This is part of an investigation I've been doing into the use and spelling of -ize suffix verbs and their spelling (-ize or -ise) in British English. For more details, related posts and the methods I've used, see the -ize / -ise page.

Random-ise: Robert Cawdrey's A Table Alphabeticall, -ize and -ise verbs

"Robert Cawdrey's Table Alphabeticall, published in 1604, was the first single-language English dictionary ever published. It lists approximately 3000 words, defining each one with a simple and brief description. A number of the words listed in the 'Table Alphabeticall' were thought of as 'hard' - or unfamiliar to the general public - as they were derived from foreign or ancient languages such as Hebrew, Greek, Latin or French." - British Library

This is part of an investigation I've been doing into the use and spelling of -ize suffix verbs and their spelling (-ize or -ise) in British English. For more details, related posts and the methods I've used, see the -ize / -ise page.

More random thoughts on examples of the passive

Last year I wrote a post listing some unnatural examples of the passive I've found in books and on websites from people who should know better (linked to below).

It's fashionable in some circles to denigrate the passive (which we'll talk more of in a moment)- although many of the people who do so can't always recognise the passive themselves - which I've also written about - and I can understand why the people who do this might (and do) use silly examples to show how 'bad' they think the passive is.

But there are some more neutral or even supportive observers who also seem to come up with some rather strange examples, which is a bit puzzling, to say the least.

The twelve tense system in English - an overview

Not everyone agrees on what comprises a tense. It is common to talk about present, past and future tenses, but some people think a tense must involve inflection (or morphological change), that is a change in the form of the verb itself, as in Latin and many European languages, so they recognise only two tenses - past and present. On the other hand, one early grammar book talked of six tenses.

In EFL/ESL we usually work on the basis that a tense combines a time (present, past or future) with an aspect (simple, continuous, perfect simple or perfect continuous). This gives us twelve active tenses. In theory we could also have twelve passive tenses, but in practice, only eight are used.

Although I will be talking a bit about individual tenses, my main aim here is to show how, in this way of looking at things, all twelve tenses fit into a neat, easy to understand scheme.

Random-ise: Jonathan Swift, ise and ise verbs

This is part of an investigation I've been doing into the use and spelling of -ize suffix verbs and their spelling (-ize or -ise) in British English. For more details, related posts and the methods I've used, see the -ize / -ise page.