Advanced English

When you woke up this morning, you probably did at least five things before you left your home for school or work. Maybe you ate breakfast, took a shower, brushed your teeth, put on your clothes, and looked at the news or internet. For each thing you did, you did something else before, during or after those other things. For example: Before I ate breakfast , I did 20 minutes of  yoga . “Before I ate breakfast” is an adverb clause. In an earlier program, we told you about  adverb clauses . Today, we will show you how to shorten these clauses. Shortened adverb clauses often sound more natural and  concise  in English. We call the shortened clauses “ modifying  adverbial  phrases .” But, that name is needlessly complex for a grammar structure that is often easy for many English learners. Listen to the example again: Before I ate breakfast , I did 20 minutes of yoga. Here is how we shorten it: Before eating breakfast , I did 20 minutes of yoga. Two things are different

This week, we are going to talk about the future tenses. There are several ways to talk about future events in English. Compared to the past and present, future tenses are usually more flexible. Will Let’s start with  will . To form the simple future, use  will  and then the simple form of the verb. For example, “I will go to the store.” In everyday conversation,  will  often gets shortened ,  which can be difficult for English learners to hear. For example, “I’ll leave tomorrow” or “He’ll go to the store.” You can use  will  to express a desire to do something. “I’ll help you move tomorrow” or “I’ll answer the phone.” Be going to The second form of the simple future is  be going to . For example, “I am going to start a new job tomorrow.” Use  be going to  when you already have a plan to do something. When you say “I’m going to start a new job tomorrow,” you made the plan in the past. If you do not have a plan, use  will . If you are making a  prediction  about the fut

Hi, everyone. How’s your day going? This morning, the Metro was loud, hot and crowded…again. And the train driver kept stopping and starting so I lost my footing and  bumped  into someone. Ugh. I need a different way to get to work! But what? Oh, I know: I’ll buy a new folding bike! Oh wait – or is it a folding new bike? No, that doesn’t sound right. New folding bike is right. I just used two adjectives to describe the bike: new and folding. But why couldn’t I change the order? The answer is that they are cumulative adjectives. And, in today’s program, I’m going to tell you about them. Cumulative adjectives When we use more than one adjective to describe a noun, the adjectives are either cumulative or coordinative . Cumulative adjectives are adjectives that must appear in a special order to express the meaning that we want to express. For example, if I told a native English speaker I was buying a folding new bike, they might not understand me. You’ll note that I also used

This week we are going to talk about problems with subject-verb agreement. Basically, subjects and verbs must agree in number. If the subject is plural, its verb also must be plural. For example, you would not say, “The dog  are  friendly” because the subject  dog  is singular and the verb  are  is plural. The sentence should, of course, be, “The dog is friendly.” This is an easy example. But subject-verb agreement gets much more difficult, especially in sentences with complex subjects or when the subject is separated from its verb. Compound subjects Let’s start with compound subjects. A  compound subject  is two or more individual nouns connected into a larger noun phrase. For example, “Sherry and her friends from Florida are coming to visit.” The key word here is  and . “Sherry and her friends from Florida” is the compound subject. When you have two or more subjects connected by  and , use a plural verb. “Salt  and  pepper  are  popular condiments.” However, if you have two si