My English Guide

What are demonstratives?

Demonstratives are words that show which person or thing is being referred to.

In the sentence:

‘This is my brother’,

‘this’ is a demonstrative

The demonstratives in […]

This is a review of the English tenses. The table is provided to help recall the form and use of the different English tenses studied in previous lessons.

Simple Present
Affirmative She drinks.
Negative […]

Homonyms include words that have the same pronunciation or the same spelling or both but are different in meaning. Studying homonyms in typical phrases in which they are used will help you to distinguish one […]

It is used to express a continued or ongoing action that will start in future and is thought to be continued till sometime in future. (Remember, an ongoing action in future which will continue till some time […]

Future Perfect has two different forms: “will have done” and “be going to have done.” Unlike Simple Future forms, Future Perfect forms are usually interchangeable.

FORM Future Perfect with “Will”

[will […]

[had been + present participle]

Examples:

You had been waiting there for more than two hours when she finally arrived.
Had you been waiting there for more than two hours when she finally arrived?
You […]

{had + past participle]

Examples:

You had studied English before you moved to New York.
Had you studied English before you moved to New York?
You had not studied English before you moved to New […]

The present perfect continuous is made up of two elements: the present perfect of the verb ‘to be’ (have/has been), and the present participle of the main verb (base+ing)

Subject has/have been base+ing
She […]

This list shows 200 common phrasal verbs, with meanings and example sentences.
Phrasal verbs are usually two-word phrases consisting of verb + adverb or verb + preposition.

Think of them as you would any other […]

A compound modifier is two words connected by a hyphen, which acts like one adjective. Usually, these words can be used as individual modifiers, so the hyphen is required to clarify the meaning; for instance, […]

The future continuous is made up of two elements:
the simple future of the verb ‘to be’ + the present participle (base+ing)

Subject simple future of the verb ‘to be’ present participle
You will be […]

Modal verbs (called modals for short) are auxiliary verbs that express a speaker’s attitude and the strength of that attitude. There are about 17 modals in English. They have multiple meanings and sometimes o […]

A prefix (affix) is a word, or letter(s) placed at the beginning of another word (a base word) to adjust or qualify its usage or meaning. The opposite of prefix is suffix.

The prefixes “pre-” and “post-” refer […]

The following grammar notes show the difference uses (and word order) of Very, Too and Enough.

Very and Too + adjective
1. The exam is very difficult, but Jim can complete it.

2. The exam is too […]

Because is a subordinating conjunction that can introduce an entire tensed subordinate clause (such clauses must contain at least a subject and a tensed verb). But it can also introduce just a noun phrase, instead […]

There are many adjectives that we have in English that end in -ED or -ING.
Yes, that’s correct, they are not only endings that we use for verbs!

An adjective that ends in -ING is used to describe: the […]