- Grammar Lessons
Hard or Hardly? 8 Words That Flip Meaning When You Add -ly
You were taught that -ly turns an adjective into an adverb. Usually true. For a small group of very common words it does something else entirely: it changes the meaning, sometimes to the opposite. He works hard and he hardly works are not the same sentence.
- Grammar Lessons
I Am Boring: The One Letter Pair That Says the Opposite of What You Mean
Bored or boring? Interested or interesting? Two endings, one letter apart, and picking the wrong one does not make your sentence odd. It makes it mean the opposite. Here is the two-second rule that fixes all of them at once.
- Grammar Lessons
Informations, Advices, Peoples: The Nouns That Refuse to Take an S
Information, advice, research, furniture, knowledge. In most languages these words have a plural. In English they simply refuse. Here is the short list that covers almost every mistake, plus the trick for counting them when you need to.
- Grammar Lessons
Comma Splice in IELTS Writing: What It Is and How to Fix It
Traffic is bad, many people arrive late. That sentence looks harmless and it is a grammar error. It is also one of the most repeated errors in IELTS writing, and there are four ways to fix it in under a second.
- Grammar Lessons
A, An, The: The Three Smallest Words That Cost the Most IELTS Marks
Articles are three tiny words, and they are the most repeated error in IELTS writing. The good news is that most mistakes come from only three situations. Learn those and your accuracy jumps without learning a single new tense.
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