english language

What are grammar patterns?

Grammar patterns are ways of describing how words are used in English. A grammar pattern tells us what phrases or clauses are used with a given adjective, noun, or verb. For example the adjective afraid can be used with a that-clause (He was afraid that…) or… Read More
English text written in a notebook, with a word crossed out and corrections by teacher underneath

Why is English SO difficult??

As a learner of the English language, how many times have you heard your teachers say, ‘it’s just not what we say in English’ or ‘that doesn’t sound very natural’? Or maybe you have thought to yourself, ‘this doesn’t sound right’ but you don’t know why? There is a good… Read More

Grammar or vocabulary? A blurry line

This article has been written by Julie Moore, who is an ELT materials developer and lexicographer, and originally appeared on our ELT Blog. Most language learning coursebooks include grammar activities and vocabulary activities. As teachers, we talk about ‘teaching grammar’ and ‘teaching vocabulary’. Grammar and vocabulary are… Read More
profile of a man with open mouth, and a stream of letters coming out

4 tips when starting to soften your English Accent

Our colleagues over on the Collins ELT blog have written an informative article on where to start when softening your English accent. So what does softening your accent mean? Even if you have spoken English for a number of years you may still… Read More
ENGLISH written on a post-it, next to crumbled post-its arranged in question mark shape

What on earth is The Schwa?

Say again, ‘The Schwa’? The what? When reading our colleague’s post over on the Collins English Language Learning blog, I heard about The Schwa sound for the very first time, and thought it would be useful to replicate some of the… Read More

Silent letters

To pronounce or not to pronounce, that is the dilemma. English, like some other languages, has a number of letters which are ‘silent’ in certain words. The tricky thing is, knowing which letters can be silent, and learning when they should and should not be pronounced. The main silent letters… Read More

Pronunciation of ‘-ough’ words

This is the first blog of our brand new series looking at difficult to pronounce words. If there is any group of letters that underlines how tricky English pronunciation can be, it is the string ‘-ough’. Fortunately, there are few letter combinations in English that vary as widely in the… Read More

Beat Blue Monday with 10 words to describe happiness

It’s official, experts have declared Monday 15th January 2018 ‘Blue Monday’, the glummest day of the year. The triple threat of extreme winter weather, a strained post-Christmas bank account and the back-to-work feeling is believed to make you feel gloomier than usual. But don’t worry, we believe grey… Read More
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