Advanced writing techniques for American university students

Posted by on Mar 11, 2013 in Grammar, Writing |

The Guide to Grammar and Writing is a resource for American college students so the language on the site is considerably more advanced than on a site for English learners.  However, the information is extensive and you may find the pages on punctuation (under Word and Sentence Level) and sentence combining skills (under Paragraph Level) particularly useful.

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Practicing phrasal verbs

Posted by on Mar 11, 2013 in Grammar, Vocabulary |

It may not always be necessary to use phrasal verbs, but they are a big part of using English naturally and fluently.  So how do you practice them?  First we need to figure out what exactly is difficult to remember about them and then find a way to isolate that and drill it in a way that we can remember.  Read my blog post about remembering phrasal verbs if you haven’t already.  Once you have examples that you want to practice, Anki is...

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Remembering phrasal verbs

Posted by on Mar 11, 2013 in Grammar, Vocabulary |

Once you have looked up the meaning of a phrasal verb, you will usually remember it when you see it again.  For example, to put up with something means to tolerate it.  You might read this and look it up in the dictionary and the next time you see it, you’ll remember what it means from the context.  But the difficult part is remembering all of the parts when you want to use it. The best thing to do is to take an example sentence from Using...

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Understanding phrasal verbs

Posted by on Mar 11, 2013 in Grammar, Vocabulary |

One of the best resources for this (besides a good monolingual dictionary) is Using English.com.  Using English has an excellent phrasal verb dictionary (also an idioms dictionary) as well as a forum where you can ask for extra information or just check that you are using them correctly. Try and notice patterns with certain particles (the prepositions or adverbs that make up the phrasal verb) and how they change the meaning of the base verb on...

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Answer all of your grammar questions

Posted by on Mar 11, 2013 in Grammar |

Sometimes an exercise book just isn’t enough and you really want to know the details.  This is when you need a grammar reference.  Practical English Usage and Cambridge Grammar of English are two of the best.

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