For this commonly-confused words lesson, we’re going to look at yet another dozen pairs of words with similar spellings but different meanings. Just like in our previous English lesson on commonly confused words, we’ll be providing brief definitions for each set of words, as well as sentences designed to illustrate the differences in meaning. Keep in…

In the previous English lesson on pronoun vagueness, we discussed how vague gendered and non-gendered pronouns can make it difficult or even impossible to understand who or what a writer is referring to. Another type of pronoun vagueness can occur with pronouns that refer back to concepts or ideas. Consider the following examples, which have…

Compared to verbs in other languages, English verbs tell the reader relatively little about whom or what is performing an action. English verbs can express number (singular or plural) but not gender (masculine or feminine). This means that a subject pronoun cannot be omitted from a sentence because the verb itself cannot “imply” the correct…

A redundant word or phrase repeats an idea expressed elsewhere in a sentence. In some types of writing, redundancy is recommended or even required. For example, legal documents may include multiple words with similar meanings when there is even the slightest possibility that the words in questions might be interpreted differently. In most types of…

This week we’re going to decode another baker’s dozen of commonly-used English idioms. Click here to see our first blog post on English idioms. For those of you who aren’t regular readers of our blog, an idiom is a phrase whose meaning is different from the dictionary definitions of the words that comprise it. Idioms pose…

English language learners often struggle with connecting ideas in a natural-sounding, smoothly-flowing manner. The English language’s emphasis on syntax can make constructing sentences that are both varied and grammatically correct challenging. Modeling your use of the language on that of friends and colleagues who are native speakers can be helpful. As we saw in the…

“Crutch words” are comfortable, go-to words that creep into our speech and writing, often without us realizing it. Over time we come to depend on these words, believing that they are necessary to construct well-written sentences. However, the opposite is usually true. Most crutch words don’t add anything to a sentence. Some can even have…

Many common objects and ideas have different names in American and British English. Today we’re going to compare some of these words. The left column in the chart below contains twenty Standard American English words, the ones you learn in our English classes in Atlanta. The right column contains their Standard British English equivalents. American…

English, like any living language, continues to grow, change, and evolve. New words are created, old words fall out of use, and existing words take on new meanings. Many common English words have very different meanings now than they did in older forms of English. Knowing these older meanings can make reading earlier English works…

A negative question is one that is worded in such a way as to require a “no” response for an affirmative answer and a “yes” response for a negative answer. In other words, negative questions switch the “yes/no” response order of regular, or positive, questions to a less intuitive “no/yes” order. The following is an…