If you are thinking of studying English in the United States of America, Philadelphia is a great city to consider. This article shares a number of benefits to studying in Philadelphia, as well as a list of places to study English in Philly.
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General English
Lots of contractions!
Contractions are two words put together in a shorter form. We use lots of contractions in English: isn't (is not) doesn't (does not), didn't (did not), can't (cannot), won't (will not). I'm (I am), you're (you are), we're (we are). There are tons of them!
Confusing contractions
Apostrophe -s
But let's (let us!) talk about some tricky contractions. Contractions with apostrophe -s ('s) and apostrophe -d ('d) are difficult because they have two meanings. Think about it: what does he's mean? Look at these two sentences:
He's studying English.
He's visited England.
In the first sentence, he's means he is. In the second sentence, he's means he has. When we see 's it can mean either has or is.
Apostrophe -d
I'd been working for hours.
I'd like a glass of champagne.
Verbs related to the five senses can be really difficult in English. This post covers all five senses, including active and passive sensory verbs, complete with charts and examples!
The internet makes it possible to learn a language online like you never could before. But make sure you are using your time wisely! Use these five tips to help learn English as quickly and easily as possible.
1. Watch Videos
One of the best things about the internet, when it comes to language learning, is that there is more video than ever. One of the most important things you can do to learn a language is expose yourself to as much of it as possible, and with YouTube you could watch videos in English for years on end!
Turn on the English subtitles to help yourself understand and to build multiple skills at once!
2. Set Goals
Technology also helps us to track and plan our behavior. Consistency is important to language learning, and tools like Google Calendar can help us to build the regular study skills and habits that will result in faster, lasting language learning.
Google Calendar has this really cool Goals feature that is helpful for everything from exercising to learning English!
3. Communicate in Groups
Interaction is an essential part of language learning, and a whole lot of the internet is in English. This means you have a massive environment for learning and using English online. Use whatever website or social network you like! There are even Facebook groups dedicated to learning English!
4. Record Yourself
Recording yourself, watching yourself, and noting where you need to improve are great ways to develop your English. It can be uncomfortable at first, but you need to get outside of your comfort zone to develop your language! This can be especially helpful for your pronunciation!
5. Read!
It’s great that you’re reading about English, don’t forget to read in English.
Many students underestimate the importance of reading in English, but reading is essential for building your vocabulary! Spoken English is mostly just the first 2,000 words in English. You need much, much more than that to become fluent, and the more advanced words are more common in written English.
The internet is full of accessible texts in English! Get lost on Wikipedia and start building that vocabulary!
You may have seen some strange acronyms floating around on the internet. If you are curious what POTUS, FLOTUS, SCOTUS, SGOTUS, FGOTUS, or even SCROTUS means, this is what you’re looking for!
What is the passive voice?
The passive voice is a way of expressing yourself in English (some people say passive form or passive tense, but the correct term is voice).
Active vs. Passive Voice
There are two voices in English grammar: active and passive. Voice is different from tense. There are 12 verb tenses in English, and any of these can be either active or passive (though some of these combinations almost never occur in actual usage).
Grammatical voice is a way of showing the relationship between action expressed a verb and the subject of that verb. When the subject does the action, the active voice is generally used. When the subject receives or undergoes the action, the passive voice is generally used.
The vast majority of the time, we use the active voice: over 95% of verbs in speech and fiction are active, and over 80% in academic and specialized texts.
This article explains the grammar of the passive voice in English, with lots of examples in each verb tense and aspect.
Why Do We Use the Passive Voice in English?
There are many different reasons that we use the passive voice. Again, the overall effect of using the passive voice is to focus on the person or thing that receives the action (the receiver or target), rather than the person or thing that does the action (the agent). But there are many reasons we might want to do this.
Because the receiver is the topic:
I just talked to my friend. He was accepted to Harvard!
Because the receiver is more important to the situation than the agent:
Katherine was hit by a car.
Because the agent is obvious:
The auditorium was built last year.
Because you want to be vague or avoid mentioning the agent:
I have to tell you something, Dad. The window was broken.
Because there is no known agent:
The car was stolen sometime during the night.
To create a more formal or academic style:
The answer has been sought by scientists for decades.
Forming the Passive Voice
When you want to transform a sentence from active form to the passive form: there are two main things to pay attention to.
First, we move the direct object to the subject position, before the verb. Simple. You can say that the object gets promoted to the role of subject, and the subject can be demoted to a prepositional phrase (including this is optional).
The second change is trickier: We also need to change the form of the verb. We need to put the main verb in the past participle. Be becomes been. Do or did becomes done. Go or went becomes gone. Cook becomes cooked. In a passive sentence, the main verb is always in the past participle.
Then we need to insert a be verb in whatever tense we are using before the main verb. If the sentence is in the simple past, use be in the simple past: was. If the sentence is in the simple future, use be in the simple future: will be. If the sentence is in the present perfect, use be in the present perfect: has been. If the sentence is in the present perfect, use be in the present perfect: is being.
The formula for a verb in the passive voice is [conjugated be verb] + [main verb in past participle].
The following section contains examples of every verb tense transformed into the passive voice.
The Get Passive
An alternate way to form the passive uses get as an auxiliary instead of be. With certain verbs, the get passive is very common. These include: get married, get hired, get fired, get picked up, get dropped off, get chosen, get arrested, get accepted.
In some situations, the get passive feels less formal than the be passive.
In some verb tenses, the auxiliary be is used to make the action continuous. When these tenses are made passive we still need to add another auxiliary. This means placing been and being together, which sounds awkward. For example the active sentence Trainees have been observing them. becomes the passive They have been being observed by trainees. Using the get passive can make sentences like this sound better: They have been getting observed by trainees.
Examples of Passive Voice for Each Verb Tense
Below you will find examples of every verb tense in the English passive voice. Some of these are so rare that we never use them. These are noted.
Simple Present
Spanish is spoken around the world
New species are discovered all the time.
Simple Past
Some money was found on Second Street.
The mosque was erected in 1873.
Simple Future
The old hospital will be demolished next month.
If it rains the concert will be cancelled.
Present Continuous
My car is being fixed.
Other options are being explored.
Past Continuous
The house was being painted so we couldn't touch anything.
Many new homes were being built at the time.
Future Continuous
I think a cure for cancer will have been developed by 2030.
This form is very unusual and awkward.
Present Perfect
The children have been given their dinner.
A decision has been made.
Past Perfect
She had been given a number of options already.
We had been told that the train would be there soon.
Future Perfect
By the end of this year, over a million lives will have been saved thanks to your donations.
*This form is very unusual and awkward.
Present Perfect Continuous
I have been getting sent from one doctor to the next all day long!
*This form is very unusual and awkward.
Past Perfect Continuous
We learned that we had been getting told the wrong information all year.
*This form is very unusual and awkward.
Future Perfect Continuous
This time tomorrow, the we will be getting driven to the airport.
*This form is very unusual and awkward.
Intransitive Verbs and the Passive
Remember, when we transform an active sentence into the passive, we are taking the direct object and moving it to the subject position. This means we must have a direct object to transform a sentence into the passive voice.
Transitive verbs have direct objects. Intransitive verbs do not have direct objects. This means that intransitive verbs cannot be transformed into the passive voice.
Imperative Mood and the Passive
How do you say “Shut the door.” in the passive? Learners try to quiz each other with questions like this.
The simplest answer is that you cannot put an imperative sentence in the passive voice in modern English because the passive voice requires an explicit subject and the imperative leaves out the subject.
Some people suggest that Let the door be shut. Is the passive form of Shut the door. This is a close workaround since it is an imperative sentence, and the verb shut is now passive. It is not, however, a direct transformation of the original sentence into the passive, because it introduces an entirely new verb: the causative let.
When Should You Use the Passive Voice?
This is a tricky question. Many inexperienced writers will overuse the passive voice to sound more formal or academic. This has led to the bad advice that you should “avoid the passive voice.”
There is no real answer except that you should use the passive voice when there is a reason to use it. Don’t just use it to sound smart. Good writing is always about making choices. Pay attention to how and when good writers choose to use it, and try to do the same!
Ready for some challenging academic grammar?
English grammar can be difficult because sometimes the same word works differently in different situations. This is true for -ing verbs, which can do three different things.
Let's look at the 3 types:
Three types of -ing verb
CONTINUOUS VERBS
The man is walking.
This is the most basic one: a present continuous verb. The subject in the sentence is "man" and "is walking" tells us what he is doing right now. If you see an -ing verb after a be verb (am, is, are, was, were), it is probably a continuous verb.
Another name for continuous verbs is progressive verbs. Continuous and progressive mean the same thing.
PARTICIPIAL ADJECTIVES
The walking man lives with my friend Paul.
The man walking across the street lives with my friend Paul.
In both of these sentences, walking works like an adjective, not a verb. Walking describes the man, and the verb in the sentence is lives. When an -ing verb describes a noun, we call it a participial adjective. Participial adjectives can come before or after the noun, but it is more common to put them after the noun.
Read a little more about participial adjectives here.
GERUNDS
The man likes walking.
In this sentence, we have a subject: the man. We have a verb: likes . What is the -ing verb here? It's the thing that the man likes. What does he like? Walking. Walking is the object of like. What are some other things you can like? Sports, travel, English. All nouns. Object of verbs are nouns, so walking is acting as a noun here. That's what a gerund is: an -ing verb that works like a noun.
More free English resources
Parts of Speech in English
Every word in a language can be categorized by its part of speech. Parts of speech (also known as word classes) tell us what a word does, along with how it functions and makes meaning. We can also group parts of speech into lexical words, which carry a lot of meaning, and function words (or grammar words), which help us make sentences and show the relationship between things.
Overview of English Parts of Speech
How Many Parts of Speech are There?
There are a total of 9 different parts of speech in English: nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, prepositions, conjunctions, interjections, and articles (or determiners). Read on for a brief explanation of each!
If an article tells you that there are only 8, they are often missing articles or determiners, which are a really important one, especially for language learners.
Why Learn about Parts of Speech?
If you’re looking for the parts of speech in English grammar, you’ve come to the right place! If you’re trying to learn English online by yourself, understanding the parts of speech is a good place to start. They can help you to understand the structure of the language to guide your studying. If you are looking for an in-depth guide to English grammar, our complete English grammar guide might be more helpful.
Frequency of Different Parts of Speech
At Ginseng English, we believe in taking a research-informed, strategic approach to learning English. So understanding the general frequency of the different parts of speech is helpful. Take a look at the following table showing the proportion of the different parts of speech in conversational English and academic prose. (Note that the percentages are approximate and may not total 100% because the original categorization was slightly different from ours. This is only to give a general sense of the proportions.
| Conversation | Academic | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Lexical | Nouns | 15% | 30% |
| Verbs | 12.5% | 10% | |
| Adjectives | 2.5% | 10% | |
| Adverbs | 5% | 3% | |
| Function | Pronouns | 16.5% | 4% |
| Prepositions | 5.5% | 15% | |
| Determiners | 4.5% | 10% | |
| Conjunctions | 4.5% | 5% |
Source: Biber, et. al., (1999). Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English.
Nouns
Lots of teachers say a noun is a person, place, or thing! You should also add ideas to that list. Proper nouns in English start with a capital letter, but other nouns do not.
Here are some examples of nouns:
This is my father.
We are from Ecuador.
I have two dogs.
On this holiday we celebrate our independence.
Nouns in English can be singular or plural. to form a regular plural, we simply add -s or -es to the end of a noun. Irregular plurals do not follow this rule.
Here is a complete article on Nouns in English.
Pronouns
Pronouns are used to stand in place for a noun, because in English we don’t like to repeat nouns again and again. The noun that a pronoun refers back to is called its antecedent. Examples of common pronouns in English are he, she, it, him, her, mine, this, that, myself. Pronouns in English change form to show, for example, whether they are singular or plural, subjects or objects, male or female or neither.
Here are examples of some basic pronouns:
Can I have that?
We are with her.
I think I need something to eat.
Here is a complete article on pronouns in English.
Verbs
Verbs are words we use to talk about actions, states, and occurrences (things that happen). Many people would say that nouns and verbs are the most important and useful parts of speech in any language.
The main verb in a sentence has a subject, generally a noun or pronoun referring to the person or thing that the sentence is about. For example, in the sentence Maria walks, the verb is walks and the subject is Maria. Verbs can change form to ‘agree with’ their subject.
Here are some examples of verbs:
They cook every night
We went to the store.
This will help the people.
Notice in that last example that a verb can be more than one word. This is called a compound verb. There are two types of verb: main verbs and helping verbs (also called auxiliary verbs).
Adjectives
Adjectives are words that describe, or modify, nouns. They generally (but not always) come before nouns. In the following phrases, the adjectives are in bold:
a big party some terrible news the best pizza an interesting idea a really strong leader
For more information, check out our list of the most common adjectives in English.
Adverbs
Like adjectives, adverbs are describing words. But while adjectives describe only nouns, adverbs can describe verbs, adjectives, other adverbs, or entire sentences.
Because adverbs are so versatile, it is hard to say much that applies to all adverbs generally. They can appear at different places in the sentence: at the beginning, before a verb, before an adjective, after a verb, or at the end of a sentence.
walk slowly speak clearly immediately fell run fast
Many adverbs end in -ly, and many adjectives can be transformed into adverbs by adding the suffix -ly: slow becomes slowly, eventual becomes eventually, stupid becomes stupidly, etc.
One of the most basic types of adverbs are adverbs of frequency. Click through to read more about those.
Articles
The articles in English are a, an (indefinite articles) and the (definite article). Articles can be really tricky, but the basic idea is that we use indefinite articles when we are introducing a new noun to our listeners or not referring to a specific object. On the other hand, we use definite articles to refer to a specific object that our listeners already know about.
Note: You may find articles out there claiming that articles are a type of adjective. This is simply incorrect. At one time (about 300 years ago) some people thought this, but this is not a current view.
Note: Some grammars treat articles as a subcategory of determiners. This is a valid view. Determiners include possessive determiners such as my and your, as well as demonstrative determiners such as this, that, these, and those.
Prepositions
Prepositions are, to put it simply, words that are placed before (pre-position) nouns or pronouns to connect them to other parts of speech in a sentence. There are different types of preposition that give different types of information: prepositions of time, prepositions of place, prepositions of direction.
Conjunctions
Conjunctions are words that connect. They can connect, for example, a list of nouns in a series. But most of the time, when we are talking about conjunctions, we are talking about connecting one clause to another clause in the same sentence. There are two types of conjunctions: coordinating conjunctions and subordinating conjunctions.
Coordinating Conjunctions
Coordinating conjunctions connect two clauses of equal importance into what we call a compound sentence. There are not many coordinating conjunctions. You can remember them with the acronym FANBOYS: for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so.
Subordinating Conjunctions
When we connect clauses using subordinating conjunctions, we are giving one clause more importance than the other. The less important clause is called a subordinate clause. Two or more clauses combined with subordinating conjunctions are called a complex sentence. Some common subordinating conjunctions are because, although, before, since, when, while, and if.
Interjections
Interjections are funny words: ouch, wow, hmm, oops, well, geez.. They are sort of the black sheep of English grammar. They are not connected to the other words in a sentence (they are inter-jected, put in between, the other words). Generally they add emotion to a sentence. Here are some examples of interjections:
Wow, I'm so tired.
Ouch! I cut my finger.
Oh, you moved to Manhattan
The present perfect continuous is an important verb form for talking about recent events and their durations. Read about the rules for using the present perfect continuous tense, how we form it, and tons of example sentences!
We have to make decisions every day, but sometimes it’s so hard to just make up your mind! If you’re on the fence about a big decision, then these idioms might help your thought process! (Or at least help you procrastinate making a difficult decision😂)
When considering where to study English in the US, the first places that come to most international student’s minds are New York City, Boston, Los Angeles, and maybe Chicago, but there is so much more to America! Take a look at these brief descriptions of weird and wacky American cities and see if any of them might be your cup of tea.
We have to make decisions every day, but sometimes it’s so hard to just make up your mind! If you’re on the fence about a big decision, then these idioms might help your thought process! (Or at least help you procrastinate making a difficult decision😂)
They say some friendly competition never hurt anyone. In fact, sometimes, people even thrive on a little competition! If you’re one of these people, these idioms about competition might come in handy…
Today we bring you a variety of English idioms featuring black and white images to help you visualize the meanings, along with sample sentences and definitions!
The time has come for Americans to kiss summer goodbye and welcome fall (also known as autumn). Here are some idioms about the fall season!