Bite Your Tongue by Alex Shepard Over 9 400 slang words and phrases from English varieties around the world! Bite Your Tongue is a comprehensive collection of English slang from around the world, with helpful regional differences and usage notes. From the latest lingo on social media and gaming platforms like Twitch, to indecipherable text Read More
Tag: esl
Easy English: Past Perfect Tense
Past Perfect Tense: Simple and Continuous There are two types of past perfect tenses in English. One is the past perfect simple tense, and the other is the past perfect continuous tense (also known as past perfect progressive). Let’s have a look at examples for each of these two tenses to understand how they are Read More
Easy English: Future Perfect Tense
Future perfect simple: “Will” Usage The future perfect tense is used to describe an event that will be completed before another point in time. As a result, we often use time expressions (such as “by tomorrow,” “by midday,” or “by then”) or another activity (expressed in a different future tense) to help make the timeline Read More
Easy English: Indirect Questions
What are indirect questions? Indirect questions are statements or questions that reframe a direct question by relaying it in reported speech. To make this clearer, let’s look at some direct questions: “Is this your bag?” “Do you know the time?” “Have you seen Emma lately?” To form questions in English, we either change the word Read More
Easy English: Modal Verbs
What are modal verbs? We use modal verbs in order to express modality, such as permission, ability, suggestion, possibility, attitude, likelihood, order, or obligation. Here are the various modal verbs that we commonly use: may would might must can shall could should will ought to An important note is that modal verbs are always paired Read More
Easy English: Reported Speech
What is reported speech? Reported speech is how we relay something that has already been said or written, either by ourselves or by someone else. For example, imagine that your friend said, “I am going to the dentist tomorrow.” Now, if we want to share what they said with someone else, we need to use Read More
Easy English: Imperatives
What are imperatives? In English, the imperative is one of three verbal moods. These are the indicative, the subjunctive, and the imperative. We use imperatives to give commands, issue warnings, or provide emphatic instructions. And if we add “please” before an imperative phrase, it can also form a request. In the examples below, note that Read More
Easy English: Relative Clauses
What is a relative clause? A relative clause (also called an “adjective clause” because it gives us more information about a particular noun) is a type of dependent clause. Every relative clause has a subject and a verb, but these clauses can’t stand by themselves as complete sentences. How to identify a relative clause A Read More
Easy English: Direct and Indirect Objects
Transitive and Intransitive Verbs In English, verbs can be followed by two different kinds of objects, depending on the type of verb we are using. These are either direct objects or indirect objects. Transitive verbs are able to take a direct object, whereas intransitive verbs cannot. Here are some examples of both (the direct objects Read More
Easy English: Time Clauses
We use time clauses in English to express that an action or event is based on a certain period of time. Most often, these clauses are introduced by conjunctions such as “before,” “after,” “until,” “while,” “when,” or “whenever.” We can also use phrases such as “the minute,” “the moment,” or “as soon as” to serve Read More