Phrasal Verbs: How do you “UP”?
Most of my students like phrasal verbs about as much as they like exercise bikes and try to use them with roughly the same frequency. Native speakers, on the other hand, find them so easy and flexible that we can invent them spontaneously to serve when we don’t know...
How do you like your English?
American English When I was a kid growing up in 1970s England, I never really had any concept of “American English”. I decided that the candy I saw advertised in Marvel comics was just another of those cool American things (like “sea-monkeys”) that weren’t available...
Still not sure?
STILL, YET and ALREADY Last time, I shared my misgivings about the slippery present perfect tense in English. As if it wasn’t bad enough alone, this tense also provides a favourable habitat for three of our most exotic and user-hostile adverbs: still, yet and already....