Active Voice

&

Passive Voice

There are two special forms for verbs called voice:

1.    Active voice

2.   Passive voice

The active voice is the "normal" voice. This is the voice that we use most of the time. You are probably already familiar with the active voice. In the active voice, the object receives the action of the verb:

Prepositions List

A full list of 150 English prepositions with example sentences

It is not possible to produce a definitive list of English prepositions. That means that nobody can create a list of prepositions and say: "Here are all the prepositions in the English language – no more and no fewer." Why? Because complex prepositions can theoretically be added to the language at any time. These pages list all 94 one-word prepositions (which are unlikely to change or be added to) and 56 complex prepositions (which may possibly be added to as the language evolves). This total of 150 prepositions

Reported Speech

Reported Speech

to report (verb): to tell somebody what you have heard or seen

direct speech	reported speech
He said: "I love you."	He said that he loved me.

If we want to say what somebody has said, we basically have two options:

1.     We can use the person's exact words in quotation marks "..." (direct speech)

2.     We can change the person's words into our own words (reported speech)

Tenses

Tenses

The English Tense System

The links below are to lessons for each of the 12 basic tenses. In each lesson we look at two aspects of the tense:

• Structure: How do we make the tense?
• Use: When and why do we use the tense?

Some lessons look at additional aspects, and most of them finish with a quiz to check your understanding.

Many English learners worry too much about tense. If you stopped 100 native English speakers in the street and asked them about tense, 1 of them might give you an intelligent answer - if you were lucky. The other 99 would know little about terms like "past perfect" or "present continuous". And they would know nothing about aspect, voice or mood. But they can all speak fluent English and communicate effectively. Of course, for ESL it helps to know about tenses, but don't become obsessed with them. Be like those native speakers! Speak naturally!

English Prepositions

English Prepositions

There are about 150 prepositions in English. Yet this is a very small number when you think of the thousands of other words (nouns, verbs etc). Prepositions are important words. We use individual prepositions more frequently than other individual words. In fact, the prepositions of,to and in are among the ten most frequent words in English. Here is ashort list of 70 of the more common one-word prepositions. Many of these prepositions have more than one meaning. Please refer to a dictionary for precise meaning and usage.

English Conditionals

English Conditionals

There are several structures in English that are called conditionals.

"Condition" means "situation or circumstance". If a particular condition is true, then a particular result happens.

• If y = 10 then 2y = 20
• If y = 3 then 2y = 6

There are three basic conditionals that we use very often. There are some more conditionals that we do not use so often.

In this lesson, we will look at the three basic conditionals as well as the so-called zero conditional. We'll finish with a quiz to check your understanding.

People sometimes call conditionals "IF" structures or sentences, because there is usually (but not always) the word "if" in a conditional sentence.

• Structure of Conditional Sentences 
• First Conditional
• Second Conditional
• Third Conditional
• Zero Conditional
• Summary
• Quiz