EclecticEnglish.Com

Hello, "Can/could" is a modal verb, like "must", "should", "will/would", "may/might", and "ought to". They are never followed by "to", except "ought to", which is an exception. There is also no need to worry about the third person singular. I swim. - He swims. I can swim. - He can swim. But there ar...

Hello, "Touring" and "appearing" are actually "ing" participles. I really like how they describe them in New Headway Upper-Intermediate. 1. When present particles (-ing) are used like adjectives or adverbs, they are active in meaning. Modern art is interesting. Pour boiling water onto the pasta. She...

Hello, I think the phrase has a different meaning. You do something (for example - accept) in favour of something (to support, help, improve it). Here is what Longman ( http://www.ldoceonline.com/ ) says about it: Vote/decide in favour of something (=vote or decide to support something) 288 members ...

In American movies, yes. Yes, certainly. But this is colloquial (informal, spoken) English, isn't it? Surely, it's absolutely fine to use it. It's just nice to feel the difference in style (register). So, it's generally up to you which form to choose. :) Nikita Kovalyov http://www.eclecticenglish.com

Hello, Most probably, it means approximately, roughly, not exactly. Here is what Longman ( http://www.ldoceonline.com/ ) says about it. ca. (also ca) British English a written abbreviation of circa (=about): dating from ca. 1900 circa preposition formal used before a date to show that something happ...

Hello Birishi, No much difference. EFL stands for "English as a foreign language", while ESL stands for "English as a second language". From my experience, ESL is used by far wider than EFL. Actually, Google confirms it: Results 1 - 30 of about 20,100,000 for ESL Results 1 - 30 of about 3,090,000 fo...

A cool phrase from Josh Billings:

A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than you love yourself.

Have a nice day!

Nikita Kovalyov
www.eclecticenglish.com

Ops. I'm not sure whether I understand this posting correctly or not. I'd rather get a bit more detailed question.

Nikita Kovalyov
www.eclecticenglish.com

Hello, I'm not sure I got the last message correctly, but never mind. Here is a link to a page on English Page website. They have a quite brief, but nice explanation about when and how to use Present and Past Simple Tense. Mind you there are several links to further practice exercises. Present Simpl...

ed/ing adjectives
for example: interested/interesting

Anna: That boy over there is annoying me!
Sue: But he is not even looking at you.
Marry: That's what I am annoyed about!

Nikita Kovalyov
http://www.eclecticenglish.com/

Hello Sakshi, Did you want to ask what "pens up and down" mean? Actually, I was taken aback because I had never met it before. I tried to do a little survey on the Internet. Google finds 33 pages with "pens up and down". They all seem to come from different kind of documentation about various electr...

Hello Alaa, First of all, I have a few pages on my website, but I must say that they are out of date and need to be redone. Present Simple – Verb to be http://www.eclecticenglish.com/grammar/PresentSimpleToBe1A.html English Irregular Verbs http://www.eclecticenglish.com/gapfillers/IrregularVerbs1A.h...

Hello Ludivine, I will happily do what I can to help you. The sentence: My girlfriend has a nice leg. (from descriptive homework) First of all, you can say "a" only when you can say "one". I don't know it for sure, but I was told that in old English language there was only one word for "a" and "one"...

Hello Ludivine, Thanks for your words. You are very kind. No problem with explaining the funny students' mistakes. Which ones do you want me to help you with? I remember that Alexander asked me to explained why the sentence "He looked at her blue-blue eyes" is incorrect. First of all, the correct ve...

And here is one more joke.

One farmer says to another farmer that he had to shoot one of his cows?
"Was it mad?" asks the other farmer.
The farmer replies "Well it wasn't very happy about it".

to be mad at sb = to be very angry with sb


Nikita Kovalyov
http://www.eclecticenglish.com/