All posts in IELTS

Like most students you are probably all-too familiar with the anxiety of waiting for exam results. The suspense might have been so extreme at times that you described yourself as being on “tenderhooks.” It certainly makes sense that “tenderhooks” could be correct. After all, if you are anxiously waiting for – or “hooked” on –…

You might know the song from Fiddler on the Roof that goes “If I were a rich man.” And if you do, you might have wondered why the words didn’t go “If I was a rich man.” After all, isn’t it true that “was” is singular and “were” is plural? “I were” simply sounds wrong!…

Where did the (e)d go? Sometimes when you read a sentence in English and the grammar seems a bit off, but you aren’t sure why. For example, what if I write “I am suppose to know these things; I have a PhD”? Does that sentence seem correct to you? Some grammar and spell checkers won’t…

Imagine receiving the following email from a friend at your college.   I’m wondering if you can help me. Admin has set up a series of info meetings next week for local high school students who are thinking of coming here, and I got an invite to act as a group leader. There shouldn’t be…

When I tell people that I devote an entire three-hour class to teaching the comma, they are often incredulous. The comma seems like such a simple little device. But of all the punctuation marks we use in English it can certainly be the most costly. And by “costly” I mean, quite literally, “costing money.”  …

One technique for fixing a comma splice is to take the simple step of exchanging the comma for a period or a semicolon or a colon. Each of these three punctuation marks is accepted by grammarians as strong enough to mediate between two sentences. But what messages are writers sending when they use one of…