Skype English School

Great Grammar 1

 The grammar of a language is the set of rules that govern its structure. Grammar determines how words are arranged to form meaningful units. Every language has its own distinctive grammar.

Nouns 

 Idioms 

 A idiom is an expression which has a meaning that is not obvious from the individual words. 

You may understand each word individually but the overall meaning may have anything to do with them ! 

• What is an idiom?
• Examples of Anger Idioms
• Anger idioms used in conversations

Pinch Punch First of the Month

Etymology

Originating from old England times when people thought that witches existed. People thought that salt would make a witch weak, so the pinch part is pinching of the salt, and the punch part was to banish the witch. The witch would be weak from the salt so the punch was to banish her.

Noun

pinch and a punch for the first of the month
(idiomatic, British, Irish) Said the first day of a new month, accompanied by a pinch and a punch to the victim.

Usage

 A Brief Guide to all things Twitter

Collocations – Everyday Verbs 

Make 

Make arrangements for         The school can make arrangements for pupils with special needs.

Make a change / changes The new manager is planning to make some changes.

Intensifying Adverbs

In English there are lots of ways of saying very or very much, for example we can use words such as highly, bitterly, deeply . These alternatives collocate strongly with specific words and other combinations often sound unnatural.

Highly 

Collocations – unlikely, unusual, successful, competitive, profitable, effective, controversial and recommended 

It is highly unlikely that I’ll finish my work on time.

 Thanksgiving 

 Verbs and adverbs

Some verbs have particular  adverbs which regularly collocate with them.

She pulled steadily on the rope and helped him to safety. [pulled firmly and evenly]

He placed the beautiful vase gently on the window ledge.

‘I love you and want to marry you,’ Derek whispered softly to Marsha.

She smiled proudly as she looked at the photos of her new grandson.

 Conjunctions and Interjection 

• What are interjections?
• What are conjunctions?
• Examples
• Types of conjunction
• Putting it into practice  

 Collocations

 A collocation is a pair or group of words that are often used together. These combinations sound natural to native speakers, but students of English have to make a special effort to learn them because they are often difficult to guess. Some combinations just ‘sound wrong’ to native English speakers. For example, the adjective fast collocates with cars, but not with a glance .