When using articles, there are a number of ways to communicate specific shades of meanings with articles. Related rules for proper names don't make things easier. To complicate things even further, there are other determiners occasionally taking the place of articles. For instance, some and no function like articles, but behave somewhat differently with uncountable nouns.

Answer the questions to check if you understand the nuances!

Articles are ubiquitous; the is the most common word in English, accounting for 7% of all words.

The concept of definiteness is hard to grasp even for advanced learners who don’t have articles in their first language. A spectacular example of such confusion is the occasion with Ivana Trump. She explained, “Yes, you know the outcome — ‘The Donald’ just slipped off the tongue, and now it seems to be making its ways to the political history books.”

Take the challenge to find out if articles are easy for you!

Very often when we compare different objects or events. As we tend to be as colorful as possible, using only comparative or superlative form of adjectives is not always enough.

Because of this, we begin to add adverbs or special constructions such as far, by far, much, a lot, a little etc.

The knowledge of the rules how to use the intensifiers of comparison usually indicates an advanced student.

Subjunctive mood is represented by three main forms in contemporary English: present subjunctive, past subjunctive, past perfect subjunctive. Other forms such as present continuous subjunctive and past continuous subjunctive are used very rarely.

These subordinate clauses may be divided into 4 types according to the realness of the condition and the time.

Apart from the aforementioned, advanced students are particularly interested in the accurate usage of such verbs as should, would, could, might, wish after if and in the case when it is omitted in the mixed type conditionals.

All this is simple and clear for you, and you would easily prove it passing a test on the subject, wouldn't you?

There are some verbs in English that need different type of objects: either gerunds or infinitives. In order not to make a mistake students usually learn these verbs by heart. Besides, there are also such verbs that may be followed by both gerunds and infinitives, and the choice of the object type directly influences the meaning of a sentence.

Of course there are not so many verbs such as “forget” in English, but the reason for the choice of the infinitive or the gerund object each time will be different and will strongly influence the meaning of a sentence. And it’s a real challenge for advanced students.

Speaking about the challenge, did you forget... ehm... nervermind...

Inversion is the change of a standard word order from subject-verb to verb-subject. If there is more than one verb, only the first auxiliary verb swaps places with the subject. Inversion is usually used in questions, but there are a number of other scenarios in which it applies. It is often used to make the speech more emphatic.

Inversion is not used a lot in everyday colloquial speech, it sounds a bit bookish and will remind people of Shakespeare’s times.

Hardly it makes knowledge of the rules of inversion less important for advanced students, does it?

Complex participles and gerunds, their perfect, passive or perfect-passive forms are interesting. The accurate understanding and usage of such participial nad gerund constructions especially after the verb to be and different prepositions; before nouns; and also in set expressions and constructions shows... shows...

Actually, go and try to figure it out yourself.

Understanding the principle of the sequence of tenses in direct and indirect speech must not be a great challenge!

However, the devil is in the details, exceptions and rules variations, not to mention indirect sentences with modal verbs and the usage of adverbs of time and place, which in turn must be changed in a special way.

In English there are some verb constructions having special indirect meaning, such as used to, would, get used to, get doing, be to do, happen to do, be going to do something, be about to do something etc.

For example “I would go swimming to the swimming pool in my childhood” – means that in the past I went to swim periodically but now I don’t go swimming anymore...

These constructions help to add different shades to the main meaning of a sentence without wordy explanations. Now, how about getting answering the questions?

This English grammar quiz is designed to check if an English learner is at C2/Upper Intermediate CEFR level.

This is a quiz to check if an English learner is at the C1/Advanced CEFR level. It tests the learner's ability to understand and use a wide range of complex and nuanced language. The questions will cover various grammar topics such as verb tenses, modals, passive voice, and idiomatic expressions. The learner will be expected to show a high degree of accuracy in their use of English. The quiz is designed to challenge even the most advanced learners and will be a good indicator of whether they have reached a C1 level of proficiency in the language.

We use this expression to talk about habits or repeated actions in the past which we don't do in the present.

For instance: "I used to pass all these grammar tests with ease!"