Why do we say "time is an illusion" but "a terrifying silence"? Master the tricky exceptions of uncountable concepts by practicing zero articles for general ideas, definite articles for specified nouns, and indefinite articles for modified abstract nouns.

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Do you know when to write "the human brain" but leave "qualitative research" without an article? Master the nuances of formal scholarly writing by testing yourself on generic classes, abstract nouns with post-modification, and zero-article rules for diseases and academic disciplines.

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Do you know how to use "Try as I might" or "Ridiculous as it sounds" correctly? Master advanced contrast structures by testing yourself on fronted adjectives with as/though, verb fronting, albeit, and much as.

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Are you ready to move beyond basic "if" clauses? Test your advanced grammar skills by mastering nuanced conditional phrases like supposing, provided that, on condition that, even if, and but for.

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Is it grammatically correct to say "another three weeks" or "many a student has"? Master the trickiest English agreement rules by testing your knowledge of "many a" phrases, amount vs. number, and determiners with irregular plurals and uncountable nouns.

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Do you know how to elegantly pivot back to a main story after a random tangent, or correctly use formal words like albeit and notwithstanding? Test your mastery of advanced transitions by practicing markers of concession, extent and purpose, and reformulation and resumption across 10 challenging questions.

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Ever wondered why "the file is scheduled to be deleted" sounds perfectly fine, but "the file was attempted to be deleted" is grammatically wrong? Test your advanced grammar skills on acceptable double passives, reporting verbs for rumors, and verbs that reject passive infinitives.

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Why repeat yourself when you can drop words to create elegant, concise sentences? Test your advanced grammar skills on gapping, verb phrase (VP) ellipsis, and right node raising across 10 challenging questions.

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Do you know why we say Never have I seen... instead of I have never seen...? Learn how to add dramatic flair to your English by mastering negative adverbial inversion, locative fronting, and inverted conditionals.

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Do you know how to express an unfulfilled plan from the past or calculate exact durations leading up to a future deadline? Test your advanced grammar skills by mastering the future perfect continuous, future in the past, and nuanced expectation phrases like bound to and on the verge of.

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Do you know when to use got caught instead of was caught, or why a theory is understood rather than got understood? Challenge yourself with complex sentence structures, including dynamic get-passives, causative delegation, and adversative passives for describing unexpected misfortunes.

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Can you spot a hypothetical situation when the word "if" is nowhere to be found? Navigate 10 tricky scenarios by identifying implied conditionals hidden within phrases like but for, otherwise, given, and implied subjects.

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Do you know how to drop the "if" to make your English sound more formal and dramatic? Master the art of inversion by testing your knowledge of first conditionals with should, second conditionals with were, third conditionals with had, and complex mixed conditionals.

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Do you know whether to write "It is I who is" or "It is I who am"? Test your advanced syntax skills by mastering pronoun and verb agreement, emphasizing prepositional phrases, and structuring complex adverbial and negative time clauses.

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Are you confused about when to use "needn't have done" instead of "didn't need to do"? Master the trickiest rules of English verbs by testing yourself on marginal modals, past regrets with ought to, and the modal forms of dare and need.

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Do you know the difference between an action that shouldn't have been done and one that needn't have been done? Put your advanced grammar skills to the test with continuous deductions, passive obligations, and unnecessary past actions.

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Can you clearly explain a chaotic sequence of past events without losing your listener? Put your storytelling skills to the test by mastering the Past Simple, Past Continuous, Past Perfect, and Past Perfect Continuous tenses in dramatic, real-world contexts.

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Do you know whether to write "I leave my fortune to whoever" or "to whomever" when it follows a preposition? Master advanced pronoun cases by testing yourself on whoever vs. whomever, what vs. that, and tricky verb agreement within nominal relative clauses.

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Are you impervious to grammar mistakes, or is your writing fraught with preposition errors? Test your high-level vocabulary by mastering advanced prepositional verbs and adjective-preposition combinations across dramatic, real-world scenarios.

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Do you know if a rumored corporate merger is in the offing or on the offing? Test your mastery of advanced, fixed phrases by choosing the correct prepositions for expressions like by dint of, under the auspices, out of kilter, and at the behest of.

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Can you confidently use present verbs to describe tomorrow's plans? Test your advanced grammar skills by mastering scheduled events, fixed personal arrangements, and future time clauses across high-stakes scenarios.

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Why do we say "most people" but "most of the people"? Master tricky grammar rules by testing yourself on quantifiers with object pronouns, specific vs. general determiners, and complex structures like every one of and none of the.

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Do you know how to link sentences using words like some, none, or half without creating a dreaded comma splice? Test your advanced grammar skills by mastering quantifiers with relative pronouns, choosing correctly between whom, which, and the tricky possessive whose.

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Do you know how to accurately report tricky statements like "What shall I do?" or "You mustn't enter"? Shifting modal verbs into reported speech requires much more than just a simple tense backshift. Test your advanced grammar skills on reporting shall for advice, must for prohibitions and obligations, and past modal deductions like must have and might have.

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Do you still use question word order when reporting what someone asked? Test your advanced grammar skills on reported wh- questions, yes/no questions, and infinitive commands in this 10-question challenge.

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Do you know the difference between "He spoke thankfully" and "Thankfully, he spoke"? Test your ability to set the tone of a sentence by mastering sentence adverbs, distinguishing them from adverbs of manner, and expressing attitude and certainty.

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Have you ever wondered why we say "be that as it may" instead of "is that as it may"? Master the remnants of the English subjunctive mood by practicing fixed expressions, concessive phrases, and hypothetical idioms across 10 challenging scenarios.

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Why do we say "I demand that he be fired" instead of "is fired"? The formal subjunctive mood ignores standard conjugation rules to express urgency, necessity, or strict demands. Test your advanced grammar skills by applying the active and passive subjunctive, negative subjunctive forms, and the continuous subjunctive.

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Do you know when to say "I suspect not" instead of "I don't suspect so"? Master advanced clause replacement by practicing negative expectations, adjective substitution, verb phrase fronting, and the tricky rules of stative verbs with "do".

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Do you know when to use "Were I to go" instead of "If I was going"? Master the art of formal hypotheticals by testing yourself on subject-verb inversion, the "were to" future conditional, and tricky mixed conditionals.

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Want to add a dramatic, native-level flair to your English sentences? Test your advanced grammar skills by mastering standard wh-clefts, reversed wh-clefts, action-focused cleft structures, and pseudo-clefts.

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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."

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Test your understanding of advanced conditionals and the use of wish for expressing unreal, hypothetical, or regretted situations. Challenge your skills with mixed conditionals and nuanced wish structures.

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Do you tell someone news or say news to them? Master essential communication collocations including say vs. tell distinctions, advice patterns, promise expressions, and argument vocabulary through 23 interactive questions.

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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...

Ever wonder why we say someone is in a hurry but did something completely by mistake? Master the tricky exceptions of English grammar by practicing indefinite article phrases, definite article idioms, and zero-article expressions.

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Ever planned something perfectly, only to have it fall apart before it even began? Master how to express unfulfilled plans, narrative destiny, and interrupted actions by practicing would, was going to, and was about to.

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By the time you finish this challenge, will you have been practicing grammar for hours? Test your ability to express ongoing future duration by mastering the future perfect continuous tense, identifying stative verb exceptions, and distinguishing it from other future tenses.

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Ready to drop the if and sound like a highly advanced English speaker? Test your mastery of formal grammar by practicing third conditional inversion with had, second conditional inversion with were, and first conditional inversion with should.

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Want to add a dramatic, advanced flair to your English sentences? Master the rules of grammatical inversion by practicing with negative adverbs like not only, under no circumstances, little, hardly, and no sooner.

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Why do we say it's no use trying instead of it's no use to try? Master the tricky gerund rules for it's no use and there's no point in while navigating fun, advanced scenarios from zombie encounters to cursed office printers.

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What happens when a past mistake alters your present reality, or a permanent trait changes a past outcome? Test your advanced grammar skills on past actions with present results, present states with past consequences, and formal conditional inversions.

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Did you waste your time doing something unnecessary, or did you realize it was unnecessary and skip it entirely? Test your grasp of past modals by choosing between needn't have done for wasted efforts and didn't need to do for avoided actions.

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Ever wondered how to fix a "dangling participle" before it ruins your writing? Master advanced sentence structures by practicing -ing and -ed participle clauses, identifying dangling modifiers, and using passive perfect participles to connect ideas seamlessly.

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Why write "the alien who was stranded" when you can simply say "the alien stranded"? Master concise writing by testing your knowledge of active and passive participle phrases, stative verb reductions, and infinitive relative clauses across 10 challenging questions.

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Do you know when to use "the manager to whom I spoke" instead of "the manager who I spoke to"? Master the strict formal register by practicing fronted prepositions, relative pronouns like whom and which, and complex prepositional phrases.

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Do you know the difference between "it is said that he escaped" and "he is said to have escaped"? Master advanced English sentence construction by practicing impersonal passive structures, perfect infinitives, and continuous infinitives alongside common reporting verbs.

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Did he say he is leaving or was leaving? Master the nuances of reporting what others say by practicing tense backshifting, identifying exceptions for general truths and present reporting verbs, and fixing indirect question word order.

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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!"