Help the exhausted professor complete her grading notes by dragging the correct words into the blanks.
Practically every student misunderstood the simple essay prompt about historical time travel. However, each of the essays was unique in its own disastrously funny logic!
Practically every student misunderstood the simple essay prompt about historical time travel. However, each of the essays was unique in its own disastrously funny logic!
Use every after adverbs like practically, almost, or nearly. (We cannot say "practically each").
Use each before of + plural noun/pronoun. We never say "every of"! Also, most is incorrect here because the verb "was" is singular, and "most of the essays" would require the plural verb "were".
Determiner
- ✅ The cat sat on a mat. — articles as determiners
- ✅ My sister has three dogs. — possessive + numeral as determiners
- ❌ I went to the home. — wrong (idiomatic: I went home — no determiner)
- ❌ She is a good student. ✅ vs She is good student. ❌ — missing determiner
A determiner sits before a noun to specify which, how many, or whose. Types include articles, demonstratives, possessives, and quantifiers.
Rule: most singular countable nouns in English require a determiner — a cat, the cat, my cat, this cat. Dropping it (cat sat on mat) breaks the sentence.
Adverb
- ✅ She sings beautifully — ❌ She sings beautiful
- ✅ He drives carefully — ❌ He drives careful
- ✅ They arrived late — ✅ a late train (same form, both roles)
- ✅ She works hard — ❌ She works hardly (different meaning!)
The -ly words are adverbs — they modify verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs, telling you how, when, where, or to what degree.
Pattern: most adjectives become adverbs by adding -ly, but watch the exceptions — fast, hard, late, well — that keep the same shape or change meaning entirely.
Subject
- ✅ The list of items is wrong. — subject = list (singular), not items
- ❌ The list of items are wrong. — trapped by nearest noun
- ✅ Running is good exercise. — gerund as subject
- ✅ What he said surprised me. — clause as subject
The subject is the noun/pronoun/phrase before the verb that controls its number and person. Finding the true subject — especially through prepositional phrases — is the key to subject-verb agreement.
Rule: strip away prepositional phrases between subject and verb. Whatever's left is the true subject. The list (of items) is wrong.
Complement
- She is a doctor. — subject complement (describes "she" via linking verb)
- We elected her chair. — object complement (describes "her" after transitive verb)
- He seems tired. — subject complement (adjective after seem)
- They called him a genius. — object complement (noun phrase after call)
A complement completes the meaning of a verb or expression. After linking verbs (be, seem, become) it describes the subject; after certain transitive verbs (call, elect, consider) it describes the object.
Test: remove the suspected complement. If the sentence collapses or changes meaning fundamentally, it's a complement, not a modifier.
Collocations
- ✅ make a decision — ❌ do a decision
- ✅ strong coffee — ❌ powerful coffee
- ✅ heavy rain — ❌ strong rain
- ✅ highly unlikely — ❌ very unlikely (grammatical, but less natural)
Collocations are word pairs that English habitually puts together. Both options may be grammatically valid, but one sounds native and the other doesn't.
Pattern: there's no logic to predict them — you make decisions but do homework, you have strong coffee but heavy rain. They must be learned as chunks, not deduced from rules.
B1 | Intermediate
- ✅ If I had more time, I would travel more. — second conditional
- ✅ The bridge was built in 1920. — passive voice
- ✅ She said she was tired. — reported speech with backshift
- ✅ Although it rained, we enjoyed the trip. — complex sentence with concession
These are B1 patterns — the CEFR intermediate level. At B1 you link ideas, use passive voice, handle reported speech, and manage second conditional — enough for travel, work basics, and everyday independence.
Marker: if you can explain why something happened and follow a news story, you're B1.
Medium
- If I were you, I would apologise. — one rule (second conditional), but distractors like was tempt you
- Answers require active thought, not instant pattern recognition
- Vocabulary and context are realistic, not artificially simplified
- Usually tests one rule, but the wrong answers are plausible
Medium marks middle-difficulty challenges: A2–B1, one rule tested, but with realistic distractors that require genuine understanding.
Use "Medium" when Easy feels too obvious but Hard feels overwhelming. This is where most productive learning happens — the sweet spot of difficulty.