The correct answers are the medieval knights, they, and the villagers.
The verb were is used with plural subjects and the pronouns we, you, and they. Singular subjects like "the king" or "the local blacksmith" would require the verb was.
Be
If your first weeks of English felt like a battle with am, is, are — you've already met the most common verb in the language. Every form of be is irregular, and you can't avoid them: they're in introductions, descriptions, questions, the present continuous, the past, and the passive voice. Get them automatic and the rest of English grammar gets noticeably less stressful.
The verb be has eight forms — be, am, is, are, being, was, were, been — more than any other English verb. Functions as a copula linking subject to complement (She is a doctor) and as an auxiliary for progressive tenses and the passive voice.
Past tense
If you've ever told a story in English and felt the timeline get tangled — I came home, the dog ate, the cat slept — you've hit the limits of using simple past for everything. The past tense system has four forms specifically because real stories have layered timing: things that happened before other things, actions caught in progress, sequences of completed events.
The past tense has four English forms: simple past (I walked), past progressive (I was walking), past perfect (I had walked — earlier than another past event), past perfect progressive (I had been walking — ongoing up to a past point). Plus irregular verbs for the simple-past form.
Grammatical number
If you've ever written The data shows and been told it should be The data show — or written The list of items are when it should be is — you've hit a grammatical-number trap. Number agreement looks simple in theory (one takes singular, more than one takes plural) but English has enough irregular plurals and tricky collective nouns to keep you on your toes.
Grammatical number is the singular/plural distinction on nouns, pronouns, and verbs. Most English nouns form plurals with -(e)s; pronouns have irregular pairs (I/we, he/they); verbs agree with their subject (He goes vs They go).
A1 | Elementary | Beginners
If you can say your name, ask Where is the toilet?, and read a simple bus sign — but freeze when someone speaks at normal speed — you're at A1. That's not a problem to fix; it's the level where most learners actually live for a while, and recognising it lets you pick the right material instead of drowning in advanced grammar that wasn't meant for you yet.
A1 is the starting level of the CEFR framework, covering basic everyday communication: greetings, introductions, simple personal questions, present-tense forms of be/have/do, and core determiners and prepositions.
Difficulty: Easy
If a textbook leaves you confused, sometimes the issue isn't the topic — it's that the practice material is layered with extra complications. Filtering by Easy strips that away. You get one rule at a time, in plain everyday language, with no trick questions. It's how you make a shaky foundation solid before stacking more on top.
The Easy difficulty tag marks beginner-level questions and challenges — typically A1 or early A2. Single-rule focus, short sentences, common vocabulary, one clear correct answer.