Complete Grandpa Joe's slightly exaggerated memoir about his youth.
My grandfather used to be a famous magician. He used to pull rabbits out of his hat every single Sunday!
My grandfather used to be a famous magician.
We use "used to" + bare infinitive to talk about past states that are no longer true.
He used to pull rabbits out of his hat every single Sunday!
We also use "used to" + bare infinitive to describe past habits or repeated actions.
Past tense
The past tense is how English talks about events finished before now. It comes in four flavours: simple past (I walked) for completed events, past progressive (I was walking) for actions ongoing at a past time, past perfect (I had walked) for events before another past event, and past perfect progressive (I had been walking) for ongoing events leading up to a past point.
Choosing the right one is what makes past narratives clear instead of murky. When I arrived, she ate dinner is technically grammatical but means something different than had eaten (already done) or was eating (in progress when you arrived).
Verb
A verb is a word that expresses an action, a state, or an occurrence — the engine of every English sentence. Most verbs have five forms: base (go), -s form (goes), past tense (went), past participle (gone), and -ing form (going). The verb be is the major exception with eight forms; modal verbs like can and must have fewer.
Verbs carry tense (when), aspect (how it unfolds), mood (the speaker's attitude), and voice (active vs passive). Mastering them is foundational — virtually every other grammar topic depends on getting verbs right.
Habits and routines
The Habits and routines tag covers questions about regular actions and daily routines: I brush my teeth every morning, She usually has coffee at 8am, We always go to the gym on Saturdays. The grammar core is the present simple for habits, adverbs of frequency (always, usually, sometimes, never), and time expressions (every day, on Mondays, twice a week).
For past habits, English uses used to and would (I used to live in Berlin; Every summer we would go to the lake). Getting these right is the difference between describing your life clearly and stumbling through every introduction.
A2 | Elementary | Pre-intermediate
A2 is the elementary level in the CEFR framework, sitting between A1 and B1. At A2 you can handle routine exchanges — ordering food, asking directions, making small talk — and describe your immediate environment in simple sentences.
Grammatically, A2 introduces past simple and past continuous, present perfect for experiences, basic modal verbs, and the first conditional. You're also picking up collocations and learning which verbs take gerunds vs. infinitives. Knowing your level here is the difference between confident progress and frustration: A2 material consolidates the basics; B1 will overwhelm you.
Difficulty: Easy
The Easy difficulty tag marks questions and challenges aimed at beginners — typically A1 or early A2 level. Expect single-rule focus, short sentences, common everyday vocabulary, and one clear correct answer. Distractors usually rule themselves out quickly.
Filter by Easy when you're rebuilding fundamentals, warming up before harder material, or testing whether you've truly internalised a basic rule before moving on. Easy doesn't mean trivial — it means the rule itself is unambiguous and the context doesn't pile on extra complications.