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.

Vocabulary

• A1: ~500–800 words (survival: family, food, numbers)
• A2: ~1,500–2,500 (routine: work, leisure, basic phrasal verbs)
• B1: ~2,500–4,000 (opinions, news, abstract topics)
• B2: ~4,000–6,000 (register precision, hedging, idioms)
• C1: ~6,000–10,000 (academic, register sensitivity)
• C2: 10,000+ (literary, rare, full style range)

Vocabulary covers word-level practice: individual words, collocations, phrasal verbs, idioms. Organised by CEFR level. Grammar tells you HOW to build sentences; vocabulary gives you WHAT to put in them.

Vocabulary for B2/Upper Intermediate

• Register precision: big → substantial, considerable, significant
• Hedging: tend to, somewhat, arguably, to some extent
• Reporting verbs: claim, argue, suggest, acknowledge, deny
• Idiomatic: break the ice, out of the blue, get the hang of

B2 vocabulary = ~4,000–6,000 words. Register awareness, hedging, reporting verbs, idioms, figurative expressions. Grammar is no longer the limit — precision of word choice is.

Focus: synonyms with different registers (begin/commence/start), hedging language for academic writing, and the reporting verbs that distinguish said from claimed/argued/insisted.

B2 | Upper Intermediate

• ✅ If I had studied harder, I would have passed. — third conditional
• ✅ The report is being reviewed by the committee. — passive progressive
• ✅ Having finished the exam, she left. — participle clause
• ✅ He denied having taken the money. — complex verb pattern

These are B2 patterns — the CEFR upper-intermediate level. At B2 you handle mixed conditionals, all passive forms, participle clauses, and can argue a point clearly. This is the level most universities and employers require.

Marker: if you can write a structured essay and debate an abstract topic, you're B2.

Easy

• She is a teacher. — one verb form, one rule
• I have two cats. — basic possession, short sentence
• He doesn't like coffee. — simple negation with do-support
• Only one answer is clearly correct; distractors are obviously wrong.

Easy marks beginner-level challenges: A1–early A2, one rule at a time, everyday vocabulary, no trick questions.

Use "Easy" when you want to build confidence on a specific rule without interference from other grammar or tricky contexts.