Help complete Maria's journal entry about how her life has changed.
📓 Maria's Journal:
"My morning routine is so different now! When I was in college, I ___ sleep until noon every weekend. Those lazy mornings feel like a distant memory. These days, after two years at my new job, I ___ waking up at 6 a.m.—it actually feels normal now!"
Choose the correct pair to fill both blanks:
The correct answer is used to ... am used to.
The first blank requires used to + base verb ("used to sleep") to describe a past habit that no longer exists. The second blank requires be used to + gerund ("am used to waking") to express being accustomed to something. Though both contain "used to," they have different structures and meanings: past habit vs. current familiarity.
Gerund
If you've ever said I enjoy to read or good at to swim and wondered why it sounded wrong, you've met the gerund. English is fussy about which structures take -ing and which take to + verb, and getting this wrong is one of the most common giveaways that someone learned grammar from a list rather than from real usage.
A gerund is the -ing form of a verb acting as a noun — reading, swimming, being late. After many common verbs (enjoy, avoid, finish) and after every preposition, English demands the gerund, never the infinitive.
Infinitive
If you've ever written I enjoy to swim or He let me to go and only later learned why both are wrong — you've hit the infinitive's main puzzle. English is fussy: some verbs demand the to-infinitive, some demand the bare infinitive, some demand the gerund, and a few accept multiple options with different meanings (remember to lock vs remember locking).
The infinitive is the basic form of a verb, used non-finitely. The to-infinitive (to go) follows verbs like want, decide, plan; the bare infinitive (go) follows modal verbs (can, will) and causatives (Let him go).
Habitual aspect
If you've ever written Last summer, I used to go swimming every day when you meant would go — or vice versa — you've hit the habitual aspect's main puzzle. Used to and would both describe past habits, but they have different rules: one needs a time anchor; the other implies the habit has stopped. Mix them up and the meaning subtly shifts.
The habitual aspect marks an action as repeated or routine. English expresses it through the present simple (I walk to work), used to for past habits no longer true (I used to smoke), and would for repeated past actions in a specific time frame (Every summer we would go to the lake).
B1 | Intermediate
If you can hold a conversation about your weekend, explain why you're late, and follow a short news story without panicking — but still feel lost in fast or technical English — you're probably operating at B1. Knowing this matters: study material at the wrong level either bores you or burns you out, and B1 is the typical target for travel, casual work, and most everyday social English.
B1 is the intermediate level in the CEFR framework, where you handle everyday English independently and start combining ideas with complex sentences, passive voice, and modal verbs.
Difficulty: Medium
If easy questions feel too obvious but hard questions leave you guessing, you're probably ready for Medium — the level where most real learning happens. It pushes just enough to expose the rules you don't quite have yet, without burying you in edge cases. This is where steady fluency is built, one well-aimed challenge at a time.
The Medium difficulty tag marks middle-range challenges — typically A2 to B1. One rule per question, realistic distractors, and contexts that require active thought rather than instant recognition.