The secret sauce must be kept in the fridge at all times. Please remember that the fancy gold-rimmed plates should not be washed in the dishwasher, or they will lose their sparkle!
To form the passive voice with a modal verb, use modal + be + past participle.
The sauce doesn't keep itself; it must be kept by someone.
The plates don't wash themselves; they should not be washed by someone.
Modal verb
- ✅ She can swim. — ❌ She can to swim. (modal + bare infinitive, no to)
- ✅ You must leave now. — strong obligation
- ✅ It might rain. — possibility (~50%)
- ✅ He should apologise. — advice/recommendation
Modal verbs (can, could, may, might, must, shall, should, will, would) are auxiliaries expressing ability, permission, possibility, obligation, or speculation. Always + bare infinitive. Never inflected (she can, not she cans).
Rule: modals never take to after them, never add -s for third person, and can't combine directly (must can ❌ — use must be able to).
Passive voice
- ✅ The meal was cooked by the chef. — passive (action matters)
- ✅ Mistakes were made. — passive, agent hidden (evasive)
- ✅ Active: The chef cooked the meal. — stronger, clearer
- ❌ The report was being been written. — malformed passive
The passive = be + past participle. Object becomes subject. Use it when the doer is unknown, irrelevant, or obvious. Avoid when it hides responsibility or weakens prose.
Formula: find the active object → make it the subject → use be (matching tense) + past participle → optionally add by + agent.
Negation
- ✅ I don't see anything. — ❌ I don't see nothing. (double negative in standard English)
- ✅ She never goes out. — never already negates (no doesn't needed)
- ✅ He doesn't like coffee. — do-support for negation
- ✅ Nobody came. — negative subject (no auxiliary needed)
Negation uses not after an auxiliary/modal, or do-support when there's no auxiliary. One negative per clause in standard English — never, nobody, nothing already negate without adding not.
Rule: one negative element per clause. I don't see anything or I see nothing — never both together in standard English.
Verb
- walk → walk / walks / walked / walked / walking (5 forms, regular)
- go → go / goes / went / gone / going (5 forms, irregular)
- be → am/is/are/was/were/be/being/been (8 forms)
- can → can / could (modal: only 2 forms, no -s, no -ing)
A verb is the one word class every English sentence requires. Carries tense (when), aspect (duration), mood (attitude), and voice (active/passive). Regular verbs add -ed; ~200 irregular verbs have unpredictable past forms.
Key insight: fix your verbs and most grammar problems disappear. Wrong tense, wrong agreement, wrong form — verb errors account for the majority of grammatical mistakes.
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.