Eric Smart Academy - E-SmA

📘 E-SmA English Focus

Sentences You Must Master to Speak and Write Better English

Every complete sentence has two important parts:

1. Subject – who or what the sentence is about.

2. Predicate – what the subject does or what happens to it.

Examples:

✔ Birds fly.

✔ Children play.

✔ The wind blows.

✔ My brother studies every evening.

In each sentence, the subject tells us who or what, while the predicate tells us what happens.

As your English improves, you can expand sentences by answering simple questions:

Who?

What?

When?

Where?

Why?

How?

Example:

🔹 The train leaves.

🔹 The train leaves at night.

🔹 The train leaves at night for Yaoundé.

🔹 The train leaves at night for Yaoundé every Saturday.

Notice how the sentence becomes richer and more informative.

You can also have:

✔ Compound Subjects

James and Daniel worked on the project.

✔ Compound Predicates

Janet runs, swims, and cycles.

💡 The secret to better English is not using difficult words.

It is learning how to build clear, complete, and meaningful sentences.

🧠 Challenge:

Identify the subject and predicate in this sentence:

"The students completed their assignment before noon."

👇 Drop your answer in the comments.

💳 Tech Focus: Choosing a Payment Gateway for Your Website

One of the most important decisions when building an online platform is deciding how customers will pay.

Many developers focus on features, design, and deployment but forget to plan for payments early enough.

Before choosing a payment gateway, ask yourself:

✔ Where are my customers located?

✔ Do they prefer cards, bank transfers, or mobile money?

✔ What transaction fees will I pay?

✔ How quickly will I receive my money?

✔ Does the gateway integrate easily with my website?

For African businesses, supporting mobile payments is often just as important as supporting debit and credit cards.

Popular options include:

📱 Mobile Money (MTN MoMo, Orange Money)

💳 Stripe

💳 PayPal

🌍 Flutterwave

🌍 Paystack

🏦 Bank Transfers

There is no "best" payment gateway for everyone.

The best payment gateway is the one your customers are most likely to use.

A smooth payment experience increases trust, reduces abandoned transactions, and helps your business grow.

💡 Remember:

If customers cannot pay easily, they cannot buy easily.

Particles
What is a particle?
A particle is a word that does not have semantic meaning on its own, but instead relies on the word it is paired with to have meaning. A particle cannot inflect—that is, its form does not change to reflect grammatical person, number, case, gender, tense, mood, aspect, or voice.
A particle is very similar to a preposition—in fact, they are almost always identical in appearance. However, prepositions are used to establish a relationship between their objects and another part of a sentence, and so they have a unique lexical meaning of their own. Particles, on the other hand, are only used to create infinitives and to form phrasal verbs.
Infinitive to
The particle to is the only particle in English that can be used to create the infinitive form of a verb.
To is paired with the base form (uninflected form) of a verb to create the infinitive, which can function as a noun, adjective, or adverb. For example:
“To love another person is a wonderful thing.” (noun—subject)
“I would like to be alone.” (noun—direct object)
“I’m going to the store to buy milk.” (adverb—modifies the verb going)
“This is a good place to start reading.” (adjective—modifies the noun place)
(Go to the section on Infinitives in the Verbs chapter to learn more about how they are used.)
Phrasal Verbs
A phrasal verb consists of a verb followed by either a preposition or a particle to create a unique, idiomatic meaning. Since particles and prepositions look identical, it can be tricky to know when a phrasal verb is using one or the other.
However, particles are used more like adverbs, modifying and uniquely expanding the meaning of the verbs they are paired with. For this reason, particles are sometimes referred to as adverbial particles, or even just adverbs. The key difference between particles and prepositions is that particles do not (and cannot) introduce a prepositional phrase, while the preposition in a phrasal verb always will.
Take the following sentence, for example

Eric Smart Academy - E-SmA
📘 E-SmA English Focus

Did You Know English Has a Middle Voice?

Most learners know two voices:

✔ Active Voice

✔ Passive Voice

But there is also something called the Middle Voice.

In the Middle Voice, the subject both performs and receives the action.

Examples:

✔ He hurt himself.

✔ She introduced herself.

✔ The cat is scratching itself.

Notice that the action comes back to the subject.

Sometimes the reflexive pronoun is omitted:

✔ My father is shaving.

✔ She stretched before the race.

(We understand that they are acting on themselves.)

Middle Voice can also appear with things:

✔ The food is cooking.

✔ The door opened easily.

✔ This book sells well.

These sentences look active, but the subject is also receiving the action.

Compare:

🔹 Active: The chef is cooking the food.

🔹 Middle: The food is cooking.

🔹 Passive: The food is being cooked.

💡 The Middle Voice sits between the Active and Passive Voices, combining features of both.

🧠 Challenge:

Which sentence is in the Middle Voice?

A. The mechanic repaired the car.

B. The car was repaired.

C. The car drives smoothly.

👇 Answer in the comments.

📘 E-SmA English Focus

Viewpoint Adverbs in English

Sometimes we want to show whose opinion we are expressing or the aspect from which we are discussing something.

Words and expressions that do this are called viewpoint adverbs.

Examples:

✔ In my opinion, online learning is effective.

✔ Personally, I prefer printed books.

✔ According to the report, unemployment has fallen.

✔ To my knowledge, no decision has been made.

Viewpoint adverbs can also show a specific perspective:

✔ Financially, the project is successful.

✔ Politically, the issue remains controversial.

✔ Technically, your answer is correct.

✔ Scientifically, the theory is well supported.

Notice that these expressions often appear at the beginning of a sentence and are followed by a comma.

Compare:

✔ Personally, I disagree.

✔ I disagree, personally.

Both are correct.

💡 Viewpoint adverbs tell us whose view is being expressed or from what perspective something is being considered.

🧠 Challenge:

Which sentence sounds better?

A. Personally I think the plan will work.

B. Personally, I think the plan will work.

👇 Answer in the comments.

💻 Tech Focus: Understanding Design Patterns

One of the biggest differences between junior and experienced developers is this:

Junior developers focus on writing code.

Experienced developers focus on designing systems.

Design Patterns are proven solutions to common software problems. They help developers build applications that are easier to maintain, scale, and understand.

Some common patterns include:

🔹 Singleton — Only one instance exists (e.g., database connection)

🔹 Factory — Creates objects for you

🔹 Observer — Powers notifications and event systems

🔹 MVC — Separates data, logic, and user interface

🔹 Repository — Keeps database code separate from business logic

The goal of design patterns is not to write more code.

The goal is to write better code.

💡 If you're learning software development, don't just ask:

"How do I build it?"

Also ask:

"How should it be designed?"

👇 Which design pattern have you already used without realizing it?