English Language Homestay Tuition

28/06/2021

How can you use can. And could you use could, when you are able to have the possibility of doing so .........?

Let's just try and keep things simple here!

English Miscellany I can climb trees / Even at my age I have the ability to climb trees.Many English language learners will make a sentence using ‘to be able to’ when there are much simpler ways of describing our abilities! Let’s pretend for a moment that one of my skills is tree climbing. The...

06/06/2021

- We have been drinking with masks on today.
- They had been drinking with masks on all day yesterday.

How to use the past or present perfect tense when drinking in a pandemic.

English Miscellany Drinking with the present perfect / It had been a difficult time for drinkers during COVID.They had been drinking with masks on!How do we use the perfect tense to indicate whether an action is still in progress? There are two ‘perfect’ tenses in English, the past and the prese...

24/05/2021

This is an important safety announcement:

When walking under the cliffs, you should always ….
… beware of falling rocks ?
…. watch out for falling people ?
…. mind the gap ?

http://www.ric.splunge.co.uk/beware-of-making-mistakes/

18/05/2021

"BACK SEA !". We often go down to the beach and command the incoming tide not to rise.

http://www.ric.splunge.co.uk/back-sea/

13/05/2021

new photos taken this week of our house and surrounds

http://www.ric.splunge.co.uk/house-gallery/

12/05/2021

- I learnt how to fly yesterday.
- Yesterday I learned flying.

Which one’s right?

It’s great that we have loads of regular verbs in English, because once we know the rules on how to conjugate one regular verb we can conjugate all the others. e.g. I walk, I walked, I’m walking, etc. But that would be too easy for the foreigners, which is why the English language also uses irregular verbs. It keeps people like me in business!

http://www.ric.splunge.co.uk/yesterdayi-learnt-to-fly/

12/05/2021

I can’t take your call at the moment, because I’m dancing in the sea!

It is a common law of the universe that events can only happen in the present moment. But in speech, we are able to describe them in the past, the present or the future, which is why languages have developed tenses to sort this out! For the moment (now!) let us have a look at how the present tense can be used.

http://www.ric.splunge.co.uk/we-are-dancing-in-the-sea/

29/04/2021

"There were not many people in London yesterday".
There are many ways in English to describe a number of people. So what's the difference between 'Not many' and 'not any', and 'a few'?
http://www.ric.splunge.co.uk/not-many-v-a-few-and-other-amounts/

29/04/2021

"My Giraffe has had an operation, and must now wear some protection.
Why use 'has had' here rather than just 'had'?
http://www.ric.splunge.co.uk/has-had-v-had/

12/02/2020

Now open for business 2020!