by Phil Williams | Apr 9, 2024 | Exercises, Vocabulary
I have finally completed my Idioms and Sayings series with a third exercise covering some common expressions in English. Sorry it’s taken me a couple of years to get back to this – it’s mostly because I forgot, but also the rest of the list went missing! As a...
by Phil Williams | Mar 12, 2024 | Business English, Vocabulary
I used to work in business writing (or writing copy, as we call functional English text), and ran a website with articles about this, which some of you may remember. That website is now gone but I still have a lot of articles saved, which I’ve been meaning to...
by Phil Williams | Feb 13, 2024 | Vocabulary
I’ve touched on prefixes and suffixes a little in the past, and when I was asked if it’s possible to form adjectives from verbs it made me think of a suffix that deserves an article of its own: -y. The letter -y appears at the end of many words in English, but can...
by Phil Williams | Dec 12, 2023 | Exercises, Grammar, Vocabulary
It’s that time of year again: Festive Season, meaning festive articles on ELB! Adding to my collection of seasonal Christmas articles which you can find here, today I’ve got another mixed tenses exercise. As we did in October for Halloween, this exercise tests...
by Phil Williams | Sep 12, 2023 | Vocabulary, Writing skills
I felt like it was time for a look at some vocabulary for once, so today I’m sharing some thoughts on how to develop and use an advanced vocabulary, from a chapter originally published in Advanced Writing Skills (which celebrated some big milestones last...
by Phil Williams | May 16, 2023 | Definitions, General English, Vocabulary, Words, Writing skills
“For ever after” is a phrase I found curious recently, as it highlights some interesting points about how English works as a flexible, evolving language. The phrase can be written in two different ways, changing the meanings of the words, with no real agreement on the...