Quick Grammar

In the same way that we use modal verbs to say how certain we are about things in the present we can also use them to speculate about the past.

There are very many multi-word verbs (sometimes called phrasal verbs) in English and it’s very difficult to learn them all.

Participle clauses are a bit like relative clauses – they give us more information.

We make the passive using ‘be’ – in a suitable tense – and the past participle (‘done’, ‘played’ etc.).

In the present tense we use ‘can’ to talk about a general ability – e.g. I can swim – and also for ability at a particular moment – e.g. I can see you! The rules for talking about past abilities are different.

The most common use of the past continuous tense is to talk about something that was happening around a particular time in the past.

When we talk about things that happened in the past but don’t happen anymore we can do it in different ways.

When we talk about something that happened in the past we sometimes want to refer back to something that happened before that time. We can use the

We can say how sure we feel about the future by using modal verbs. There are also other phrases we can use to express our certainty or uncertainty about future events.

The present perfect tense has a number of uses.