Grammar

Can, could, may. Saying what someone is able to do and what they are allowed to do, in the forms that appear in signs, rules and everyday requests.

Nouns that name ideas rather than things, and the nominalisation that turns a verb into one. The engine of academic and institutional writing.

Adjectives and nouns with their fixed prepositions: good at, interested in, a reason for, an increase in. Collocation doing the work grammar cannot.

Where an adverb goes once a sentence has more than one verb, an object and a time phrase, and how moving it changes what the sentence emphasises.

How an action is done and how often it happens: slowly, carefully, always, never. Includes where these words go, which English is fussier about than most languages.

A, an and the, the choice English makes before almost every noun. With the this, that and my that point at something rather than count it.

Where English uses no article at all, with meals, institutions and abstractions, and the approximate quantity phrases that stand in for a number.

Do, does, did. The auxiliary that appears in questions and negatives and then disappears again in the answer, alongside have and have got.

Sentences that split in two to spotlight one part: what I need most is a holiday, it was the manager who decided. Plus reduced clauses that drop the relative pronoun.

Adverbs in their comparative and superlative forms: more carefully, the fastest, better. Plus where a longer adverb phrase can and cannot sit in a sentence.

Making adjectives longer or stronger: bigger, the biggest, more careful. Also where an adjective sits when it meets a noun, and the very and too that grade it.

Saying two things match, or do not: as tall as, not as good as, less crowded, the least expensive. With compound adjectives and the ones no intensifier can grade.

Hyphenated adjectives built from two words, and the -ed and -ing forms in their less obvious uses, alongside the intensifiers that only fit certain adjectives.

Two nouns acting as one: coffee table, traffic jam, credit card. Plus collective nouns for groups, which can take a singular or a plural verb.

And, but, or, so. Joining two short sentences into one, and the first step past writing every idea as a separate statement.