Grammar

Practise a few with countable nouns and a little with uncountable nouns, the change in meaning when the a is dropped (few, little), plural nouns after a few, and the phrase quite a few.

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.

Practise adverbs of manner that tell you how someone does something. Most are an adjective + -ly, some, like well and fast, change or stay the same, and look or feel take an adjective.

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.

Practise and, but, because and so in everyday sentences. Choose because for a reason and so for a result, and never use the two together in one sentence.

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.

Practise comparison with as ... as: saying two things are equal with as + adjective + as, not as ... as for less, the same as for things that are exactly alike, and the phrase as soon as possible.

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

Practise be going to for plans and predictions: am, is or are, the base verb after going to, negatives, questions and short answers.

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.

Practise comparative adjectives: -er for short adjectives, more for long ones, spelling such as heavier and funnier, better and worse, than, and much or a bit before a comparative.