A REVIEW OF THE

GRAMMAR FOR OUR

C1-1
Blended group 2020-21
EASY STUFF…
PARTS OF SPEECH
https://www.myenglishpages.com/site_php_files/gramm
ar-lesson-parts-of-speech.php

The ‘content’ parts of speech carry meaning: nouns,

adjectives, adverbs, and verbs. They are stressed.
The ‘grammar’ parts of speech do not have a denotational
meaning like the others; they are prepositions,
pronouns, conjunctions. They are not usually stressed
unless we want to create emphasis.
Interjections are another specific part of speech which
can convey meaning and emotion (oops, yum yum, etc)
SENTENCES: TYPES
• Simple, compound, complex:
I love Málaga. (simple sentence: one clause)
I love Málaga and I want to keep on living here.
(compound sentence– two clauses joined by
AND, OR, SO, BUT )
I want to live in Málaga because I love it. (complex
sentence – here there is a main clause and a
subordinate clause – joined by a conjunction
different from the ones above)
BASIC WORD ORDER IN THE SENTENCE
• STATEMENTS
SVOC:
Eg Mary bought her sister a bunch of flowers for her birthday.

• QUESTIONS
(Q)ASI
Eg Can you repeat that? What did Mary buy? Who did she buy it for? – NB: Careful with
reported questions: I wonder if you can repeat that – SVOC
Careful with subject questions: Who discovered America?

• DIRECTIVES
Imperatives: Shut up!
More polite utterances: they adopt the form of questions (Could you be quiet?) or indirect
directives ( I’d like to ask you for advice).
Reported directives: I want you to help me, please.- I told him not to touch it.
ON WITH THE TENSES…
THE PRESENT TENSES
• PRESENT SIMPLE
Used for habits, with adverbs of frequency.

• PRESENT CONTINUOUS
Used for things going on at the moment of speaking.

• PRESENT PERFECT SIMPLE & PRESENT PERFECT

CONTINUOUS: for actions that began in the past but are still
relevant in the present: I have lived in Málaga for 9 years. I
have been teaching blended groups for four years now.
PRESENT TO EXPRESS PAST
Sometimes the present is used when we mean
past:
• telling anecdotes and jokes
• talking about the plot of a book or film
• narrating a story that we want to show more
vividly to our readers
• historical present: eg Samuel Morse is born on
the 27th April 1872 and his family is not aware
that he will give his name to a great invention.
THE FUTURE TENSES
• We should talk, if we want to be accurate,
about ‘ways of talking about the future’,
rather than future tenses.
• The future can’t be known for sure; so it’s the
speaker’s viewpoint about an action and its
chances to happen that matters here.
• We have then different options, as reflected in
the following examples…
THE FUTURE: examples

• You´re going to love that film - your favourite actor stars in it.
• (The phone rings) I´ll answer it.
• I´m having a drink with Sean in the pub at 10.00.
• The plane lands at midnight.
• When I finish this lesson, I’ll have some tea.
• He’ll be wondering where on earth we are.
• What time will you be coming tomorrow?
• Today is April Fool, so they’ll have been playing pranks on
everyone as usual, I suppose.
• All students are to assemble in the hall at 11
am at the end of the fire drill.
• The post is bound to be offered to Smith, as
he’s the most senior of the workers.
• Ian is sure / certain to pass as he’s studied a
lot.
• Linda’s baby is due next April.
Imminent future:
• The play is about to start!
• Larry is on the point of resigning.
• John was so frustrated he was on the verge of
crying.
• The firm is on the brink of disaster.
HABITS IN THE PRESENT
AND IN THE PAST
• I usually have coffee for breakfast.
• I tend to have coffee for breakfast.
• I’m in the habit of having coffee for breakfast.
• On a typical lockdown day,I will do some yoga, I will have coffee and
toast for breakfast, I will turn on my laptop and I will spend the day
watching Netflix.

• I used to drink tea (habit in the past, no longer kept).

• Idoia would drink tea whenever her English uncle came to visit her
to Bilbao. (typical behaviour in the past)
• I would be a tea-drinker in the past. Incorrect. I used to be a tea-
drinker. Correct.
THE NARRATIVE TENSES
When we are telling a story, we often use
these tenses: simple past, past perfect, past
continuous, past perfect continuous.

We may also use USED TO and WOULD to

refer to habits and typical behaviour in the
past.
Examples:
A stone's throw from Jerusalem
I walked a lonely mile in the moonlight
And though a million stars were shining
My heart was lost on a distant planet

From: Mad About You, by Sting:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTMqPi_GVm0
Last night I had the strangest dream
I ever dreamed before
I dreamed the world had all agreed
To put an end to war
I dreamed I saw a mighty room
The room was filled with men
And the paper they were signing said
They'd never fight again

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Pf_DntbQ8Y

Simon And Garfunkel - Last Night I Had The Strangest Dream

It was a bright day in April, and the clocks were
striking thirteen.

(George Orwell's well-known dystopian novel,

Nineteen Eighty-four, begins with that
sentence)
What was new was not that the European Union
would be imposing rules, because that had been
going on for more than 30 years, but rather that a
radical measure, that had been heralded for many
years, the opening up of the market, would actually
be taken.

From: europarl.europa.eu
• This used to be my playground…
- From this song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WdzR2VKa8A

• Seas would rise when I gave the word…

- From this song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tmb7YIKqLeM
TENSES IN HEADLINES
• Prince Harry announces birth of baby boy
• Jailed Russian journalists freed
• Major gaming convention to take place in
Aberdeen
NOW IT’S TIME FOR A BIT OF COMPARISON
COMPARATIVES AND SUPERLATIVES
The basics:
http://sherwoodschool.ru/en/lessons1/english_grammar/comparative_structur
es_in_english/

Double comparative
We use double comparatives with the to say that one situation leads to
another.
• The more you read, the more you'll learn.
• The more I see him, the less I like him.

Progressive comparative
We use progressive comparative form to say something is escalating. If we want
to emphasise the adjective, we use the comparative word twice.
• House prices are getting higher and higher.
Everything is relative…or is it?
RELATIVE CLAUSES 1:
DEFINING and NON-DEFINING
• This is the operation which/that Karen needs to undergo.
• That's the doctor who/that performed Karen's
operation.
• Dr Lake, who has been working here for over ten years,
is a very experienced surgeon. (here ‘that’ is incorrect)
• The operation, which is not complicated, will require her
to stay the night at hospital. (here ‘that’ is incorrect)
RELATIVE CLAUSES 2:
REDUCED and WITH PREPOSITIONS
• The indie film shot in Alaska won the Oscar.
• I love that woman wearing the blue dress!
• Those men, several of whose faces you
cannot remember, were your assailants.
• Mary Shelley, by whom the best SF novel was
written, was very young when she wrote it.
• He offered me a pile of books, many of which
were battered and torn.
Don’t be passive!
IMPERSONAL PASSIVE
• Fewer than 1,000 blue whales are reported to
survive in the southern hemisphere.
• In ancient Greece it was thought that dolphins
were men who had abandoned life on earth.
• Mr Clark is said to have been difficult to work
with when he was younger.
• It is believed that the painting was stolen by a
professional thief.
Talking about graphs
DESCRIBING TRENDS & GRAPHS
• Food prices have been rising steadily.
• House prices shot up last month.
• Share prices have plummeted.
• Prices have remained steady.
• We need to flatten the curve.
• This pie chart shows…
• What the line graph is highlighting is…
• https://www.aehelp.com/blog/2014/04/08/ac
ademic-ielts-task-1-useful-vocabulary-for-grap
hs-and-diagrams/

• https://www.englisch-hilfen.de/en/words/cha
rts.htm

NB Useful for reports and mediation tasks.

MODAL VERBS
Image from:

• https://a2cristina.wordpress.com/2013/06/14
/modal-verbs/

Some reminders:
• http://www.advanced-english-grammar.com/
modal-verbs.html
PHRASAL VERBS
• https://guidetogrammar.org/grammar/phrasal
s.htm

These verbs are very common in English. There

you have a good list and a basic classification.
DESCRIBING PICTURES
DESCRIBING PEOPLE
Firstly, make sure you know the difference between:

• WHAT DOES HE LOOK LIKE? (physical appearance)

• WHAT IS HE LIKE? (general description, which includes the
personality)
• WHAT DOES HE LIKE DOING? (hobbies)
• WHAT DOES HE DO? (profession)
• HOW IS HE? (‘Fine; he just recovered from covid.’)

Secondly, when we describe, and it may be a person or an object

or a place, we need adjectives that modify that noun…
PREMODIFICATION
OF THE NOUN PHRASE
(aka order of the adjectives in the Nominal Group)

• I had a strange, frightening, almost supernatural

experience.
• Those are delicious, huge, chocolate chip cookies.
• She borrowed my little black dress.

What we usually call ‘a complex NG’ is a noun that

has premodification and /or postmodification.
DOSA SCOMP + n
Determiner + opinion, size, age, shape, colour, origin, material, purpose
+noun

This Zulu woman is wearing

a wonderful enormous
ancient conical colourful
African wooden dancing hat.
NB: That ‘purpose’ word stands for:
• An -ed adjective
• An –ing adjective
• A noun acting as an adjective

Eg:
A shy broad-shouldered boy (this is a compound adj)
Five baking apples (ie, good for baking)
An excellent teacher trainer / taxi driver/ voice coach
POST-MODIFICATION OF THE NG
• Prep G:
A woman in a blue evening dress
• Relative clause:
A woman who was wearing a blue evening dress
• Reduced relative clause:
A woman wearing a blue evening dress
A woman dressed in blue
POSITION OF ADVERBIALS
• Wrong:* I like very much cinema.
• Correct: I like cinema very much. (SVOC –
never separate the verb from its object)
• Daniel got the job quickly at the new restaurant last
week.
(MANNER + PLACE+TIME)
• I always watch TV for half an hour before going to bed.
(PERIOD + POINT IN TIME)
• Generally speaking, trains are very efficient. (a sort of
linker usu used between pauses)
COLLOCATIONS WITH ADVERBS
• Adverbs collocate with adjectives, other
adverbs and verbs – not with nouns
* a quickly plane, * an easily diet
• Some adverbs can only be used with certain
adjs and verbs:
I sincerely hope vs. *I strongly hope
It’s utterly ridiculous vs. * It’s utterly feasible
We call this ‘collocation’.
PUNCTUATION
https://grammar.yourdictionary.com/punctuatio
n/what/fourteen-punctuation-marks.html
COHESION
Here are two versions of a fable from Aesop, one well-written and the
other badly written. In terms of organization and cohesion, what does the
good writer do that the other doesn't?
COHESION
A vixen was walking down a road one day and had four young cubs and
a vixen met a lioness with a cub and a vixen started to boast about a
vixen's family and said a vixen had four cubs and a lioness only had one
cub and a lioness said a lioness only had one cub but one cub was a lion.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A vixen who had four young cubs was walking down a road one day
when she met a lioness with her cub.
The vixen started to boast about her family, saying that she had four
cubs, whereas the poor lioness only had one.
'Only one,' replied the lioness, 'but he's a lion!'
ANSWER:
THE WRITER OF THE SECOND TEXT
USES SUBSTITUTION AND ELLIPSIS,
PUNCTUATION AND
PARAGRAPHING.
10 different ways to give…
1) FRONTING
• And from the dark appeared a man.
• Down the hill and into the lake quickly rolled the
ball.
• Up into the bright blue sky went the balloon.
• Why she chose to marry him I can’t understand.
• Gone are the days when children played on the
streets.
• Such was the weather that they decided to call off
the picnic.
2) INVERSION AFTER NEGATIVE ADVERBIALS

• Never before have I seen such a fierce dog.

• Not for a minute did I think about it!
• Not in a thousand years would I have imagined she
would leave that job.
• Not until you say sorry will you have your supper.
• Seldom does he go to her place.
• Only at 5 pm can you turn the TV on; not before.
• Little did they realize what was about to take place.
• Barely had I arrived when the strangest thing
happened.
• No sooner had I arrived than the strangest
thing happened.
What makes the picture unusual?
… there are people who are overdressed, people in
costumes and people who are underdressed…
This picture pretty much sums up what using
inversion in the wrong context looks like graphically. If
you are overdressed at an informal do, you look and
will certainly feel strange. Likewise, if you are
underdressed at a formal do, you will feel out of
place. This is what happens when you use inversion
incorrectly.

DON’T OVERDO IT
3) IT-CLEFTING
• It was on Monday that I zoomed him.
• It was Maggie who told me.
• It must have been my boss who you spoke to.
• It will be from John that you will hear the news.
• It is midnight when the spell has to be cast.
• NB: WHICH, WHOM, WHAT, WHY, WHERE are not
posible in clefts.
*It is with the right advisors which you must approach
the issue.
4) WH-CLEFTING

• What Mary finds stressful about museums is that they

seem to be huge.
• When the exam results will be ready is what worries me.
• Why John insists on leaving is what I can’t fathom.
• The ones who need more protection are the elderly.
• What Peter did was (to) leave the door unlocked.
• The thing that we badly need here is some more
organisation. (infml)
5) EMPHATIC DO, DOES, DID
• I do believe that consumerism is killing the planet.
• Shakespeare does feel such a contemporary. That’s
why his works are classics!
• The professor did warn the students that the
subject needed careful analysis.
INCORRECT:
• Mary did be a painter.
• Tom does have never been to New York.
• Eliza does can play the ukulele.
OTHER WAYS TO GIVE EMPHASIS:
• 5) PASSIVE VOICE
• 6) PRESENT CONTINUOUS + FOREVER / ALWAYS /
CONTINUALLY (annoyance): eg Martha is always getting into
trouble.- John is forever asking tricky questions.
• 7) REPETITION: eg I tried and I tried and I tried… all to no avail.
• 8) CERTAIN WORDS TO EMPHASISE NEGATIVES: eg She was not
interested in the slightest.
• 9) SO & SUCH: eg You can enjoy such marvellous views from
this balcony!
• 10) USING INTONATION (SPOKEN ENGLISH): Are you NUTS??
CONDITIONALS
4 basic types
These are the 4 basic types:
• 0: If you boil water, it evaporates.
• 1: If you work hard, you’ll reap your reward.
• 2: If you won the lottery jackpot, what would
you do with the money?
• 3: If you had gone to the airport earlier, you
wouldn’t have missed your flight.
CONDITIONALS: advanced points
• If I had gone there, I wouldn’t be here now. ---mixed conditional --
https://www.englishpage.com/conditional/mixedconditional.html

• Should you need medical assistance, dial 333. (inverted conditional, type 1)
• Were we to need advice, they were always willing to give it to us. (inverted
conditional, type 2)
• Had we known the real situation, we would have intervened. (inverted
conditional, type 3)
https://www.clarkandmiller.com/inverted-conditionals-have-you-mastered-t
his-advanced-english-trick/

• But for her help, the company would have gone bankrupt. --Substitutions
for IF:
https://open.books4languages.com/english-b2-grammar/chapter/alternati
ves-to-if/
DISCOURSE MARKERS
• Significantly, the majority of students heading
for C1.2 have visited or even lived in English-
speaking countries.
• I thought his jokes were very macho, not to say
sexist, and in very bad taste.
• I can only tell jokes in two languages, namely
Spanish and English.
• Although it rained, the picnic was not called off.

http://www.edu.xunta.gal/centros/iesblancoamorculleredo/sy
stem/files/Discourse+markers+trad+en+castellano.pdf
DEPENDENT PREPOSITIONS
Prepositions that we must use with certain verbs,
adjectives and nouns

http
://english.teamdev.com/resources/prepositions?tmpl=
%2Fsystem%2Fapp%2Ftemplates%2Fprint%2F&showPr
intDialog=1

Eg I’m not used to getting up early.- She’s responsible for

the spaceship launch.- John applied for the grant.- A
good diet depends on many factors.- He suffers from
lack of sleep.- I need proof of your innocence.
WORD FORMATION
https://worldliterate.com/word-formation-and-formation-of
-word-process

Conversion
Don’t miss out this excellent article, which reviews how English gains
new words:
https://www.theguardian.com/media/mind-your-language/2016/feb/04/engl
ish-neologisms-new-words

Coining new words - different ways:

• blending: a combination of two words to make a new one, such as
brunch from breakfast and lunch;
• clipping: cutting parts of a word such as app (from application);
• acronyms: taking the initial letters of words and pronouncing them as a
new word, like NATO;
• alphabetisation: this takes the initial letters of words and pronounces
them as letters, e.g. BBC and CD;
• compounding: this combines two words to make a new one, e.g. sugar
daddy
We can also borrow words from other languages!
RECOMMENDED BIBLIOGRAPHY:

- Nieto, Diego (2018) The Box: Advanced English

Structures (with key) + The Subjuctive Affair &
The Modal Verb Affair (2021)
- Swan, Michael (2016) Practical English Usage,
4th ed
- Vince, Michael (2003) Advanced Language
Practice with Key