Best English grammar exercises
Knowing many English words is a great way to get started on learning English. However, without knowing grammar you will hardly be able to string a sentence together. You can resort to reading grammar books, but this will get boring very quickly. Difficult is also that there are many different aspects to English grammar. Try your hand at a few of the exercises below to make learning English grammar easier. Also, they make it more fun too!
They’re, their and there
This is a famous example of basic grammar that many native English speaker get wrong. That is because the words sound very similar, but they mean different things. They’re means ‘they are’, their (they possess), there (location/pronoun). A good way to practice the difference is by watching an English language film on DVD. Each time you hear ‘there/they’re/their’, pause the DVD. Through the context try to work out which word it was you heard. Once you’re sure, rewind, put on the English subtitles and check if you were correct.
Your and you’re
Another infamous one that native English speakers get wrong all the time. The good news is that it’s not hard to learn. ‘Your’ means ‘you possess/own’ whereas ‘you’re’ means ‘you are’. To practice, print off a number of verbs and a number of nouns and cut them out. Once done, mix them up and determine for each one you pick whether you should use ‘your’ or ‘you’re’.
Sentence structure
Print a sheet of sentences in English and cut out the individual words. Use your cut-out words to put the sentence back together properly. Once you’ve mastered this, why not try to create new sentences with your cut-outs?
‘A’ or ‘an’
Firstly, think of as many nouns as you can. After you’ve done this, work out for each whether the article should be ‘a’ or ‘an’. For instance, ‘house’ will be ‘a house’, but ‘apple’ is ‘an apple’. Sound the combinations out when you try it. For instance, you’ll find that ‘a apple’ doesn’t sound right. Trust your gut instincts as they will often show you the right way.
Questions
Read any regular English sentence and try then to turn it into a question. For instance, take the sentence ‘football is the most popular sport in the world’. Now, change the word order to make it a question; ‘is football the most popular sport in the world?’ For some sentences you may even need to add an extra word. For example, ‘I go here’ becomes ’do I go here?’.
Possession
Pick any object that is near you. Whether it’s a tree, a sandwich or whatever else, it doesn’t matter.
Secondly, think of a few people you know. Now, make sentences to describe that the object you’re thinking of belongs to them. For instance: ‘it’s my car’, ‘the car is mine’, ‘this is John’s table’, ‘it’s his table’.
These are just a handful of examples that can help you grasp English grammar, but there are many more things to English grammar and many more things you can try. Language courses, like the evening English course from MixTree, can teach you a great deal more.