2025-01-23 Academic Writing: Common Patterns, Part One
The new school year is beginning in communities across the United States. Many students are busy at work in their new classes. Some are already thinking about all the homework…
2025-01-16 Studying Sentence Patterns to Improve Your Writing, Part Two
From VOA Learning English, this is Everyday Grammar. In a previous Everyday Grammar story, we discussed two common sentence patterns using the word “be.” This week, we are going to…
2025-01-09 Studying Sentence Patterns to Improve Your Writing, Part One
Many English learners have spent a lot of time studying the parts of speech: adjectives, nouns and verbs, for example. But sometimes studying the English sentence from a larger perspective…
2025-01-02 Questions, Answers about Holiday Activities
Imagine you are talking to an American. You are curious to know about what they did during the holidays of Christmas and New Year’s. How can you ask about these…
2024-12-26 Grammar for Making New Year’s Resolutions
The New Year can come on different dates for different cultures. Most of the Western world, for example, celebrates it on January 1st. But one thing many cultures have in…
2024-12-19 Grammar and Christmas
Many Americans experience surprise (or disappointment) when they wake up on Christmas Day. They might be surprised or disappointed by a family member’s actions. They might be happy or unhappy…
2024-12-12 Fun with Future Tenses
For VOA Learning English, this is Everyday Grammar. This week, we are going to talk about the future tenses. There are several ways to talk about future events in English.…
2024-12-05 Simple Past and Present Perfect
Editors note: This is the third of a four-part series on verb tenses. Click here to see part one. See the others in Related Stories. In this week’s episode of…
2024-11-28 Are You Learning the Progressive Tenses?
Editors note: This is the second of a four-part series on verb tenses. Click here to see part one. See the others in Related Stories. For VOA Learning English, this…
2024-11-21 Thanksgiving and English Grammar
Every year around the Thanksgiving holiday, a strange ceremony happens in Washington, DC. The president stands outside the White House, gives a brief speech and then officially pardons a turkey.…
2024-11-14 An Introduction to Verb Tenses
For VOA Learning English, this is Everyday Grammar. Today we are going to give you a basic overview of the verb tense system in English. Verb tenses tell us how…
2024-11-07 You Want to Learn about Tag Questions, Don’t You?
For VOA Learning English, this is Everyday Grammar. Have you ever been in a conversation and wanted to check your understanding? That is the time to use a tag question…
2024-10-31 In, On and At: Prepositions of Time and Place
When English speakers talk about time and place, there are three little words that often come up: in, on, and at. These common words are prepositions that show a relationship…
2024-10-24 Grammar and Halloween
An interesting holiday in the United States is coming up soon. Halloween happens on the last day of October. If you have lived in the U.S., you have probably noticed…
2024-10-17 Learn 10 Separable Phrasal Verbs
Welcome back to Everyday Grammar from VOA Learning English. Today we return to a very common verb form in English – phrasal verbs. You will find one phrasal verb in…