Start with short recordings, then work through longer phrases. Listen once for the situation and again for the words.
Put enough before a noun, as in enough time or enough chairs. Put it after an adjective or adverb, as in warm enough or quickly enough. Use enough to plus a base verb when you say what someone or something can do.
An epic is a long story about heroic events. In informal English, epic can also mean very large, difficult, or impressive.
Use exercise for physical activity, a practice task, or the use of an ability or right. Use exorcise for an attempt to drive out an evil spirit in a religious or fictional context.
Fall behind means to stop keeping up with work, study, payments, or another person. Fall out usually means to argue and stop being friendly.
Choose a few or few with things you can count, and a little or little with an amount you do not count separately. Use a few and a little when some amount is available. Use few and little when the amount seems smaller than needed or expected.
Learn a fixed expression as a complete chunk of language. Notice its usual words, grammar, situation, and meaning. Do not replace one word just because it has a similar dictionary meaning.
A flea market is a market with many individual sellers, especially one where people buy and sell used, old, unusual, or low-cost goods. Say at a flea market when you mean the place: We found the mirror at a flea market.
Food idioms use food words to express another idea. A piece of cake means something is easy, spill the beans means reveal information, bread and butter means a main source of income, in a pickle means in a difficult situation, and full of beans means lively and energetic.
Understand a food idiom from the whole situation, not from each word alone. The apple of someone's eye is a much-loved person, sour grapes describes bitter criticism after disappointment, and butter someone up means flatter someone to get a favor.
English has borrowed many everyday words from other languages. Café, piano, kindergarten, tsunami, algebra, and shampoo are familiar English words with word histories outside English.
Choose your tone after you decide who will read the message and what you need from them. Use a suitable greeting and closing, make requests politely when the situation needs it, and avoid slang or very casual abbreviations in formal writing.
To form many adverbs, add -ly to an adjective: careful becomes carefully. With an adjective ending in consonant plus y, change y to i and add -ly: happy becomes happily. Check the sentence too: an adjective describes a noun, while an adverb often tells how an action happens.