The primary meaning of the Past Continuous is that of a past action shown in its progress at a given past moment, e. g.:

• The door was slowly opening, and Anthony found himself gazing into a pair of pale-gray hooded eyes. (Gordon)
• She followed his gaze through the falling rain and saw a man and a girl coming from the large block of flats opposite her home. Now they were getting into a little motor car. (Gordon)

The problem of the interrelation between grammar and vocabulary is most complex.

If the question arises about the relationship between grammar and vocabulary we generally think of grammar as a closed system, i. e. consisting of a limited number of elements making up this system. The grammatical system of a language falls into subsystems, such as for instance, parts of speech, conjugated verb-forms, prepositions, affixes, etc., in other words, the classes of linguistic units whose exhaustive inventory can be made up as a whole.

A funny way to learn vocabulary. We have reviewed a list similar to this in the past. Most of these are new. The humor in the following sentences is in the form of "puns" (plays on words).
Please try to read these and see if you can see where the 'joke' is. Please ask me about any you cannot understand. I hope they make you laugh.

A / an are determiners. Determiners are words we use before a noun to show whether the noun is specific or general, singular or plural, etc.

A/an

We use a or an with singular countable nouns only. A and an are indefinite articles. We use them to talk about one of something when we assume that the listener / reader doesn't know which specific thing:

• A car drove past. (= we don't know exactly which car)

The

We use the with countable nouns (singular or plural) and uncountable nouns:

• A man is coming round to fix the television.
• Let's sit on the grass over there.

 

The is the definite article. We use it to talk about a specific example of something we think is known to both ourselves and the listener / reader:

• The cars were parked illegally in the city centre. (= we know which cars and which city)

The grammar authorities are going to battle it out today. For they all have a different opinion about our topics: the merits of using the word “for” to mean “because,” and whether it’s OK to start a sentence with the word “for.”

Now, guest-writer Bonnie Trenga writes,

The experts' opinions range from,

• yes, go ahead and put a “for” wherever you like—in the middle or at the beginning of a sentence; to
•  yes, but “for” belongs best at the beginning of an independent clause; to
• no, no way—you’re not allowed to put “for” at the beginning of a sentence.

Yikes! Who’s right? You’re going to upset someone no matter what you do.

Many students delay the test preparation process because they dread the awful amounts of practice time they think necessary to succeed on the test. There is an effective method that will take you only a fraction of the time. There are a number of “obstacles” in your way on the IELTS. Among these are answering questions, finishing in time, and mastering test-taking strategies. All must be executed on the day of the test at peak performance, or your score will suffer.

The IELTS is a mental marathon that has a large impact on your future. Just like a marathon runner, it is important to work your way up to the full challenge. So first you just worry about questions, and then time, and finally strategy:

Straight talk from Yossarian the Grammarian on participles.

State verbs are verbs which do not normally have continuous tenses because they describe a state rather than an action. These include:

• verbs which express likes and dislikes: like, love, hate, dislike, enjoy, pre etc
  e.g. Cathy likes romantic films
  
• verbs of perception: believe, know, notice, remember, forget, recognize, understand, realize, seem, think, etc.
   e.g. I don't believe a word he's saying.