English
Every rule you have been given about English, with the one thing no book prints beside it — how often it is actually right, and the words it gets wrong.
- Courses
- 10
- Lessons
- 41
- Level
- Foundational
- Assumes
- no earlier course on this site is assumed; the number work never goes past counting
Overview
Tense Tables comes first because every later lesson needs the forms it builds, and because it is the lesson that shows what this Subject does differently: a rule arrives with a hit rate and a list of exceptions rather than on its own.
Irregular Verbs comes second because it is the exception list the first course keeps pointing at, and because it is short — the verbs that break the rules are few, and a small number of them carry most of the trouble.
Helping Verbs comes third because be, have and do take the forms the first two courses build, and before Word Order because the adverb and question rules move a helping verb, and a reader should have met one first.
Nouns and Articles comes fourth because its plural rule is the same -s rule the first course scores on verbs, now run on nouns.
Word Order comes fifth because it needs a verb, a helping verb and a noun before it can ask where each one goes, and because its method is borrowed from the first course: English marks who is doing the action in the little words like he and him, so the rule can be checked on printed words with nothing marked up by hand.
Small Words and Comparisons comes sixth and closes the grammar: its rules are about the short words around nouns and verbs, and its comparisons lesson counts the parts of a word, which it explains where it needs them and which Word Stress takes further.
Spelling to Sound comes seventh and begins the three courses about sound. It needs nothing from the grammar and can be read first: each rule takes a spelling to a sound and is scored on the 2,800 words.
Word Stress comes eighth because it uses the sound marks Spelling to Sound explains, and the strong part of a verb that Tense Tables needed for its doubling rule.
Listening comes ninth, and apart: it needs nothing from the other courses, Word Stress helps it, and a reader who wants help hearing English before anything else can start there.
Vocabulary and Reading comes last because its lab is the other nine courses' rules run as a reading machine: it asks how much of a real page the 2,800 words cover, and a reader needs the rules that turn one listed word into its other forms first.
Courses
Ten courses. The first six are grammar and are in one order: the forms of a verb, then the verbs that break the rules for them, then the helping verbs that stand in front of a verb, then nouns and the little words before them, then where everything goes in a sentence, then the small words and comparisons. The next three are about sound — how a spelling is said, where the strong part of a word falls, and what a listener actually hears — and can be read apart from the first six, Listening first if you want help hearing English before anything else. The tenth uses every rule before it. These ten are the whole Subject as published: a new course is added only when its rule can be run over printed words and scored the same way, and nothing is announced before its page exists.
A book gives you twelve boxes and asks you to learn them. This course gives you five forms and four rules that build all twelve, then runs those rules over 1,210 real verbs in your browser and prints how often they are right and every word they miss. It ends with the sound of the two endings, which the spelling hides.
Tense Tables built any verb from four rules. An irregular verb is one those rules do not reach. This is the list of them, and it is shorter than it looks, because 132 of the 133 verbs here fall into six patterns, be stands alone outside them, and three words carry more than half of the trouble.
Most mistakes with English verbs are mistakes with the small word in front of the verb. This course takes those words one rule at a time, runs each rule over one printed chapter of a novel and two modern documents in your browser, and prints every line the rule gets wrong beside the line it gets right.
Four small questions about nouns: how to make the plural, the form that means more than one; which nouns have none; whether it is a or an; and when the goes before the only one. Each is a rule that you can score on printed words, with every miss shown.
English does not mark who does what with word endings. It marks it with position, and with the shape of the pronoun — he against him. That makes the order rules checkable on ordinary printed text, with nothing marked up by hand, and this course checks them, on a novel and on a play.
In, on or at? Bigger or more big? Happily or happyly? Give it up or give up it? This course states the rule for each, counts how often it is right on printed lines, and shows you the lines it gets wrong.
Every student is given rules for how a spelling is said, and few are told how often each rule is right. This course takes five of them, runs each on the 2,800 words of the list, checks it against a dictionary that records how the word is said, and prints the score and every word the rule gets wrong.
Every English word of two or more parts has one part that is said stronger than the rest. A learner who puts it in the wrong place is often not understood, even when every sound is right. This course states the rules for where it goes, runs them over the 2,800 words in your browser, and prints how often each is right and every word it misses. It ends with what the weak parts sound like.
People learning English say it is spoken too fast. Mostly it is not. Fewer than fifty small grammar words are two in every five of a page, and most of them change shape when said. Most of the rest announces where it begins. Two more lessons count how the small words are written when they are said short, and where the gaps between words go. Every count is made on a page you can read.
How many words do you need to read a page? This course counts. It checks every word of a passage from a novel, part of a play and two modern documents against the 2,800 words of the list, prints the words that are left, and lets you paste a text of your own. Then it shows which ten words make up a quarter of any page, and what changes when a word and its family are counted as one.
Recommended background
The ability to read this page. The writing is kept inside the 2,800 most frequent words of English and every other word is defined where it first appears, but it is still English, and a reader at the very beginning will want a teacher as well as a page.
Counting, and working out a share. Nothing here needs more number work than that, and no earlier course on this site is assumed.