中国学生英语

Improve English Language Grammar and Parts-of-Speech for Chinese Speakers

This is the second course designed to be simple to learn English for Chinese students.

It includes articles that explain parts of speech in English we need to understand that go beyond the basics of nouns and verbs.

The design focuses on phrases. A pronoun does not replace a noun but a noun phrase. This could include articles, adjectives or prepositional phrases.

By the end of this course you will improve your English proficiency.

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Phrases in English

In this course we will cover the three types of phrases in English: noun phrases (NP), verb phrases (VP) and prepositional phrases (PP)

Prepositional Phrases

Introduction to prepositional phrases includes

  1. Prepositional phrase overview
  2. What are prepositional phrases?
  3. Examples of prepositional phrases

Here is the previous page on prepositions.

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Noun Phrases

Nouns are used with other words that affect that noun called modifiers. These form noun phrases.

It is the noun phrase that gets represented by the pronoun rather than the noun by itself.

If you wish to revise on our previous lessons, here are the pages on nouns , articles (determiners), adjectives and prepositional phrases using prepositions.

Visit our page on noun phrases

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Verb Phrases

Verb phrases include helping verbs that help the man verb that include modal verbs.

An overview is seen on the page on verb phrases and the details on helping verbs including modals verbs are seen on the helping verb page.

Here are the previous course pages on verbs and adverbs.

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Other Phrases

There are other types of phrases in English. Visit this website to see all these phrases:
types of phrases in English

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Multiword Expressions in English

In the English language, there are many terms that use more than one word. These include collocations, compound and collective nouns, and phrasal verbs.

Collocations

English collocations are a small group of words commonly used together like take a bath, do homework or heavy rain.

Visit English Collocations

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Countable Nouns

We already understand the basics of nouns and areas such as proper nouns, common nouns, irregular nouns and plural nouns.

Now let’s look at some more advanced areas:

Here is the previous course page on learning nouns.

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Collective Nouns

Collective nouns are used to define a group of people, animals or objects

For detail, examples, exercises and worksheets then visit collective nouns

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Compound Nouns

Compound nouns are formed by more than one word. For example break + fast = breakfast.

More examples and exercises see the compound noun webpage.

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Phrasal Verbs

We have looked at noun phrases, prepositional phrase and will look at verb phrases next.

But in our vocabulary section we also have very short phrases like ‘give up’, ‘come on’ and ‘calm down’. These are called  ‘phrasal verbs‘.

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Expressions in English

In the English language, there are also many, many different types of expressions. These range from old words of wisdom such as proverbs (e.g. Chinese proverbs), to expressions that have a special meaning like idioms.

Variety of Expressions

There are many groups of words in English that include a variety of expressions.

two boys with the slogan he who laughs last laughs longest

Expressions in English

A comprehensive look at the different types of expressions can be found with this link. 

girl crying over spilled milk

Resources from Course 1

Introduction to Improving your English

This course assumes you understand the basics of parts of speech. If you wish to remind yourself of these area please revise these areas first.

Resources from English for Chinese Students 2023-4

Improve English Exercises

The sets of idioms in the speaking exercise are available next. If you wish to review these and other idioms like these then visit:

  1. nature idioms, or
  2. lists of idioms in categories, or
  3. idiom exercises.