In Verbs^x, Conversations^x

Avangi - That is precisely it: when I raised this grammatical point with the Director of English he replied, "increased is an ergative verb and so using the middle voice for the sentence 'Last year, turnover increased by 20%' is correct; although the trainees will mistakenly think...

Okay, several points here. Yes, employee turnover is something we try to avoid. If you recall, one of the reasons to use the passive is when you don't want to identify the agent - in other words, stupid management decisions. Avangi's example was perfect. Next, while employee turnover is...

Your grammar is okay, but your use of "vocabulary" isn't quite right. 3000 words isn't 80% of the (entire) vocabulary -- that would imply that there are only 3750 words in total. However, this core of 3000 words are 80% of the words used in normal conversation. (We won't...

Then when you are in that classroom, use "will" for the future, and in real life, know that "are verb-ing" is fine. I expect you will learn that form in another few months or perhaps another few years. (If you teacher tells you that the are verb-ing form is actually WRONG,...

My teacher teach me I should use "will verb" in future tense. "Be verbing" is only for an event which is doing now

Are you verb-ing is often used for the future. Are you coming to dinner next Sunday?Are you going to Eurpose in the fall?

Hi Sir, Thank you so much for your taking time to help me and may God, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, bless you greatly.. Sir, what is the proper verb to be use here? Why is it that even if it did happen in the past (the conversation, I mean) I can read a lot of them using the present tense...

Your instinct is right--the phrase refers to "last year's figure" but the word "figure" is understood and so dropped. So grammatically the spelling should be year's. However, it has become common especially in conversationto drop the 's, and that has slipped into...

It's very common in sentences of this sort to drop everything after the pronoun. So "John is taller than I" is the acceptable wording. In fact, in conversation many, probably most, people would say, "John is taller than me." To those folks using the "correct"...

I second Jim's advice based on 70 years of American conversation.