The Grammar Trainer

The section Grammar Trainer is devoted to rising the ability to choose the right words and put them in the right order while making English phrases.

In the current version there are 11 types of exercises:

1) making general questions (with possible yes/no-answers ),
2-5) composing questions to subject, verb, direct and time object
6) construction of sentence negation,
7) defining grammar categories of verb,
8) verb form substitution,
9) preposition substitution,
10) article substitution,
11) word group substitution

1. In 'build-the-phrase' tasks you can, as usually, assemble answers from puzzle pieces, or, if you prefer, input them with the keyboard (it is configured in the Trainer's settings).

2. To avoid putting in a full answer each time, the setting 'Ignore tail differences' is on by default, that is, to get a right answer accepted it is necessary to print/assemble the corresponding sentence till its main verb only inclusively. For instance, in the answer "Do you like to drink tea in the morning?", with the 'assemble from pieces' mode on, the last input piece will be "like", or, using the keyboard, you may type only "Do you like".

3. In the current version, answers abbreviated using the apostrophe ('), like "She doesn't like playing tennis", or "What's up, doc?" are not supported. Please, write the answers in the full form.

If the setting 'Smart task selection' is on, then your previous results in the Trainer are taken into account while composing each new set of excercises, to provide maximum correspondence of the latter to your level of English and, in particular, to your knowledge of the English Grammar. If the mentioned setting is off, the exercises are selected randomly from all over the exercise base.

...If I want, for instance, to do only the exercises on preposition substitution or on defining grammar properties of verbs in order to pay more attention to working on the topic in which I feel I am lacking knowledge.

What the idea of smart task selection implies is that there is no necessity for learners to draw up tasks they need for further improving their skills and reaching the next level of English. By looking at the results displayed by a learner when doing exercises, it is possible to figure out which aspects of learning English need to be improved and to offer the learner the proper tasks.

We keep improving our task selection system, so if you have any comments and/or suggestions concerning its functioning, feel free to contact us at gramotey@puzzle-english.com - any feedback is much appreciated.

Subject is the part of a clause referring to the person or thing that does or causes the action of a verb. In English, the subject is usually a noun group or pronoun.

Predicate is the part of the sentence that contains the verb and its object or complements and gives more information about the subject.

For instance, in the sentence "All cats would like to be stroked" the subject is "All cats", and "would like" is the predicate.

Notice, that in positive sentences in English, the subject usually comes in the beginning of the sentence and always before the predicate.

English verbs change their forms depending on the context. Grammatical category effectively indicates the context in which a certain verb form can be used. For instance, the form 'was reading' can be used to describe an action that began in the past and is still going on at the time of speaking (Past Continuous), and the form "reads" can be used to indicate an action that happens repetitively or regularly at the present time (Present Indefinite/Simple).

On the other hand, grammatical categories define the structure of a verb form. For example, the form that indicates a continuing action is "be + doing", the one that indicates a completed action is "have/had + done", and the one that complies with Passive voice is "be + done", etc.

Knowing grammatical categories will help you quicker become comfortable at reading complicated English texts, understand spoken English better and express your thoughts in English more accurately and correctly.
For more explanations about grammatical categories of verbs, check out the study materials on our website ;)

Be given is the predicate in the dependent clause of a complex sentence, while the question in the task referred to the main clause (He demanded). Please notice that the predicate in question is marked as italic in the task.

If you would like to leave a comment on a particular sentence, please have a look at the link “Leave feedback” to the right of the sentence in question in the list of results. All your comments will help improve our service.

If you have the function "Smart task selection" turned on and your level of grammar (displayed at the top of the page) is close to 100 per cent, then you get tasks on the most difficult topics only. There are not so many tasks of this kind (yet), so they start recurring after quite a short period of time.

We are already working on diversifying the tasks and phrases used in them, but it may take a while. For the time being, you can just turn off the function "Smart task selection" (although in that case, you will be coming across some tasks that may seem too easy to you).

If you feel that our Grammar Trainer is too easy for you, congratulations! You got the hang of English grammar! Now try to apply the skills you acquired by watching an interesting film with the subtitles turned off ;)

We are also already in process of preparing some new interesting exercises for the Grammar Trainer. And if you have got your own ideas on what exercises would be useful for you, be sure to contact us at gramotey@puzzle-english.com, and we will try to take all your suggestions into account!