Study guide: English Grammar and U.S. History

📋 Course Outline

1. Question Tags
2. Present Simple Uses
3. Present Continuous Uses
4. English Question Formation
5. Wh- and Yes-No Questions
6. Interrogative Words
7. Simple and Continuous Past
8. English Relative Pronouns
9. Pronouns and Possessives
10. Countable and Uncountable Nouns
11. Some, Any, No and Every
12. English Articles
13. Jamestown and the Pilgrims
14. American Independence
15. U.S. Formation and Expansion

📅 Key Dates

1. 1513Juan Ponce de León arrived in Florida and claimed it for the King of Spain
2. 1607the first permanent English settlement in North America, Jamestown, was founded
3. 1620the Pilgrim Fathers arrived at Plymouth, Massachusetts, after a 66-day Atlantic crossing on the Mayflower
4. 1775 to 1783the American War of Independence took place
5. 1789George Washington became the first president of the United States

📖 1. Question Tags

📝 Essential Points

📌 A question tag repeats the sentence’s auxiliary and subject pronoun, with a negative tag after an affirmative statement and an affirmative tag after a negative statement.

💡 Memory Hook

Affirmative statement, negative tag; negative statement, affirmative tag.

📖 2. Present Simple Uses

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Present simple: Presents bare facts without the speaker’s comment.

★ Must-know

• The present simple expresses general truths or characteristics, such as “Women live longer than men.”

• The present simple describes habitual or repeated actions, often with frequency markers such as usually, always, every month, or on Saturdays.

Further detail

• The present simple can narrate sudden actions as they happen, especially in radio or television commentary, and can make stories livelier.

• The present simple describes future events presented as objective schedules, as in “The train leaves at 8:30 tomorrow morning.”

📖 3. Present Continuous Uses

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Present continuous: The present continuous uses be + verb-ing to present an action from an observer’s viewpoint, usually as linked to the moment of speaking.

★ Must-know

• The present continuous commonly focuses on an action in progress at the present moment, often understood as temporary.

• The listed poorly compatible verb groups are:

  • involuntary perception
  • mental activity
  • possession
  • appearance
  • certain states

Further detail

• The present continuous can describe a future personal plan or intention, as in “I’m leaving tomorrow.”

💡 Memory Hook

Simple reports a general fact; continuous views an action in progress.

📖 4. English Question Formation

📝 Essential Points

📌 For questions with verbs other than be, place the auxiliary before the subject and the main verb in its base form; for be, invert be and the subject.

📖 5. Wh- and Yes-No Questions

★ Must-know

📌 Wh-questions ask for unknown information and begin with an interrogative word, whereas yes-no questions seek confirmation and begin directly with an auxiliary.

📌 In present-simple questions with a verb other than be, use do or does before the subject and the base verb after the subject; in past-simple questions, use did and the base verb.

Further detail

📌 When the questioned word is the subject, a wh-question has no auxiliary, as in “Who helps Paul?”; when it is the object, use an auxiliary, as in “Who did Anna help?”

💡 Memory Hook

Wh-questions seek unknown information; yes-no questions confirm known information.

📖 6. Interrogative Words

📝 Essential Points

• The course’s interrogative expressions include how, how old, where, who, whose, when, what time, what, which, why, what … for, how many, and how much.

📌 Use how many with a plural countable noun and how much with an uncountable noun; how much can also ask a price.

📖 7. Simple and Continuous Past

★ Must-know

📌 Regular verbs form the affirmative simple past with -ed at every person; its ending is pronounced [t] or [d], or [ɪd] after a base ending in [t] or [d].

📌 In simple-past negatives and questions, did carries the past tense and the main verb remains in the base form.

• The simple past describes a past action with a specified date or an action belonging to a fully finished period, contrasted with the present.

📌 The past continuous is formed with was or were plus the verb in -ing form, and the final consonant is doubled in a consonant-vowel-consonant spelling such as sitting.

• The past continuous describes a past background action or a description and can accompany a simple-past action that interrupts it; while introduces the continuous clause and when the simple-past clause.

Further detail

📌 The course excludes state, preference, perception, and mental-activity verbs from the past continuous, while noting expressions such as have lunch and see someone meaning date as exceptions.

💡 Memory Hook

Simple past marks a past event; past continuous presents its ongoing background.

📖 8. English Relative Pronouns

★ Must-know

📌 For subject relative pronouns, use who for people and which or that for inanimate antecedents; who is usually required after those.

📌 Object relatives for people can use whom or that, or be omitted; object relatives for things can use which or that, or be omitted, although a preposition may precede which.

Further detail

• Whose marks possession regardless of whether its antecedent is animate or inanimate.

• The course uses where for a place antecedent, when for a time antecedent, and why for a cause or reason antecedent.

📖 9. Pronouns and Possessives

📝 Essential Points

📌 Subject pronouns occur before the main verb, object pronouns after the main verb or before an infinitive, and reflexive pronouns after certain verbs.

📌 Possessive adjectives such as my and your precede a noun or gerund, whereas possessive pronouns such as mine and yours are not followed by a noun.

📖 10. Countable and Uncountable Nouns

★ Must-know

📌 Countable nouns can be plural and preceded by numbers, whereas uncountable nouns are not pluralized and do not take a number directly.

📌 Use many with countable plurals and much with uncountable nouns; a lot of, lots of, and plenty of can be used with both, especially in affirmative sentences.

Further detail

• Few and a few modify countable nouns, while little and a little modify uncountable nouns; the course contrasts few/little meaning little with a few/a little meaning some.

• People is a countable plural noun, men, women, and children are already plural forms, and information, advice, and news are uncountable.

💡 Memory Hook

Countable nouns take plurals and numbers; uncountable nouns do not.

📖 11. Some, Any, No and Every

★ Must-know

📌 Some is used in affirmative statements and any commonly in negatives and questions asking whether something exists; some also appears in questions that assume something exists or make an offer or request.

📌 Every takes a singular verb form and appears in compounds such as everything, everybody, everywhere, every time, and every day.

Further detail

• Some-, any-, and no- compounds include something/anything/nothing, someone or somebody/anyone or anybody/no one or nobody, and somewhere/anywhere/nowhere.

📌 In affirmative use, any and its compounds can mean “no matter which, what, where, or when,” and adding else means “other.”

💡 Memory Hook

Some suits affirmatives and offers; any suits existence questions and negatives.

📖 12. English Articles

★ Must-know

📌 The indefinite article a/an is used with singular professions and nationalities and follows the sound of the next word: a before a consonant sound and an before a vowel sound.

📌 The definite article the can precede singular or plural nouns and is used when the situation or context identifies the noun.

Further detail

• The course lists these zero-article contexts: meals, seasons, titles followed by proper names, country names used alone, except certain names such as the United States

📖 13. Jamestown and the Pilgrims

★ Must-know

• John Smith led the Jamestown settlers, imposed a rule that they had to work to receive food, and the settlement endured starvation before eventually thriving.

Further detail

• The Pilgrims’ first winter brought disease and starvation; Native Americans taught them to grow corn, and the following year the Pilgrims held a thanksgiving feast.

💡 Memory Hook

Jamestown (1607) precedes the Pilgrims’ arrival (1620).

📖 14. American Independence

★ Must-know

• The course identifies increased taxes on tea as the main trigger of the American War of Independence and describes the Boston Tea Party as Americans throwing tea into Boston Harbour.

Further detail

• France supported the American cause with:
  • soldiers led by Lafayette
  • ships
  • money

📖 15. U.S. Formation and Expansion

★ Must-know

• In 1776, thirteen British colonies in North America joined in a union called the United States of America, while each state retained its own government under a common president.

Further detail

• About 35,000 years ago, Indigenous peoples are said in the course to have arrived in the continent later called America.

• The course states that the United States bought Louisiana from France for 15 million dollars and that Russia sold Alaska to the United States for $7,200,000.