Study guide: Basic English for Everyday Life

📋 Course Outline

1. Personal life and home
2. Leisure, travel and interaction
3. Daily needs and communication
4. Core grammar: tenses and auxiliaries
5. Core grammar: pronouns and determiners

📖 1. Personal life and home

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Personal characteristics: Category of information about yourself, your family, and your friends that you can describe orally and in writing.
• Family composition: Set of details that describe who is in your family.
• Domestic animals: Type of pets you can name and describe in your everyday life.
• Home rooms: Parts of a house you can identify, describe, and locate using simple language.

📝 Essential Points

• You must be able to state your name, age, birthplace date, address, phone number, and nationality.
• You must be able to list languages you speak and languages you are learning.
• You must be able to describe physical appearance and clothing.
• You must be able to describe your family composition and your profession/occupations.
• You must be able to name domestic animals you have.
• You must be able to identify the dwelling, its environment, and the rooms with their main furniture locations.

💡 Memory Hook

Home = people + pets + rooms; build sentences in that order.

📖 2. Leisure, travel and interaction

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Daily activities: Main actions you do at home, at school, on holiday, and during parties.
• Holiday hobbies: Leisure activities you do during vacations, including sports and technology-related activities.
• Travel transport: Ways of getting from one place to another, including different transport modes.
• Social interaction titles: Formal ways to address people such as Madame and Monsieur.

📝 Essential Points

• You must be able to talk about your main daily activities at home, school, on holiday, and during festivities.
• You must be able to discuss holiday leisure: hobbies, sports, and technology.
• You must be able to name means of transport and give destinations and times.
• You must be able to describe places and their locations during a trip.
• You must be able to request repetition, slower speech, and clarification of a route.
• You must be able to use common social functions: greetings, thanks, apologies, proposals, agreement/refusal, wishes, congratulations, ability/incapability, willingness/obligation/permission, certainty/ignorance, surprise, and pleasure.

💡 Memory Hook

Trip flow: transport → destination/time → place/location → route questions.

📖 3. Daily needs and communication

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Health and well-being: Information about your body parts, health state, and mood that you can express in simple language.
• Class instructions: Commands and phrases used in the classroom for activities and materials.
• Shopping and services: Everyday situations involving shops, product availability, and basic item description.
• Food and drinks: Everyday ability to ask about and describe common meals, drinks, and preferences.

📝 Essential Points

• You must be able to name main body parts and describe health state, common ailments, and symptoms.
• You must be able to give common advice and remedies for everyday health problems.
• You must be able to express your mood.
• You must be able to talk about school: class, classroom instructions, lessons, timetable, and materials.
• You must be able to discuss shops: location and opening hours.
• You must be able to describe an item by size, shape, color, and weight, and state quantity and price.

💡 Memory Hook

Body + School + Shops + Food = daily needs.

📖 4. Core grammar: tenses and auxiliaries

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Present Simple: Verb tense used for general habits and facts in affirmative, negative, and question forms.
• Present Continuous: Verb tense used for actions in progress in affirmative, negative, and question forms.
• Past Simple: Verb tense used for past events in affirmative, negative, and question forms, including irregular verbs.
• Future forms: Set of ways to express the future, including will, be going to, and uses of present tenses.

📝 Essential Points

• Present Simple must be practiced in affirmative, negative, questions, and short answers.
• Present Continuous must be practiced in affirmative, negative, questions, and short answers.
• You must know the difference between Present Simple and Present Continuous.
• Past Simple must include irregular verbs and its pronunciation is emphasized for written expression.
• Future can be expressed using present simple, present continuous, be going to, and will.
• Auxiliaries you must know are to be, to have, can, must, may, should, and have to.

💡 Memory Hook

Now: Simple = facts/habits; Continuous = ongoing.

📖 5. Core grammar: pronouns and determiners

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Subject personal pronouns: Pronouns used as subjects such as I, you, he, she, it, we, and they.
• Possessive case: Possessive form used to indicate ownership.
• Articles determiners: Determiners A, an, and the used before nouns.
• Demonstrative determiners: Determiners this, these, that, and those used to point to nouns.

📝 Essential Points

• You must know subject personal pronouns: I, you, he, she, it, we, and they.
• You must know personal object pronouns: me, you, him, her, it, us, them.
• You must know interrogative words (wh-words) for questions.
• You must control possessive determiners: my, your, his, her, its, our, their.
• You must control demonstrative determiners: this, these, that, those.
• You must know some vs any and There is vs There are vs ago.

💡 Memory Hook

Determiners point: A/an/the for articles; this/that for near/far.

⚠️ Common Pitfalls & Confusions

1. Mixing Present Simple and Present Continuous is common because both mention the present but differ by habits versus ongoing actions.
2. For Past Simple, forgetting irregular verbs can make both negative and question forms incorrect.
3. Students often confuse object pronouns (me, him, her) with subject pronouns (I, he, she).
4. Many learners confuse some and any when talking about availability, causing the meaning to flip.
5. There is vs There are is a frequent error because the verb must match singular vs plural nouns.
6. Determiners can be misused when swapping A/an/the with possessive or demonstrative determiners, breaking noun phrases.

✅ Exam Checklist

1. Write and say your name, age, birthdate, birthplace, address, phone number, and nationality.
2. List languages you speak and the languages you are learning.
3. Describe your physical appearance and clothing clearly.
4. Explain your family composition and your profession/occupations.
5. Name domestic animals and say how they fit in your life.
6. Describe your home and environment and identify rooms and main furniture locations.
7. Talk about main daily activities at home, school, on holiday, and during festivities.
8. Discuss holiday hobbies, sports, and technology-related activities.
9. Talk about travel: transport mode, destination and time, place location, and how to clarify a route.
10. Use core interaction language for greetings, thanks, apologies, proposals, agreement/refusal, and common feelings/functions.
11. Talk about health and well-being: body parts, health state, symptoms, advice/remedies, and mood.
12. Talk about school: class, classroom instructions, lessons, timetable, and materials.
13. Talk about shops and services: location, opening hours, item availability, and item description with quantity and price.
14. Talk about food and drinks: availability, tastes, meals, menu items, and prices.