Ep.22 Practice your English grammar with Andy

Another week, another episode of Everyday English with E2! Each week we focus on English grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation and spelling. This week we are practising grammar by using the ‘Correlative comparative’ to talk about experiences and give advice to others.

Remember: If you need extra practice with your English grammar you can do this by going to www.e2english.com

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the Everyday English podcast with E2 – my name is Andy! Each week we teach you how best to learn English vocabulary, spelling, pronunciation – and what we’ll do in today’s podcast – grammar. More specifically, we’re going to learn how to give advice and talk about our experiences using the ‘correlative comparative’.

Now, if you need help with any of your English skills, including grammar, then be sure to get extra help by going to www.e2english.com You can even sign up for our FREE placement test to see how good your English is and what you need to do to improve!

Let me start by telling you about something that happened to me the other day.

Last month, I started to learn to play the guitar. I watched a few YouTube videos and taught myself to play a few songs. It was great! My brother is also a great guitar player, so I asked him if he had any advice for me, and he told me “keep practising”. Then he said, “the more you practise, the better you’ll get”.

That’s it! That’s my story. It was very short, but it ended with a nice simple idea.

Let’s listen a little more closely to that last phrase using the correlative comparative:

The more you practise, the better you’ll get.

So the first part of the sentence gave me advice: practice more. Then the second part of the sentence told me what will happen if I practise. “The more you practise, the better you get.”

The structure is pretty easy, I just say ‘the more’, or another comparative phrase like “the happier”, “the sooner”, “the harder”, and then I follow it with a subject-verb and then I do it again: The harder you work, the more money you’ll make. The sooner you finish, the sooner you can go home. The more you study, the better your grades will be. It’s a really clear way to give someone advice.

Why don’t you finish some of these sentences:

The more junk food you eat… (pause)

The sooner you finish your homework, … (pause)

The harder you study, … (pause)

How did you go?

Maybe you said something like this:

The more junk food you eat, the sicker you’ll feel.

The sooner you finish your homework, the sooner you can meet up with your friends.

The harder you study, the better the score you will get on your test.

Now, you can also say this with ‘less’. Listen to this:

The less you practise, the less you learn.

The less vegetables you eat, the less healthy you’ll feel.

So we can use “the less” or “the more” or ‘the comparative adjectives (like ‘the sooner’ or ‘the faster’) to give our advice. But we can talk about our own experience. Listen to this:

The sooner I finish my homework, the sooner I can meet up with my friends.

The harder I work, the more money I can make.

Now, if you haven’t done so already, I recommend that you sign up for FREE to E2 English. It’s a great website to improve your English language skills. You can start with our FREE Placement Test – and from there, you can take any course you like from spelling to pronunciation to grammar. Check it out by going to www.e2english.com!

Well done! So what have we learned? Well, we’ve learned that we can use the correlative comparative or ‘the more… the more…’ or ‘the more… the less’ to give advice or to talk about our experiences!

Terrific! That’s all from me. Remember to subscribe to this podcast and check out E2 English if you need more help. And remember, the more you know, the more you grow. See you next time.