Marmara Elt Resources

Words like they, them and their are usually taught to students as having a third person plural meaning. But look at the following sentences :

* If someone from the insurance company calls, tell them that they can come and see me tomorrow.
* If a teacher only ever read from the textbooks, their lessons wouldn’t be very interesting.
* I never refuse to mark a student’s work just because they don’t give it in on time.
Here, they, them and their are clearly third person singular. Why? Read the rest of this entry »

What are Personal Pronouns?

Personal Pronouns in English are used to replace nouns that refer to people. Personal Pronouns can be used as the sentences subject or objective. English doesn’t have singular and plural forms of “you”. “You” is used for both male and female and singular and plural.

English Grammar-Present Perfect Progressive Tense

The present perfect progressive expresses the meaning until now and makes the connection between the past and present. Since it is progressive, it usually connotes an idea of continuity. It is often used with prepositional phrases: for + amount of time and since + point in time.

I have been living in Istanbul since 1999.

I have been living in Minneapolis for three years.

The present perfect progressive tense is made by placing have been (or has been) immediately in front of the -ing form of the main verb.

Read the rest of this entry »

English Grammar-Reciprocal Pronoun

Definition: We use the reciprocal pronouns to indicate that two people can carry out an action and get the consequences of that action at the same time. There are two reciprocal pronouns:

They enable you to simplify sentences where the same general idea is expressed two or more times.

For example:

• On their wedding day Jhon gave Mary a gold ring and Mary gave Jhon a gold ring.
  * Using the reciprocal pronoun, “each other”, this could be rewritten:
  => On their wedding day Mary and Jhon gave each other gold rings.
• Peter and Mary kissed each other.
  * In this example “each other” indicates that both people involved in the action of “kissing” got the result, kisses, at the same time.

If you need to refer to more than two people, say the students in a classroom, then we could use the reciprocal pronoun, “one another”.

For example:

• The students in this classroom cooperate with one another.
• The teachers gathered to congratulate one another on the year’s conclusion.