Vocabulary & grammar that you can use

Learn a useful sentence, not just a word

A new word is easier to use when you learn its partners and a situation. Instead of writing only “interested”, record “interested in photography”. Add a sentence about your life, then cover it and try to remember the whole phrase the following day.

Cambridge publishes official vocabulary lists on its website. We do not reproduce those lists here. Our groupings are teaching suggestions, not a complete syllabus or a guarantee that a word will appear. Use the A2 Key and B1 Preliminary official pages as your starting points for current exam resources.

Build a secure A2 foundation

• Present simple and continuous: routines versus an activity happening now. Compare “I work on Saturdays” with “I’m working at home today”.
• Past simple: completed events, negatives with “didn’t” and questions with “did”. Practise irregular forms inside sentences.
• Future meaning: arrangements, plans with “going to” and simple predictions or decisions with “will”.
• Nouns and quantity: singular and plural, countable and uncountable nouns, “some”, “any”, “much” and “many”.
• Comparison and description: adjectives, adverbs, comparatives and superlatives.
• Everyday sentence patterns: articles, pronouns, possessives, prepositions of place and time, requests with “can” and “could”.

Apply each area to a real topic: travel plans, a class, an invitation, shopping or a weekend activity. For short grammar gaps, try the A2 open-cloze workshop.

Extend towards B1

• Present perfect and past simple: connect an experience or unfinished period to now, then use past simple for a finished time.
• Past continuous: give background to an event: “I was waiting when the bus arrived”.
• Modals: explain obligation, advice, possibility and permission with “must”, “have to”, “should”, “might” and related forms.
• Conditionals: express general conditions, likely future outcomes and imagined situations.
• Passive forms: focus on an action or result when the person doing it is unknown or less important.
• Relative clauses and reported speech: identify people and things, and pass on what someone said.
• Verb patterns: learn combinations such as “enjoy doing”, “decide to do” and “ask someone to do”.

Do not force all these structures into one email. Choose a pattern because it helps you say something. The 60-verb drill helps with forms; your own sentences help with meaning.

Link ideas with a clear purpose

Linking words must match the relationship. Avoid “although… but” in the same structure. Use punctuation carefully with “however”: it is not a direct replacement for “but” inside every sentence.

Common mistakes worth catching

Keep a short personal error log with the corrected sentence, one reason and your own new example. Review a few items regularly. For vocabulary choices in context, try the three B1 multiple-choice cloze sets.