This level is for learners who can already cope with everyday exchanges and now want English that stands on its own - at work, while travelling and in study. Along the path you will secure the tense contrasts that trip up intermediate learners, train the rhythm of longer words, build natural word partnerships, and finish with the conventions of work email and structured writing.
Time, tense and consequence
Secure the tense system that lets you connect past events to the present moment and talk about what may realistically happen next.
- ReferenceThe irregular past forms you cannot avoid
Refresh the past forms that refuse the regular pattern; every tense contrast in this stage leans on them.
- LessonPresent perfect continuous
Learn to present an activity as still running, so recent effort and unfinished business come across clearly.
- PracticePresent perfect or past simple?
Practise the choice between a finished story and one that still touches now, the classic intermediate stumble.
- LessonReal future possibilities and their results
Move from describing time to predicting it: link a realistic condition to its likely result.
- PracticeReal conditions, real results: fill the gaps
Consolidate the condition-and-result pattern until choosing the right verb forms becomes automatic.
The beat of the word
Train your ear and voice to place the stress on the right syllable, which often decides whether listeners understand you at all.
- LessonWhen the stress moves, the meaning changes
Discover how a moving beat can turn one written word into two different ones, in your listening and in your speech.
- ReferenceWhich syllable carries the beat, and what makes it move
Keep the patterns that fix the beat close to hand, so new longer words no longer need guessing.
- WordPhysically relaxed, or free from worry
Add a word whose sound is easy to get wrong, putting the stress habits you have just trained into use.
Words that travel together
Master the combinations - two-part verbs, fixed pairings and set expressions - that make intermediate English sound natural rather than translated.
- LessonWhere the little word goes in two-part verbs
Learn where the small second word may sit and when the object forces it to move - a rule, not a matter of taste.
- PracticeTwo-part verbs: where does the pronoun go
Practise placing pronouns inside two-part verbs until the word order stops needing conscious thought.
- WordTo decide to do something later instead of now
Pick up a two-part verb for postponing things, and see the word-order rule at work in a single everyday item.
- ReferenceThe small words that follow common adjectives
Keep to hand the fixed small words that follow common adjectives; guessing them is the surest way to sound foreign.
- WordTo have enough money to buy something
Add a common way of saying what your budget will stretch to, useful in everyday life and at work alike.
- ReferenceEveryday expressions where one word is fixed and cannot be swapped
Survey everyday expressions in which one word is fixed by convention, ready for the recall exercise that follows.
- PracticeRestore the unguessable word in each everyday expression
Test whether you can restore each fixed word from memory, since no rule will supply it for you.
English for work and study
Apply everything to the two settings intermediate learners meet first: the professional email and the structured piece of writing.
- LessonAsking for things politely in work emails
Learn how distance and indirectness create politeness in writing, the skill behind every request you send at work.
- ReferenceReady-made lines for opening and closing an email
Stock up on reliable ways to begin and end a message, so the frame of an email never slows you down.
- ReferenceChoosing the right line for each move in a work email
Match a ready line to each move a work email makes, building on the polite-request habits you have just formed.
- ReferenceConnectors that hold an essay together
Study the connectors that signal contrast, cause and sequence, the skeleton of any structured piece of writing.
- PracticeConnecting your ideas: choose the linker
Practise choosing the connector each gap demands, proving your ideas hold together on paper.
- DialogueRinging a company to move an appointment you cannot keep
Hear the polite request forms of this level carry a real phone call, from opening to goodbye.
With these habits in place you are ready for the B2 path, where you will learn to pass on other people's words, control the beat of whole sentences and handle delicate situations with tact.
Continue to the B2 path