Grammar for Work and Study
Linguaskill mixes general and workplace English. This chapter reviews the tenses, passive forms, conditionals, and verb patterns that appear most often in single-sentence usage tasks.
Perfect Tenses and the Passive
Use the past perfect ('had finished') for an action completed before another past event. Use the passive ('is reviewed') when the subject receives the action rather than performs it, which is common in formal and process-focused writing.
Conditionals
The third conditional describes unreal past situations: 'if + past perfect, would have + past participle'. It is used to talk about how things might have turned out differently.
Verb Patterns
Some expressions are followed by the -ing form because they end in a preposition, such as 'look forward to hearing'. Others take the 'to' infinitive, such as 'ask someone to do something'. Learn each pattern as a fixed unit.