Welcome to Day 2!

Today, we’re focusing on grammar, but not boring textbook grammar. This is about understanding how structures actually work in natural, flowing speech.

In the Day 2 lesson, you looked at structures like the present perfect continuous, third conditional, future perfect continuous, cleft sentences and more. These patterns make your English sound clear, confident and natural.

If you haven’t started the lesson yet, click below to watch the Day 2 video lesson before continuing with the exercises. You’ll see exactly how these grammar structures come to life in real contexts.

B1 Task

Understanding the Grammar

Before we jump into the exercises, let’s review the important differences between the present perfect simple and the present perfect continuous:

 

Form

  • Present perfect simple: have / has + past participle
  • Present perfect continuous: have / has + been + -ing verb

 

Use

We use the present perfect simple and the present perfect continuous to talk about states or actions that began or happened in the past but are connected with the present. Sometimes, they can be used with little or no difference in meaning:

 

  • “I have worked / have been working here for 10 years.”

 

Sometimes, there is a difference in meaning or focus:

B2 Task

Understanding the Grammar

Before we jump into the exercises, let’s quickly review two important structures:

 

Future Perfect Simple

 

Form: will have + past participle

 

Use:

  • to talk about an event or action that will be finished before a specific time in the future
  • usually used with a time expression like by, by the time, in 2 weeks’ time and for 10 years

 

Examples: 

 

  • By this time next year, I will have finished my degree.
  • In five years, they will have saved enough money to buy a house.


✅ The action is complete before the future moment. The focus is on the result.

 

Future Perfect Continuous

 

Form: will have been + -ing verb

 

Use: to emphasise the duration or ongoing nature of an activity up to a certain point in the future

 

Examples: 

  • This time next week, we’ll have been travelling for 4 months. 
  • In January, I’ll have been living here for 20 years. 


✅ The action will likely continue after the specified time. The focus is on the duration.

C1 Task

Understanding the Grammar

Let’s review the cleft structures you learnt today:

 

Cleft Sentences:
 
In the video, you saw a cleft structure containing ‘what‘:
 
  • Form: what + clause + be + clause
  • Focus: information in 2nd half of sentence (new / interesting)
 
Examples: 
 
  • What I love most about this city is the food.
  • What he’s really good at is fixing computers.
  • What you should do is (to) go to bed earlier. (‘to’ is usually optional)
 
We also have cleft structures that start with ‘it‘:
 
  • Form: it-clause (with ‘be’) + that + clause
  • Focus: information in 1st half of sentence (new / interesting)

 

Examples:

 
  • It was in September that we moved house. (Not in August, for example.)
  • It is the people that we love. (We love the people, not the landscapes, for example.)

 

There is a lot more to learn about this and we cover this point in my C1 programme.