Learning Express Library

Course 1 :
Grammar Skills 3 : Practice with subjects, verbs and nouns

1. Interest:
At first, I figured this course (which has 5 different lessons) was going to be quite easy. When I realised the first lesson was about verb tenses and knowing that there are irregular verbs in the past participle I almost decided to take another course instead. Didn't we all learn and hear about irregular verbs all through High School? The second lesson was about active and passive verbs which is exactly like what we had seen in french class in grade 7, 8 or 9 ( I don't really remember). Fortunately, the course did become more interesting and difficult as I went on. After that, I'm pretty sure I learned something new per lesson.

2. What I learned:
There are many grammar rules I had never even heard of that I know now, thanks to this course. For example, I did not know that
'' if a singular and a plural noun or pronoun are joined by or, the pronoun agrees with the closest noun or pronoun it represents''.
This is an example of what the rule means:

Neither the soldiers nor the sergeant was sure of his location.
Neither the sergeant nor the soldiers were sure of their location.

(citation & example taken directly from the course Grammar skills 3 : Practice with subjects, verbs and nouns )

3. Difficulty:
Although I did not find such a notion difficult to understand, had I not read about it before hand, I would not have answered the questions following that information correctly because I did not know this rule even existed. It's the same thing for the rest of the course.
What I found strange though, is even if the course became more difficult, or more new to me the further I went, it ended with an activity about how to differenciate certain homonyms which, in my opinion, was the easiest part of the whole course.

4. My score:
At the end of this long course, I did not get a score. Instead, after each exercise, you could compare your answers to the right ones and learn if you had any wrong ones and why. This is just like when our teachers let us revise our exams after they have corrected them.

5. Course rating:
I would rate this course 9/10 because it is very useful. For each lesson, it explains which errors are most common in the english language and why and then helps you not make them by giving you simple tricks you probably would not have thought of yourself. Finally, you go through a certain amount of quizzes and questions to make sure you understand. I found that it was full of useful grammar rules I did not know and that not many people must know.





Course 2
Grammar skills 4 : Adjectives, Adverbs & Confusing Words

1. Interest:
This course was all about being able to tell the difference between adjectives and adverbs and knowing your homonyms (confusing words). I did not find this course very interesting. There was not much variety in it. Two thirds of the course was about homonyms. It was very well done, but it was repetitive and boring. Each ''confusing word'', was described with an example so you could understand the difference between the homonyms, and after a short list of words there were exercices to make sure you got the hang of it.

2. Difficulty:
The course was well done and easier to follow than the last one I did. Instead of long texts full of explanations, it was simply lists of words with their descriptions. Furthermore, I already knew most of the ''confusing words'' thanks to my grade 9 english teacher, this made the course much shorter and much easier than the last one. Of course, homonyms like ''seen'' and ''scene '' or the classic ''which'' and ''witch'' are words I have known, written and read for a while.

3. What I learned:
Other than homonyms, there was a part on how to tell the difference between adverbs and adjectives. In this part of the course, I learned that you have to place a word's modifier as close as possible to the word it modifies, otherwise, the phrase can mean something entirely different. For example, there was a sentence ressembling this one : Barking loudly, Mister Peterson walked his dog. This would mean that Mister Peterson was barking loudly as he was walking his dog. For the sentence to make more sense, it should be written like this : Mister Peterson walked his dog that was barking loudly. Or something like that.

4. My score:
In this course, just like in the first one I did, you do not get a score at the end. However, after every exercise you do, you get feedback and you learn if your answers were any good or not.

5. Course rating:
I would give this course 7.5/10.
It was very useful for those who have trouble with words that sound alike and their spelling but, as I've already mentionned, it lacked variety. Furthermore, some exercise questions were too cliché. For example : The confused (choose witch or which) did not know (chose witch or which) broom to pick for Halloween.