A1 English Grammar

A1 grammar exercises

Every lesson marked above also has its own practice set: 27 sets of 60 exercises — 540 multiple-choice questions, 540 fill-in-the-blank and 540 sentence-building tasks in total. Each one is marked as you answer, keeps your score, and works without an account.

What you can do with A1 English

The Common European Framework describes A1 as the level at which a learner can handle the following. Each grammar topic below feeds directly into one or more of them.

• introduce yourself and ask simple questions about people you meet

• talk about your family, your home, your job and your daily routine

• order food, ask prices, buy tickets and handle basic shopping

• describe what you did yesterday and what you are doing now

What order to study A1 grammar in

Start with the verb be and subject pronouns, because every other structure at this level leans on them. Move next to articles and plural nouns, then to the present simple, and only afterwards to the present continuous — the contrast between the two is far easier once each is secure on its own. Leave the past simple until the present tenses feel automatic.

The mistakes that mark an A1 learner

These five come up more often than everything else combined at this level. None of them stops you being understood, which is precisely why they survive so long — nobody corrects them in conversation.

• ✗ She have a car. ✓ She has a car.

  The third-person -s is the single most-broken rule at A1, and it applies to every verb in the present simple, not just have. Check every sentence whose subject is he, she or it.

• ✗ I am not agree. ✓ I don’t agree.

  Agree is a full verb in English, not an adjective, so it needs don’t rather than am not. Many languages express agreement with be, which is why this error is so persistent.

• ✗ I have 25 years. ✓ I am 25 years old.

  Age uses be, not have. The same pattern applies to hunger and thirst in some languages but not in English: I am hungry, never I have hunger.

• ✗ There is many people. ✓ There are many people.

  There is for one thing, there are for more than one — and people is already plural. Note also that peoples means nations, not persons.

• ✗ He go to work every day. ✓ He goes to work every day.

  The same third-person -s, with the added spelling rule that verbs ending in -o, -ch, -sh, -ss and -x take -es: goes, watches, finishes.

How to know you have really reached A1

You can call A1 secure when you no longer have to think about the third-person -s, when you can form a question without translating it first, and when the difference between I work and I am working feels obvious rather than learned. A useful practical test: describe your yesterday, your today and your tomorrow in three short paragraphs. If the past simple, the present simple and going to all come out without stopping, you are ready for A2. If the verbs come out right but slowly, keep reading at this level rather than moving up — fluency at A1 is worth more than accuracy at A2.

A1 English grammar: frequently asked questions