B2 Grammar

Complete B2 grammar contents

Choose a grammar topic to open the full explanation and practice page. Work through the sections in order or jump directly to the grammar you need.

32 topics · 14 sections

Past tenses

Control narrative choices and past habits.

Narrative tenses, used to and would

Use past simple, continuous, perfect and perfect continuous alongside used to/would to control narrative sequence, background, duration and repeated past behavior.

Future

Express future time with a wider range of forms and viewpoints.

Future forms

Choose future forms according to viewpoint: decision, prior intention, arrangement, timetable, activity in progress, completion or duration up to a future point.

Be about to, be due to and other future expressions

Use alternative future structures to express imminence, schedules, expectation and formal plans precisely.

Future in the past

Describe events that were still future from an earlier past viewpoint with would, was/were going to, was/were about to and scheduled future-in-the-past forms.

Modals and related expressions

Express obligation, speculation, perception and idiomatic meaning.

Permission, obligation, prohibition and necessity

Choose modal and semi-modal forms according to strength, source of obligation, time reference and whether something is required, optional or forbidden.

Speculation and deduction

Express graded certainty about present, ongoing and past situations with modal simple, continuous and perfect forms.

Verbs of the senses

Use sense verbs as linking verbs and action verbs, and combine them with adjective, like, as if/as though and infinitive/participle patterns.

Get: different meanings

Use get across common advanced patterns meaning receive, obtain, become, arrive, understand, cause, persuade and experience.

Conditionals and unreal meaning

Use mixed time reference, alternatives to if and inverted conditionals.

All conditionals and alternatives to if

Choose conditional patterns by time reference and speaker stance, including zero, first, second, third, mixed conditionals and formal alternatives to if.

Mixed conditionals

Use mixed conditionals when the imagined condition and result belong to different times, especially past condition → present result or present condition → past result.

Wish, rather, if only and it's time

Use remote past forms and perfect forms to express present dissatisfaction, past regret, preference, criticism and overdue action.

Unless, even if, provided and as long as

Choose conditional linkers according to whether a condition is negative, sufficient, restrictive or irrelevant to the result.

Passive and distancing

Use formal passive patterns and verbs with two objects.

Distancing and reporting passives

Use impersonal and personal reporting passives to report claims with distance: It is believed that... / He is believed to....

Passive verbs with two objects

Form passive sentences from verbs such as give, send, offer and award, choosing either recipient or thing as the passive subject when grammar permits.

Complex verb patterns

Control object complements and perfect/passive non-finite forms.

Verb + object + infinitive or gerund

Choose object + to-infinitive, object + bare infinitive or possessive/object + -ing patterns according to the controlling verb and meaning.

Complex gerunds and infinitives

Control passive, continuous and perfect infinitive/gerund forms so the non-finite verb expresses the correct time relationship and voice.

Nouns, pronouns and possession

Handle advanced reference and possession patterns.

Reflexive and reciprocal pronouns

Distinguish self-directed actions, emphasis and mutual relationships using reflexive forms and each other/one another.

Generic and common-gender pronouns

Refer naturally to unspecified people using you, we, they, one and singular they while maintaining clear agreement and register.

Compound nouns and possessive forms

Choose among noun+noun compounds, possessive 's and of-phrases according to relationship, animacy, length and conventional usage.

Possessive 's with time expressions

Use possessive forms with periods of time, distance and value to express measurement relationships compactly.

Relative clauses

Use defining and non-defining relative clauses with greater flexibility.

Defining and non-defining relative clauses

Control relative pronoun choice, omission, punctuation, preposition placement and whole-clause reference in defining and non-defining structures.

There and it

Use preparatory subjects to organize information naturally.

Preparatory there and it

Use existential there to introduce existence and preparatory it to postpone heavy infinitive, gerund or clause subjects.

Auxiliary verbs

Distinguish uses of have and avoid repetition through ellipsis.

Have: auxiliary or main verb

Distinguish lexical have, perfect auxiliary have, have got, causative have and have to so that questions, negatives and tense forms are built correctly.

Ellipsis and substitution

Avoid unnecessary repetition by omitting recoverable words or replacing them with auxiliaries, so/not, one/ones and do so.

Adjectives and adverbs

Modify comparisons and use inversion for emphasis.

Modifying comparatives

Strengthen or soften comparisons and express proportional, repeated and superlative relationships with appropriate modifiers.

Compound adjectives

Build and interpret multi-word adjectives formed with nouns, participles, numbers and adverbs, using hyphens when needed for clarity before a noun.

Inversion with negative adverbials

Use auxiliary-subject inversion after negative or restrictive adverbials placed at the beginning for formal emphasis: Never have I seen..., Rarely do we....

Prepositions

Build lexical accuracy with noun-preposition collocations.

Noun + preposition collocations

Use frequent noun-preposition combinations accurately and distinguish similar nouns that select different prepositions.

Conjunctions and clauses

Connect complex arguments and compress clauses.

Contrast, purpose, reason and result

Choose among clause linkers, prepositional linkers and formal structures according to logical relationship, grammar and register.

Discourse markers

Organize spoken and written arguments using markers for addition, contrast, concession, result, example, reformulation, sequencing and stance.

Participle clauses

Use present, past and perfect participle clauses to compress related information when the understood subject is clear and logically matches the main clause.

Word order and emphasis

Reshape sentences to control information focus.

Cleft sentences

Use it-clefts and wh-clefts to move important information into focus: It was Ana who called / What I need is more time.