maintain - "Maintain a positive attitude" is the most natural collocation for consistently keeping an optimistic outlook.
shift - "Shift focus" is the standard collocation for deliberately redirecting your attention.
stay - "Stay optimistic" is the most common way to express continuing to be hopeful despite difficulties.
Verb
- walk → walk / walks / walked / walked / walking (5 forms, regular)
- go → go / goes / went / gone / going (5 forms, irregular)
- be → am/is/are/was/were/be/being/been (8 forms)
- can → can / could (modal: only 2 forms, no -s, no -ing)
A verb is the one word class every English sentence requires. Carries tense (when), aspect (duration), mood (attitude), and voice (active/passive). Regular verbs add -ed; ~200 irregular verbs have unpredictable past forms.
Key insight: fix your verbs and most grammar problems disappear. Wrong tense, wrong agreement, wrong form — verb errors account for the majority of grammatical mistakes.
Phrasal verb
- give up = quit — ≠ give + up literally
- come across = find by chance — ≠ come + across literally
- put up with = tolerate — 3-word phrasal verb
- look into = investigate — ≠ physically look inside something
Phrasal verbs = verb + particle/preposition forming a unit with non-literal meaning. There are thousands, and they dominate casual native English. They must be learned as whole units.
Key fact: the particle completely changes the verb's meaning. Look up (search), look after (care for), look into (investigate), look down on (disrespect) — all different.
Collocations
- ✅ make a decision — ❌ do a decision
- ✅ strong coffee — ❌ powerful coffee
- ✅ heavy rain — ❌ strong rain
- ✅ highly unlikely — ❌ very unlikely (grammatical, but less natural)
Collocations are word pairs that English habitually puts together. Both options may be grammatically valid, but one sounds native and the other doesn't.
Pattern: there's no logic to predict them — you make decisions but do homework, you have strong coffee but heavy rain. They must be learned as chunks, not deduced from rules.
Vocabulary for B2/Upper Intermediate
- Register precision: big → substantial, considerable, significant
- Hedging: tend to, somewhat, arguably, to some extent
- Reporting verbs: claim, argue, suggest, acknowledge, deny
- Idiomatic: break the ice, out of the blue, get the hang of
B2 vocabulary = ~4,000–6,000 words. Register awareness, hedging, reporting verbs, idioms, figurative expressions. Grammar is no longer the limit — precision of word choice is.
Focus: synonyms with different registers (begin/commence/start), hedging language for academic writing, and the reporting verbs that distinguish said from claimed/argued/insisted.
B2 | Upper Intermediate
- ✅ If I had studied harder, I would have passed. — third conditional
- ✅ The report is being reviewed by the committee. — passive progressive
- ✅ Having finished the exam, she left. — participle clause
- ✅ He denied having taken the money. — complex verb pattern
These are B2 patterns — the CEFR upper-intermediate level. At B2 you handle mixed conditionals, all passive forms, participle clauses, and can argue a point clearly. This is the level most universities and employers require.
Marker: if you can write a structured essay and debate an abstract topic, you're B2.
Medium
- If I were you, I would apologise. — one rule (second conditional), but distractors like was tempt you
- Answers require active thought, not instant pattern recognition
- Vocabulary and context are realistic, not artificially simplified
- Usually tests one rule, but the wrong answers are plausible
Medium marks middle-difficulty challenges: A2–B1, one rule tested, but with realistic distractors that require genuine understanding.
Use "Medium" when Easy feels too obvious but Hard feels overwhelming. This is where most productive learning happens — the sweet spot of difficulty.