Imagine you are reading an article and want to check whether it contains a good example of the present perfect or a second conditional. Do you have to read through the whole article or is there a quicker way of finding what you want?
Simply use ctrl + f to find what you are looking for in an instant. It’s such a useful tool and one that I regularly use in my conversation classes, where we read articles beforehand and talk about them in class. Students might mention words or expressions they have found interesting and I can quickly locate them in the article. We can then discuss what the words mean in that particular context.
Using ctrl + f enables you to do language research on authentic texts. Choose a topic that you are interested in and start searching.
Not sure what you should look for? Here are a few ideas:
apostrophes – do they show a contracted word or possession?
hyphens – do you understand why they have been used?
present perfect – search for have, has, ‘s or ‘ve
the ‘ing form – which isn’t only used in continuous tenses
prepositions such as on, off, up, down
past tense would (one of my favourite grammar topics to teach)
vocabulary you want to learn – to remind yourself of the context
words such as ‘I’ and ‘you’ – are they used? Why/ why not?
By the way, if you want to know how the 'ing form is used in English read this blog post.
