Of these four nouns the one that confuses English learners most is definitely travel.
Travel is used to refer to the activity of travelling in general. In this meaning it’s always uncountable, i.e. takes no article and is always singular.
His job involves a great deal of travel.
Her interests are history, art and travel.
Travel can be plural when it means journeys, especially abroad.
On their travels they met lots of interesting people, many of whom became their lifelong friends.
In English, agreeing and disagreeing with negative statements and questions is a bit confusing, if not counterintuitive.
Don’t you like apples? No, I don’t.
Here you express agreement with no – you agree that you don’t like apples.
– It’s not cold.
– Yes, it is.
And here you contradict the speaker with yes – unlike them, you think it is cold.
The rule is to choose yes or no depending on your answer (yes if it’s positive and no if it’s negative) and not what it communicates (agreement or disagreement).
Didn’t you see the sign? No, I didn’t. (agreement but the answer is negative (I didn’t), therefore we use no)
You can’t afford this car. (Yes,) I can. (contradiction but the reply is positive (I can), therefore yes is used)
Hope you’ll never have trouble with this language point again. Did you just say “I won’t”? Great! And if you think you will, well maybe you should re-read this post.
In English, there are quite a few pairs of adjectives one of which ends in -ed and the other in -ing, for example, excited/exciting, bored /boring, inspired/inspiring. The adjectives in each pair are very different in meaning, and yet, as they look so similar, English learners often find them confusing. If you too find it difficult to use them correctly, then read on.
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