English Grammar Encyclopedia
for Educators
How is Insightsopedia different?
Other encyclopedias — including Wikipedia — take a standpoint based on linguistic sciences. However, there is often a disconnect between how linguists view English grammar and how English grammar is presented in classrooms. Insightsopedia is not written for linguists, but for educators. On this website, you’ll find what you need to know in order to best teach grammar to English language learners.
Other English education resources tend to follow the same universal standards that haven’t been updated in decades, even though our understanding of language has evolved. Insights to English’s resources are all about taking a fresh and enlightened approach to grammar that fosters a deeper level of understanding.
Popular Topics
Relative Clauses: subordinate clauses that modify some element — typically a noun — of the main clause and whose linker also refers to what the two clauses have in common.
Verb Patterns: the combination of a main verb followed by either a participle or an infinitive, as in “want to go” or “start driving”.
Past Perfect: a tense that expresses what happened prior to an established time period in the past.
Reported Speech: a framework used to reiterate an idea that was expressed previously, but altered for the change in context (unlike Direct Speech).
Question Tags: short phrases appended to the end of a clause to make the sentence interrogative.
Key Concepts
Leading Auxiliary: the first auxiliary verb in a verb string; it takes on multiple important roles in sentence formation.
Participles: a set of verb forms that reveal the pertinent noun’s participation to be active (-ing), passive, or perfect (both -ed, if regular).
Aspect: a feature of tense that communicates when the verb took place or its duration, relative to the context; may be Continuous, Perfect, both, or neither.
Embedded Clauses: clauses that are set within a host clause and which serve a role (such as that of a noun or a modifier) within that host clause.
Backshifting: altering a verb so that its form is “more past” than its original meaning; used for both Reported Speech and for many applications of Unreal Mood.
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