Before and After
Watch each verb become its noun. The marked letters are the ones that move.
Click to zoom
These nouns are not built by adding. The word changes inside.
Nouns that change their spelling instead of just adding an ending, so you stop writing words that don't exist.
Preview · progress not saved — Chapter 1 is free
Eight verbs you already use. One spelling in each pair is the real noun — the other is what you get by adding a suffix and hoping.
describe → which noun is correct?
Most nouns you assemble. These ones you cannot — the word changes inside.
Most of the time, building a noun is addition. You keep the word and put something on the end.
govern + ment → government
achieve + ment → achievement
treat + ment → treatment
Nothing moves. Nothing disappears. If all English worked like this, spelling would be easy.
But a second group transforms. The word changes on the inside, and no amount of careful adding will get you there:
describe → description (the B becomes a P)
explain → explanation (the I disappears)
repeat → repetition (the EA becomes E)
choose → choice (barely recognisable)
This matters because a learner who does not know a word is in the second group will build it anyway — and produce describtion, explaination, repeatition. Those are not sloppy errors. They are the sound of someone applying a rule correctly to a word that does not obey it.
Watch each verb become its noun. The marked letters are the ones that move.
These nouns are not built by adding. The word changes inside.
Eight verbs, eight nouns — and four of the nouns on offer do not exist.
Terms
Definitions
Three nouns. Decide which kind of word it is before you write a letter.
Chain 1
Verb: achieve
Step 1 — built by adding, or transformed?
Step 2 — so the noun is:
Chain 2
Verb: describe
Step 1 — built by adding, or transformed?
Step 2 — what changes inside it:
Step 3 — so the noun is:
Chain 3
Verb: explain
Step 1 — built by adding, or transformed?
Step 2 — what is lost:
Step 3 — so the noun is:
Eight sentences. No options, no letters — build the whole word yourself.
The report gives a clear ______ of the process. (describe)
Her ______ of the results was more careful than the original study. (analyse)
My ______ for a scholarship was rejected in the first round. (apply)
He offered no ______ for missing three weeks of classes. (explain)
Most students expressed a strong ______ for evening classes. (prefer)
The ______ between the two courses is harder than it looks. (choose)
The ______ of forty jobs affected the whole town. (lose)
Constant ______ of the same phrase makes an essay sound memorised. (repeat)