There is very important difference between Japanese and English. To put it simply, in Japanese, you can cut out a lot more words from your sentence when you speak. This is called "ellipsis". English is not as flexible as Japanese when it comes to cutting out words from your sentence. This difference is often the cause of many mistakes that Japanese speakers make when they speak English.

Consider this sentence in Japanese:

あなたは昨日銀行へ行きましたか？

If I translate this sentence exactly, word for word, then in English you would be saying:

You yesterday bank to went?

In general, word order is fixed. However, adverbs move around a sentence. They can be in three different places:

1. at the end of a sentence;
2. at the beginning of a sentence; or
3. in the middle.

The location of an adverb in a sentence depends on what kind of adverb you are using.

One of the most difficult punctuation marks to use are quotation marks. These are sometimes called "speech marks", "inverted commas" or "quotes".

There are only five ways you can use quotes in English writing:

1. to show a quotation or direct speech;
2. to show a title, name or nickname;
3. to talk about a word or phrase itself;
4. to show a different, special or new meaning to a word or phrase; or
5. to express irony.

Passive verbs are used when we want to make the object of an action the topic of a sentence. Compare the following two sentences:

1. Jeremy ate the cake; and
2. The cake was eaten by Jeremy.

Sentence 2 is passive. The topic of sentence 2 is the cake. The cake is what we are interested in talking about.

To use passives well in English, you should understand that native speakers prefer them only in a few situations. Often passives are thought to be bad style. However if you read on, you will learn more about the times when passives are perfect for the job.