Grammar Quiz

Question 1

Fill in the blank.
"When we first launched the agency, my cofounder and I would _____ the same mistakes with pricing over and over."

The correct collocation is make a mistake, not "do a mistake." Polish speakers often choose "do" because the Polish verb robić covers both meanings, but in English you always make mistakes — and do work, tasks, and activities.

Question 2

Fill in the blank.
"I _____ in the same city for 20 years, and I still run the agency from there today."

A continuous action that started in the past and is still true now requires the present perfect continuous ("have been living") with "for." Polish uses the present tense here, but English does not allow "I live in the same city for 20 years" for an ongoing situation.

Question 3

Choose the correct sentence.
Context: Describing how last month's conference team handled the logistics for your talk.

When describing a specific, finished past event, use the past simple ("organized"), not the present perfect. The present perfect is for past actions with a present result or an unspecified time, so it clashes here with the clearly completed past context.

Question 4

Choose the correct sentence.
Context: Telling a podcast guest how your keynote began.

A single completed action at one moment in the past takes the past simple ("entered"). The past continuous describes an action in progress around a point in time — not a quick, finished event like stepping onto a stage.

Question 5

Fill in the blank.
"Looking back at our launch, I don't think we _____ advertising right away — we waited a few months."

Use the past simple ("started") for a completed action at a specific time in the past. The present perfect ("have started") cannot be used with a finished, clearly bounded past situation — it would imply a connection to the present.

Question 6

Fill in the blank.
"After the panel, two clients wanted to talk about what we _____ earlier that morning at the trade show."

When one past action happened before another past action, the earlier one takes the past perfect ("had presented"). The presenting happened before the wanting to talk, so it must use "had presented."

Question 7

Fill in the blank.
"By the time the podcast episode went live on Monday, we _____ it three times over the weekend."

Use the past perfect ("had already edited") for an action completed before another past moment — here, before the episode went live. The present perfect ("have edited") is wrong because the whole sequence is finished and in the past.

Question 8

Fill in the blank.
"I _____ in real estate for years before I co-founded the marketing agency."

An action that continued over a period and ended before another past event takes the past perfect continuous ("had been working"). The present perfect ("have been working") wrongly implies you still work in real estate today.

Question 9

Choose the correct sentence.
Context: Reporting what you expected before your conference talk.

After a past reporting verb like "thought," the embedded clause must backshift: "will / gonna" becomes would. Keeping "is gonna" or "will" breaks the tense agreement that English requires in reported speech.

Question 10

Fill in the blank.
"The organizers asked me to present in English at last year's summit, and honestly I _____ doing it that way."

To express willingness about a specific past event that is now over, use the past modal "wouldn't have minded." The present form "wouldn't mind" refers to a hypothetical or future situation, not one that already happened.

Question 11

Fill in the blank.
"Most of our agency clients come from _____ US and _____ UK."

Country names that are acronyms or based on a common noun require the: the US, the UK, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic. Polish has no articles, so "the" is easy to drop — but here both blanks need it.

Question 12

Fill in the blank.
"First-time founders often have _____ tendency to underprice their services."

A singular countable noun like "tendency" needs an article. The indefinite "a" fits this general reference. Polish has no articles, so they are easy to drop — but English always requires one before a singular countable noun in this context.

Question 13

Choose the correct sentence.
Context: Describing yourself to a new business partner.

Singular countable nouns like "person" always need an article, so "a very adventurous person" is correct. Polish omits articles, but dropping "a" here is ungrammatical in English — the noun cannot stand alone.

Question 14

Fill in the blank.
"I met two of my biggest clients _____ a marketing conference in Berlin."

Use "at" for events and venues: at a conference, at a meeting, at a trade show. The Polish preposition pattern leads many speakers to say "on a conference," but English uses "at" for attended events.

Question 15

Choose the correct sentence.
Context: Comparing two product launches your agency ran.

Comparisons of equality use "as … as": "wasn't as disruptive as." The pattern "that … as" is not correct English, and "so … than" incorrectly mixes an equality structure with a comparative one.

Question 16

Fill in the blank.
"We expected a small _____ of people at the workshop, so we booked a tiny room."

Use "number" for countable nouns like people, and "amount" for uncountable nouns like money or time. Since people can be counted individually, "a small number of people" is correct.

Question 17

Choose the correct sentence.
Context: Explaining your schedule to a podcast guest.

Time phrases like "all the time" come after the verb "be" and its complement, not between the subject and the verb. The natural order is "I'm at work all the time" — the same applies to "always": "I'm always at work."

Question 18

Fill in the blank.
"If guests can't join the podcast remotely, they can always come record _____ at our studio."

Use "in person" (or "face to face") for being physically present at a location. "In real life" means in reality as opposed to a game or imagination — it does not work for a business context about visiting a studio.