Don't try to swallow this list flat. The easy way to hold it in your head is to ask one question of every vehicle: where does it move — on land, in the air, or on water? Sort it into that drawer and the word stays put. A drone and a hot-air balloon feel unrelated until you notice they share the sky; a ferry and a submarine feel different until you notice they share the water.
| Land | bicycle · motorbike · car · van · bus · lorry · tram · train · monorail · bullock cart · tuk-tuk |
|---|---|
| Air | aeroplane · helicopter · jet · space shuttle · hot-air balloon · glider · drone |
| Water | boat · ferry · catamaran · yacht · cargo ship · submarine |
| Other | cable car · escalator · skateboard · roller-skates · trolley |
When you tell someone what you did on a trip, every verb steps back in time. "We wake up early" becomes "we woke up early". Most verbs make the step the easy way — an -ed coat (walk → walked, travel → travelled). A stubborn handful change shape entirely, and these are exactly the ones the exam catches students on: go → went, see → saw, take → took, buy → bought, eat → ate, fly → flew, drive → drove, ride → rode, leave → left, come → came.
A good travel story is past-tense verbs in order. Sequencing words thread them together: First we packed our bags. Then we drove to the station. After that we caught the train. Later we walked up to the temple. Finally we returned home.
Walk into a hotel an hour before a wedding: "the food is being served", "the hall is being decorated". Nobody says who is doing it. That's the passive voice — it turns the spotlight from the doer onto the thing being done, like a camera zooming in on the work instead of the worker.
The build is always the same three blocks: is/are + being + past participle (V3). One thing → is being; many things → are being. To ask a question, lift is/are to the front: "Is the food being served?"
A suffix is a small tail bolted onto a word's end, and it can completely change the word's job. "Kind" is a quality you have; add -ness and "kindness" becomes a thing you can give. Learn the common tails and you can read comprehension vocabulary you never directly "studied".
| Suffix | Becomes | Example |
|---|---|---|
| -ness | noun | kind → kindness, sad → sadness |
| -ment | noun | develop → development, agree → agreement |
| -tion / -sion | noun | introduce → introduction, decide → decision |
| -ous | adjective | danger → dangerous, fame → famous |
| -ful | adjective | care → careful, beauty → beautiful |
| -ly | adverb | quick → quickly |
| un- / in- / dis- | opposite | happy → unhappy, possible → impossible |
"ch" looks like one sound, but English hides three behind it because words arrived from different languages and kept their old pronunciation. The word's origin usually tells you which.
| / tʃ / like chair | / ʃ / like chef | / k / like character |
|---|---|---|
| chocolate · march past · church · lunch | parachute · machine · brochure · chauffeur | headache · chaos · choir · chemistry |
Rule of thumb: French-origin words take the soft /ʃ/; Greek-origin words take the hard /k/; almost everything else is the ordinary /tʃ/.
Short paragraph (50–60 words): where you went, how you travelled, one memorable thing. A short trip paragraph lives or dies on one sharp picture the reader can actually see, not a vague "it was nice".
Letter about a trip (~100 words): address top-right, "Dear...", where you went, who with, mode of travel, two things you did, how you felt, then "Love / Yours sincerely + name". Open by answering the friend's last letter, walk through the trip in clear time order, and end with a question that hands the conversation back.