Both — Exercises

Both in English: Determiners, Pronouns and Correlative Conjunctions

Both is one of the most productive English quantifiers for talking about two things together. It operates in three grammatical roles: as a predeterminer before a noun phrase ('both restaurants'), as a pronoun with 'of' ('both of them'), and as the first element of the correlative conjunction both...and. The consistent rule across all three uses is that 'both' always signals two items and always takes a plural verb. Learner corpus data from the Cambridge Learner Corpus shows that verb agreement errors after 'both' — using a singular verb by analogy with the Russian 'оба + singular predicate' pattern — account for approximately 28% of all 'both' errors at B1 level. A second frequent problem is omitting the required determiner: 'both of students' instead of 'both of the students'.

Both as Determiner

Used directly before a plural noun, 'both' functions as a predeterminer. The verb must be plural.

Both of + Determiner + Plural Noun

When 'both' is followed by 'of', a determiner (the, my, these, etc.) or an object pronoun (them, us) must come next. 'Both of' before a bare noun is incorrect.

Both...and — Correlative Conjunction

'Both...and' links two parallel elements to emphasise that both are true. The two elements must be grammatically parallel (both nouns, both verbs, both adjectives).

Common Mistakes