World Cup time is almost here!!
Want an easy way to practice your English listening? BBC Five Live Radio is going to be broadcasting EVERY (yup, all of them!) match of the World Cup, live from South Africa.
You can hear the games for free (in English) by clicking on:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/fivelive
5.27.2010
5.20.2010
Thursday's Word Challenge
Here's one to test your memory and your vocabulary: How many words can you think of that have four or more syllables? Do you know where the stress goes in each word?
5.19.2010
One more thought about exam techniques...
One thing I forgot to mention in my earlier post about exam techniques:
If you have to do an oral exam (and almost everyone has to do some kind of speaking task), whatever you do....DON'T BE QUIET. It's fundamentally important to try to do the task as best you can, even if you think you're going to sound like a fool.
Why? Examiners cannot tell the difference between someone who's too scared to talk and someone who doesn't understand the task. In the end, a silent candidate is someone who is not doing what he or she was asked to do, and that means guaranteed failure.
So...take a deep breath. Smile. Talk, talk and talk some more, and if you're doing the exam with a partner, be sure to talk to your partner, too. After all, your failure is NOT guaranteed (unless you stay quiet, of course...)
If you have to do an oral exam (and almost everyone has to do some kind of speaking task), whatever you do....DON'T BE QUIET. It's fundamentally important to try to do the task as best you can, even if you think you're going to sound like a fool.
Why? Examiners cannot tell the difference between someone who's too scared to talk and someone who doesn't understand the task. In the end, a silent candidate is someone who is not doing what he or she was asked to do, and that means guaranteed failure.
So...take a deep breath. Smile. Talk, talk and talk some more, and if you're doing the exam with a partner, be sure to talk to your partner, too. After all, your failure is NOT guaranteed (unless you stay quiet, of course...)
The most fundamental fundamentals
I once read a statistic that said that most English speakers can survive using the same 50 words over and over again. While that may be true (especially since the present simple of verbs and the infinitives of words tend to be the same word), you need a lot more vocabulary to be able to communicate effectively. But how many words are enough words? How many words does the average English student need to use to be able to express ideas and thoughts?
To give you an idea of how many words are good to know (and to reassure you that you don't need to know EVERY word in English), take a look at the link below. It's the Oxford University 3000, a list of keywords that every student needs to learn because the words are important and useful:
...keywords are both frequent and used in a variety of contexts. In addition, the list includes some very important words which happen not to be used frequently, even though they are very familiar to most users of English. These include, for example, words for parts of the body, words used in travel, and words which are useful for explaining what you mean when you do not know the exact word for something.
You can find the Oxford 3000 online at: http://tinyurl.com/2ugldca.
To give you an idea of how many words are good to know (and to reassure you that you don't need to know EVERY word in English), take a look at the link below. It's the Oxford University 3000, a list of keywords that every student needs to learn because the words are important and useful:
...keywords are both frequent and used in a variety of contexts. In addition, the list includes some very important words which happen not to be used frequently, even though they are very familiar to most users of English. These include, for example, words for parts of the body, words used in travel, and words which are useful for explaining what you mean when you do not know the exact word for something.
You can find the Oxford 3000 online at: http://tinyurl.com/2ugldca.
5.18.2010
Tuesday's Word Challenge
Go get your dictionaries....here's a puzzle to keep your brain busy:
Which four-letter word can be used as a noun, a verb, an adjective, a conjunction, a preposition AND an adverb?
I'll post the answer tonight.
Which four-letter word can be used as a noun, a verb, an adjective, a conjunction, a preposition AND an adverb?
I'll post the answer tonight.
5.15.2010
The Art of Preparing for Exams
Exam time is coming up. If you're planning on doing an exam with the Escuela Oficial de Idiomas at the end of May, or a Cambridge exam in June, you have -- hopefully -- been studying and practising your skills all the way throughout the year. If you're like most students, however, you've probably put off studying, and now you're starting to feel panic because of all the work you haven't done.
Don't panic. Panic is useless. You may not pass the exam with perfect marks, but there's still time to rescue your year. Here's how.
1) Think like an examiner. I say: What's on the exam? "Everything," you say. No. Wrong answer. Not possible. Remember that, in an exam, you have a limited amount of time to show that you can work with the language you learned in class, and an exam is probably going to focus on the skills and language that you need for your level.
If you're a B1 student (EOI Level 3), for example, your teacher needs to see that you can express opinions correctly, ask other people about their opinions, and compare and contrast things and people. Your exam, therefore, will probably check that you understand and can use comparatives and superlatives; that you understand how to express opinions properly (I think that, If you ask me...)
2) Don't believe the "PERFECT" myth: "PERFECT" does NOT exist. Know what "perfect" is? It's a trick that people use so that they can have an excuse later on for not trying - because they KNOW that speaking English perfectly is impossible. Don't try to be perfect. Just do your best.
It's the same with sports. An athlete who puts pressure on himself to be perfect gives himself or herself too much stress, and is destined to fail; athletes who compete doing the best job they can almost always do better than the ones who obsess too much and end up failing because of stress.Use the English that you know and understand to do the task on the test. That's all you need to do.
3) Choose your battles intelligently. Don't waste time studying things that don't give you problems.
Before you start studying, take a piece of paper and divide it into three columns. At the top of the first column, write "NO PROBLEM". The second column is called "MAYBE." The third column is the most important: "NEED HELP".
Now, go through your notes and put each topic - vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation - in the correct column. If you can easily talk and write about the topic, it goes in "NO PROBLEM" and will not require a lot of review. On the other hand, if you have trouble remembering the relevant vocabulary and don't think that you could easily talk about the topic or use the language that is connected with it, it must go under "NO PROBLEM".
Why should you do this? If you only have a week or two to prepare for your exam, it's important to distribute your time in the most efficient way possible. You cannot gamble and hope that the exam will only include the topics you know best. Identifying the worst problems allows you to review in a productive way. Even if you don't know the topic enough, you still have a chance if you guess (and on the Cambridge Exams, points are NOT deducted for an incorrect answer.)
4) Ask for help. Ask me. Ask your teacher. Ask other students (remember, none of you is as smart as all of you are together.) Ask an English speaker who you know. Check English-learner websites on the Internet; look in the back of your textbook and see if your textbook publisher has a companion website for your textbook (where you can get extra activities and advice.) The squeaky wheel gets the grease: You only get as much help as you ask for.
Good luck!! And stop procrastinating!!
5.14.2010
Matthew WHO?
Have you ever wondered why English has those double letters (like double "T") in the middle, or at the ends, of words?
I was watching the Giro d'Italia today on VEO7, and one of the announcers kept mispronouncing the name of Matthew Lloyd, the Australian cyclist. "Lloyd" is one of several last names which begin with double "L" (almost all of them are from Wales), and one of the only cases when you would see a double consonant at the beginning of words in English. This is different from Spanish, where "LL" and "RR" aren't really common at the beginning of words, but you can see them in some words (like Lleida).
So why do we have double consonants in English, if they don't represent a different sound?
Double consonants that are in the middle of words are where you separate syllables. Think of these two-syllable adjectives: fun·ny, sil·ly, hap·py, Fin·nish, com·mon: In each case, you would break the word in between the double consonants.
The same is true if the word has more than two syllables. This is especially true of words that are formed with suffixes: hap·pi·ness, in·suf·fer·able, bar·ris·ter, con·som·mé (meat broth), cor·res·pon·dence.
Double consonants (especially -ss) also happen frequently at the ends of words: kiss, miss, bliss. They're also extremely common at the ends of surnames: Pratt, Raitt, Schnurr, Flynn, Dunn.
And don't forget that if you need to put a suffix on the end of a verb that ends in a noun/consonant combination, you need to double the final consonant, too:
stop: stopped, stopping
counsel: counselled, counselling
travel: travelled, travelling
kid (=joke with someone): kidded, kidding
(**Note that the double -l only happens in British spelling, not American spelling.)
So if you're pronouncing a name like "Lloyd" or "Llewellyn, it's pronounced "loid", not "zloid."
I was watching the Giro d'Italia today on VEO7, and one of the announcers kept mispronouncing the name of Matthew Lloyd, the Australian cyclist. "Lloyd" is one of several last names which begin with double "L" (almost all of them are from Wales), and one of the only cases when you would see a double consonant at the beginning of words in English. This is different from Spanish, where "LL" and "RR" aren't really common at the beginning of words, but you can see them in some words (like Lleida).
So why do we have double consonants in English, if they don't represent a different sound?
Double consonants that are in the middle of words are where you separate syllables. Think of these two-syllable adjectives: fun·ny, sil·ly, hap·py, Fin·nish, com·mon: In each case, you would break the word in between the double consonants.
The same is true if the word has more than two syllables. This is especially true of words that are formed with suffixes: hap·pi·ness, in·suf·fer·able, bar·ris·ter, con·som·mé (meat broth), cor·res·pon·dence.
Double consonants (especially -ss) also happen frequently at the ends of words: kiss, miss, bliss. They're also extremely common at the ends of surnames: Pratt, Raitt, Schnurr, Flynn, Dunn.
And don't forget that if you need to put a suffix on the end of a verb that ends in a noun/consonant combination, you need to double the final consonant, too:
stop: stopped, stopping
counsel: counselled, counselling
travel: travelled, travelling
kid (=joke with someone): kidded, kidding
(**Note that the double -l only happens in British spelling, not American spelling.)
So if you're pronouncing a name like "Lloyd" or "Llewellyn, it's pronounced "loid", not "zloid."
5.04.2010
Advanced Reading: Opinion Pieces
This coming Sunday is Mother's Day in North America. For those of you who are going to do the Proficiency Exam this June, you may want to take a look at this essay ... it's a very good example of using personal experience to tell stories. Pay close attention to the section about the soother: it's an excellent example of using a specific episode to introduce character or ideas.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/facts-and-arguments/its-your-fault-im-a-brat/article1555465/
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/facts-and-arguments/its-your-fault-im-a-brat/article1555465/
Tuesday's Word Challenge
How many words can you think of that contains the same long /oo/ sound as the word "blue"?
Try to avoid one-syllable words like "new", "true", "do", "shoe", "you" and "glue".
Try to avoid one-syllable words like "new", "true", "do", "shoe", "you" and "glue".
Present perfect and past simple?
One of the questions that comes up again and again in English classes is the difference in meaning between present perfect and present simple.
To show you how these work, take a look at this article (from The Independent - http://tinyurl.com/35p2ltb) about actress Lynn Redgrave, who died on Sunday:
Lynn Redgrave...who became a symbol of the 1960s for her free-thinking character in the film Georgy Girl has died of breast cancer aged 67.
Her son, Ben, and daughters, Kelly and Annabel, were with her when she died in Connecticut on Sunday. Yesterday, they released a statement mourning her loss. "Our beloved mother Lynn Rachel passed away peacefully after a seven-year journey with breast cancer," they said.
Why the difference? It all comes down to an idea called ASPECT - the rules and conditions which tell us why one verb is possible in a situation, and another isn't.
Perfect tenses are called "perfect" because you can "see" or understand the ENTIRE action perfectly - you know when it starts, you see the entire length of the action from when it begins to the time when you're speaking. In that sense, the idea of "perfect" is very close to the idea of time. You understand that the action (or state) starts in the past and continues to the time you're speaking; you're not missing or eliminating any time. The TIME is not finished (because it continues to "now") and the ACTION may not be finished.
That's why the introduction of the article says that Lynn Redgrave "has died". It's NEW news to YOU, the reader, so the time is not finished.
Simple tenses, in contrast, are simple because they don't have language that tells us that we need to use another tense. They're simple because they do not have complications or additional information that tells us we need another tense.
Take a look at the third paragraph of the obituary:
The news comes less than a month after the death of her older brother, Corin Redgrave, also an actor, who died of cancer on 6 April, and a year after her niece, the actress Natasha Richardson, died from head injuries sustained in a skiing accident.
In this case, the ACTIONS (died) are finished and the TIMES (6 April / last year) are finished. They are not connected to now, and they cannot happen again. In this case, PAST SIMPLE is the only option we can use.
So, if you're not sure which tense you need to use, think of these three questions:
a) Is there some kind of time language that connects the action in the past and the present, such as "since", "for", "ever" and "never?" If there isn't, use PAST SIMPLE.
b) Does the verb talk about a historical figure (Cervantes, Queen Elizabeth I, Mussolini), a time in the past (the Victorian Era, the Carlist Wars, the Great Depression), or someone who's dead (Antonio Vega, Errol Flynn, Agatha Christie)? Use PAST SIMPLE.
c) Do you see time language that uses words like "last" (last month/last class /last year?) Use PAST SIMPLE.
And if you're genuinely not sure, use PAST SIMPLE. More often than not, you'll be correct.
To show you how these work, take a look at this article (from The Independent - http://tinyurl.com/35p2ltb) about actress Lynn Redgrave, who died on Sunday:
Lynn Redgrave...who became a symbol of the 1960s for her free-thinking character in the film Georgy Girl has died of breast cancer aged 67.
Her son, Ben, and daughters, Kelly and Annabel, were with her when she died in Connecticut on Sunday. Yesterday, they released a statement mourning her loss. "Our beloved mother Lynn Rachel passed away peacefully after a seven-year journey with breast cancer," they said.
Why the difference? It all comes down to an idea called ASPECT - the rules and conditions which tell us why one verb is possible in a situation, and another isn't.
Perfect tenses are called "perfect" because you can "see" or understand the ENTIRE action perfectly - you know when it starts, you see the entire length of the action from when it begins to the time when you're speaking. In that sense, the idea of "perfect" is very close to the idea of time. You understand that the action (or state) starts in the past and continues to the time you're speaking; you're not missing or eliminating any time. The TIME is not finished (because it continues to "now") and the ACTION may not be finished.
That's why the introduction of the article says that Lynn Redgrave "has died". It's NEW news to YOU, the reader, so the time is not finished.
Simple tenses, in contrast, are simple because they don't have language that tells us that we need to use another tense. They're simple because they do not have complications or additional information that tells us we need another tense.
Take a look at the third paragraph of the obituary:
The news comes less than a month after the death of her older brother, Corin Redgrave, also an actor, who died of cancer on 6 April, and a year after her niece, the actress Natasha Richardson, died from head injuries sustained in a skiing accident.
In this case, the ACTIONS (died) are finished and the TIMES (6 April / last year) are finished. They are not connected to now, and they cannot happen again. In this case, PAST SIMPLE is the only option we can use.
So, if you're not sure which tense you need to use, think of these three questions:
a) Is there some kind of time language that connects the action in the past and the present, such as "since", "for", "ever" and "never?" If there isn't, use PAST SIMPLE.
b) Does the verb talk about a historical figure (Cervantes, Queen Elizabeth I, Mussolini), a time in the past (the Victorian Era, the Carlist Wars, the Great Depression), or someone who's dead (Antonio Vega, Errol Flynn, Agatha Christie)? Use PAST SIMPLE.
c) Do you see time language that uses words like "last" (last month/last class /last year?) Use PAST SIMPLE.
And if you're genuinely not sure, use PAST SIMPLE. More often than not, you'll be correct.
5.03.2010
Coming up next...CHINGLISH!
If you ever feel bad or self-conscious because you don't think you're speaking 100% proper English...don't feel bad at all. Someone else is probably doing the same thing as you. Taken from today's New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/03/world/asia/03chinglish.html?src=me&ref=general
(Although Canada may not have particularly Canadian cuisine, it does have its own special mix: franglais!)
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/03/world/asia/03chinglish.html?src=me&ref=general
(Although Canada may not have particularly Canadian cuisine, it does have its own special mix: franglais!)
BBC Words in the News
Hi everyone...
Sorry to make this a short, quick message, but I'm just checking in between classes. I'll have more information for you tonight (including a quick lesson on past simple and present perfect by talking about the life of actress Lynn Redgrave, who has died today at the age of 67.)
In the meantime, I wanted to share a very useful and informative website with you.
Three times a week, the BBC World Service has a new Words in the News story, which allows you to listen and read to a BBC news story while learning new vocabulary. It doesn't take much time to do - you can listen and read two or three times in five minutes. Plus, if you'd like extra practice with your pronunciation (especially with stressed and unstressed syllables), try reading the words out loud at the same time you listen to them. You'll be amazed at how your listening comprehension improves after two or three weeks!
This week's Words in the News story is about racism in Tintin comics:
http://tinyurl.com/crklkh
Enjoy!
Sorry to make this a short, quick message, but I'm just checking in between classes. I'll have more information for you tonight (including a quick lesson on past simple and present perfect by talking about the life of actress Lynn Redgrave, who has died today at the age of 67.)
In the meantime, I wanted to share a very useful and informative website with you.
Three times a week, the BBC World Service has a new Words in the News story, which allows you to listen and read to a BBC news story while learning new vocabulary. It doesn't take much time to do - you can listen and read two or three times in five minutes. Plus, if you'd like extra practice with your pronunciation (especially with stressed and unstressed syllables), try reading the words out loud at the same time you listen to them. You'll be amazed at how your listening comprehension improves after two or three weeks!
This week's Words in the News story is about racism in Tintin comics:
http://tinyurl.com/crklkh
Enjoy!
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