Sometimes you aren’t studying English. This is certainly true when you are studying for tests like TOEIC, TOEFL and IELTS you study specialised kinds of English. What you study depends on the test. TOEIC tests English for business (as well as everyday English). TOEFL and IELTS test academic English. The best ways to study for … [Read more…]
When students ask me how to improve their writing the first thing I tell them is to read more and copy the style. After that, I usually tell them to change ‘good’/’better’/’best’ a few times and delete or change ‘very’. Why? They are overused and – most of the time – not precise enough. Is … [Read more…]
It’s very difficult for a lot of students to tell the difference between ‘can’ and ‘can’t’ in spoken English. In this podcast, I’ll give you some help. 29 Jan 2014 Can and Can’t
English presentations are very common in business and are becoming more common for students of the language too. Whatever the reason, here are some tips to help your presentations. Prepare You need to know what you want to say and the best way to remember it is practice. Prepare short prompts on index cards or … [Read more…]
The English Blog’s Learning English Blog is rather good but only updated every month or two. It has links to materials for a mix of levels. This is where I found out about Speechyard, which has links to YouTube videos of movie clips and full movies with Google Translate powered subtitles (I’d recommend English subtitles … [Read more…]
So many people are busy and a lot of people think they are too busy to study English outside their English lesson time. That once-a-week lesson, with no homework in between, means that you leave seven days available for forgetting what you learned. This post from Learn English at Home gives you some ideas about … [Read more…]
Today’s podcast is about the way native speakers pronounce words to allow them to flow together more quickly. I look at ‘flap D’, the way written ‘t’ turns to a ‘d’ sound in spoken English, then I look at inserting a ‘w’ sound between two vowels to allow words to run together quickly. I hope … [Read more…]
Here are a some links to different sites that I like for English. The English Learner Blog is written by Michal, a Polish guy and it is very well written. I love recommending BBC’s Newsround because it is news for kids, but it is a great way for adults to get news vocabulary. Antimoon has … [Read more…]
To develop fluency in your speech, there is only one way: speak. To improve you must practise. Practise any way you can. Read aloud, repeat along to podcasts or videos (using the pause button to help you), talk to yourself. Do anything to speak English. To check you are getting better, record yourself speaking English … [Read more…]
Since I became a teacher I have been interested in how people use technology to help them study. When I was setting up this website and the social media that I use to let people know about it, I found some interesting ways to use Pinterest and Evernote for language study. Use Pinterest as a … [Read more…]