Paris Map by Stefano Creative Commons: Attribution How much do you really know about the place you live in? Have you ever visited the tourist information office? If you haven’t, you may be missing out on an amazing source of study material. Pick up every free leaflet, map and brochure in English. You already have … [Read more…]
I’ve written about learning new skills such as cooking and learning the specialist vocabulary can help you get great English. How about computer programming? You like computers and the internet because you’re using a computer now (even a phone is a computer nowadays) unless you had someone print out this page for you. Why not … [Read more…]
This was originally a reply to a post on Google Plus but I thought it would also be useful for everyone. Using ‘other’ is difficult for some people because of the level of specificity (knowing if something is special to the topic of conversation) much like ‘a’, ‘an’ and ‘the’. Here are the basic uses. … [Read more…]
Everyone knows that comics are great for your English because if you can’t understand words you have pictures to help you guess what they mean. Unfortunately, importing comic books can be quite expensive and reading comics on e-readers can be frustrating, too. However, webcomics are a great compromise and most are short enough to be … [Read more…]
Today’s podcast is about indirect questions and how you can use them to ask for help and to offer help. 20140326 Indirect Questions The podcast is also available in the iTunes Store by searching for Get Great English or clicking here.
In academic writing, there is a tendency for students to write what comes straight out of their head without pausing to think about grammar. While this is fine when one is writing against the clock, it is good practice to use parallelism, or parallel construction, not only at the whole text level (introduction, supporting arguments, … [Read more…]
How to use ‘stop’ with another verb is difficult to remember for some students but there is an easy way to remember how to use it correctly. Stop + infinitive Using ‘stop’ with the infinitive (i.e. ‘stop to…’) means pausing because there is another different action that the person or thing does. I had to … [Read more…]
Some of you may be wondering if you can take a free Google Hangout lesson with me to try things out. Well, on Sunday, 30th March you can. All times Japan Standard Time (GMT + 9:00). Each hangout is limited to 5 people. You can only take one of these hangout lessons. To book, email … [Read more…]
Should you pay to study? Some students do very well with free study material while others like to have a lot of textbooks. It can be quite expensive to buy a lot of textbooks but there are also advantages. I am going to talk about the pros and cons of studying using free material and … [Read more…]
Last week I showed you how to interrupt politely in a conversation. Now I am going to show you how to ask people to repeat themselves. A lot of students feel embarrassed by this but it is important for conversations between natives, natives and non-natives and also conversations between non-natives only speaking English. People often … [Read more…]