Understand Difficult Accents
Understanding some native accents and dialects and also foreign accents takes effort and time. Find out how you can build up your skills to understand a wider range of people and their English.
Month: June 2014
Links
Here are some interesting links for you. 7 tips for preparing for the IELTS Test from Yago.sg 20 Tips for Learning your First Second Language from ReturnofKings.com – I believe he means ‘first additional language’ but let’s not split hairs – via @SayHowDoYouDo How to read and understand a scientific paper for non-scientists from IFLScience.com … [Read more…]
The Digest: 28th June 2014
On Monday there was a little bit of travel English with a guide to booking hotel rooms. On Tuesday there was vocabulary, with a post about describing solutions to problems. This week’s podcast was about crime. There was a post about being aware of common homophones on Thursday. Yesterday we topped off the week with … [Read more…]
An Easy Way to Vary Your Sentences
Whenever you write, it is advisable to vary your sentence structures in order to keep your readers’ interest. In this post, I’ll show you an easy way to do this using relative clauses.
Be Aware of Homophones to Improve Listening Comprehension
When you listen to people speaking it is easy to misunderstand if you are not aware of homophones (words that sound the same). This is especially true in standardised tests like TOEIC, TOEFL and IELTS but also in everyday situations as well. Some common homophones and near homophones are: ate eight blew blue check Czech … [Read more…]
Podcast: Crime
In this podcast I’m talking about crime, punishment and a deterrant. What’s appropriate and what isn’t? 20140625_crime.mp3 The podcast is also available in the iTunes Store by searching for Get Great English or clicking here. Also, you can stream it on Stitcher here or in the sidebar.
The Answer to Your Problem
Some things are so difficult that you need a solution for them. Here are some different words and phrases that can be used to talk about the answer to your problem. answer “One answer to the energy crisis is simply using less energy.” cure “Most of the medical research budget is spent on looking for … [Read more…]
Book Hotel Rooms
When you book hotel rooms, it is important to know what kind of rooms you need. A single room has one single bed. A twin room has two single beds. A double room has one double bed. A suite usually has a double bed and a living room facility and often also has private dining … [Read more…]
The Digest: 21st June 2014
OK, let’s kick things off with a post about space. To follow up, I posted about colloquial pronouns you never get taught. On Wednesday, the podcast was about feelings using adjectives and prepositions. After that there was a post about regrets. On Friday I put up a video about sequencing step-by-step processes with the example … [Read more…]
Is This Right?
When you start learning a language everything is unknown. You take in vocabulary and grammar and make fast progress in making those new, unknown words become old, known words. The speed of progress becomes normal. What most language learners aren’t prepared for is the plateau at the intermediate level, where there is less clear meaning. … [Read more…]