Today’s video shows how to make coffee. It is not perfect but it does show you how to describe a process by sequencing actions (‘first’, ‘then’, ‘next’) and using the imperative verb form (‘do this’, ‘pour the water’). For more practice, have a look at how to cook in English.
Regrets are difficult for students to talk about. What’s a regret? It’s wishing you could change the past by doing an action you didn’t do or by not doing an action you did do. You can express regrets by using the verb ‘regret’ in the following way. Using a gerund (‘~ing’ verb) and object: “I … [Read more…]
Today I’m talking about feelings using adjectives and prepositions, for example ‘interested in’ and ‘sick of’. 20140618_feelings.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.
Everybody knows the ordinary ‘I’, ‘we’, ‘you’, and ‘me’ pronouns. However, there are other more colloquial pronouns that native speakers use which can be a little tricky for non-natives. The first-person singular ‘us’ This is pronounced as /uz/ and is used in place of ‘me’. It is used throughout Britain, though not as much in … [Read more…]
Today’s post is about astronomy, the study of the night sky, stars and such. All the pictures come from NASA. Most people know what stars are. The Sun is a star; in fact it is our nearest star. However, there is more to space than stars. Many of these things orbit (travel around) other things. … [Read more…]
On Monday I posted some banking English. Everyone has to use banks and it can be inconvenient to use English banks when you don’t know the right words to say. On Tuesday I posted a way to use your to-do list to study grammar. I’ve started to do this with my to-do list in Japanese, … [Read more…]
Here’s a video about describing food. It should be useful to describe food from your country or to ask about food in other countries. You might also want to read about cooking, look at my dinner, or an older post about describing food.
Here are two of my favourite sites about letter writing, which is a fantastic way to practise your English. However, you can’t really reply to these letters, but you do get to read them. The first, Letters of Note, is a high-quality collection of letters by famous people. Some of the world’s greatest writers and … [Read more…]
Today I’m talking about gossip, which can be good when used to build rapport but the wrong kind of gossip can be awful so there are some strategies for stopping conversations that are just gossip and rumours. 20140611_gossip.mp3 The podcast is also available in the iTunes Store by searching for Get Great English or clicking … [Read more…]
I have written before about using your to-do list as a way to practise English but why not use your to-do list for more repetitive grammar study? You could use this system for present perfect tense, modals and contrasting the simple future, present continuous and simple past tenses. Present Perfect Tense Simply add the item … [Read more…]