Today’s podcast is about listening with background noise. I recorded it in a metro station. Background Noise – 15th October 2014 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.
Today’s episode is about homophones, words that sound the same, and what happens when you encounter homophones with little context. Homophones In Context – 10th September 2014 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 … [Read more…]
In the part II of the TOEIC test you need to listen for the best answer to a question and you choose from three possible answers. It’s easy for some people but more difficult for others. Here are some tips to help you guess responses correctly in TOEIC tests.
When you need to check that you understand what someone said it is useful to paraphrase them. There are several ways to do it and I’ll provide some examples that are simple enough for you to try next time you speak English.
I know that the books are no longer new but there are still ways that Harry Potter can help your English study. You can learn new words and get familiar with different styles of English.
Speaking speed is one of the things most students feel nervous about at one stage or another. What is the right speaking speed? How do you get it? What do we talk about when we talk about speaking speed? I think I have all of your worries covered.
A lot of advice about how to get better at English listening says that students need to understand almost everything in their independent study materials. I disagree with it because this is a useful guideline but it is not a rule; it is useful for a lot of people, but not everyone. Think about this: … [Read more…]
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.
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…]
So many of my students, mainly college students, keep reaching for dictionaries. Every time they see a word they don’t understand or get into a situation where they don’t know the perfect word in English like they do in their first language out comes their smartphone for the dictionary or their Casio Ex-Words. Every language … [Read more…]