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…]
This post has the Business English graphic but really, it’s for anybody who needs to use banks in English. Vocabulary open an account When you want to start using a bank you have to open an account, which is a section of a bank database that says how much money you have available. close an … [Read more…]
Here are this week’s posts. On Monday I talked about making English-speaking friends and how it isn’t so tough if you remember a few things. On Tuesday I looked at an easy mistake to make, ‘fish’ or ‘fishes’? I looked at trying to cut down on dictionary use on Thursday. For your listening pleasure, I … [Read more…]
Here’s a video of me at home, giving reasons for actions using ‘so that’. If you like it, why not click ‘like’ in YouTube, share it with a friend, or leave a comment?
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…]