I found this on Facebook a while ago (thanks to the Memrise page). It sent me to a really
interesting website called Maptia, which is full of true stories from
around the world. They are not very long
stories and many of them are very ‘uplifting’ (meaning they make you feel
good).
Words like these are why English has so many words. When we find a new word that we can’t
translate, we often just steal the word! These words aren't used in English... yet - but I might start using them in my conversations. ;-)
If you are interested in the origin of words in English,
then you might enjoy this little video.
It might be a little difficult to understand all the words that are
said, but you will get a good idea of the story from the visual information.
Are there any other words you know in your language that don’t translate into English? If so, please leave a comment below giving the word and some description of what it means - go on, it will be good practice for your English! :-)
To see the rest of the untranslatable words, click here.
So this post isn't really about learning or understanding English. This is a video that I've just finished making. The paintings are by a good friend of mine, James Allan Kennedy, who's an artist... but also an English language teacher! I met Allan during my first job as an English language teacher in Mexico a few years ago.
It's his birthday today so I've posted this video as a present for him! You can see more of his art on his Facebook page.
I'll be posting more about learning and practising English soon but until then, play the video in full screen and enjoy! :-)
I am very lucky because I live in Britain and our Internet connection is relatively free of censorship. Do you know this word, ‘censorship’? It is the action of a government or organization that limits information.
Last year, I wrote about how much I hated the censorship of the Internet in Turkey. I think this is a very important issue so I wanted to show you a short video about it. Here are a few questions for you to read before you watch the video:
How many countries did Freedom House include in their ‘Internet Freedom’ report?
When was this report released?
How were the countries categorized?
There were 3 categories for scoring ‘Internet Freedom’, what were they?
What was the worst scoring country?
What is the population of that country and how many people have broadband access there?
What is the general speed of internet there?
What is the ‘Soft War’?
The Iranian Government wants to unplug its country from the internet... by when?
What is a ‘dual internet structure’?
Okay, now here is the video:
Did you get all the answers? If not, try listening again. Answers are below but try listening at least one more time before you scroll down to read them.
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
Okay, here are the answers:
37
Countries
April
2011
Free,
Partly Free, Not Free
Obstacles
to Access, Limits on Content, Violation of User Rights
Iran
73.2
Million & 560,000 Broadband Subscribers
56K
‘The Soft War’ is the Iranian government’s
attack on the connection of government protestors, Internet users and
international media.
Within
the next two years (2013)
A ‘dual
Internet structure’ is a system where a country has unrestricted access to the
Internet, for tourists and government officials, and restricted access to the
Internet for the normal citizens of the country.
Some
of those answers were probably a bit difficult.
Here is a small activity to improve your listening.
Watch the video again and try to fill in these gaps.
Many governments ____________ are locked in a fight with their citizens.
...on a _________ of 0 to 100.
Most private ____________ only have 56k connections.
In June 2009, Iranians _____ __ the streets in protest of presidential election results.
Protestors relied ________ on the Internet...
With social media proving to be such a powerful revolutionary tool, it’s ___ ________ that the Iranian government...
... only about 1000 individuals have direct access to the Internet, ___ _______ ___ the population has access to filtered content
Burma recently launched a intranet-like web portal that ____ ___ wean the public off popular websites...
With all this ____________, it’s hard to dispute that the war for Internet access is _____ __________.
Here are the answers and a little bit of explanation about how you can use these phrases.
The rules are quite simple. Person A needs to ask Person B questions for 1 minute. If B can answer all the questions without saying “Yes” or “No” then B wins. If B says “Yes” or “No” then A wins. Here are a few videos of Liverpool F.C. football players playing the game... they are not very good at it. :-)
If you are practising for a speaking exam, this is a really good activity because it will help you avoid giving basic answers and will give you more practice giving longer, more interesting answers.
The Question Game
This game can be a lot of fun but you need at least an upper-intermediate level of English for it to work. The rule is simple – you can only talk using questions. The first person who doesn't use a question loses. This is really good to practise grammar and question structure. Here is an example although these American comedians are talking much faster than you need to.
I think tongue twisters are great to help learners of English with their pronunciation. Just like you need to build your muscles to life heavy objects, you need to build the muscles in your mouth to speak a foreign language. Tongue twisters are like taking your mouth to the gym – lots of fun repetition to improve your pronunciation of those difficult sounds.
Here is a video to help you.
I think the Betty Botter tongue twister is great because it practises the most difficult part of English pronunciation – vowel sounds. Here are the similar words and the different pronunciations. Use this interactive phonetic chart to help you. Let me know how it goes.
Big thanks to Inna, who brought this tongue twister to class!
‘Betty’ /’beti:/
‘Botter’ /’bɒtə/
‘bought’ /’bɔ:t/
‘butter’ /’bətə/
‘bitter’ /’bɪtə/
‘batter’ /’bætə/
‘But a’ /’bətə/ (the same pronunciation as ‘butter’ when it is said quickly)
‘bit of’ /’bɪtə/ (the same pronunciation as ‘bitter’ when it is said quickly)
I don’t have lots of knowledge ‘when it comes to’ YouTube. When it comes to Twitter or blogs I feel much more confident but when it comes to YouTube, I still feel that I’m not really using that resource as much as I could be. By the way, the previous sentence is not very good because it has too much repetition of the phrase ‘when it comes to...’ but hopefully my repetition (see my earlier blogpost) will help you remember this phrase for you to use in the future! ;-)
A big, big thank you to Marcelo Mendes for recommending most of these channels! I highly recommend you explore his website. He is very generous with his time and obviously enjoys learning and helping other people to learn as well.
Two Great YouTube Channels
The Daily English Show amazes me – there is obviously a lot of work that makes this channel! On their blog, they say they are the world’s first daily online English language show. These videos come from New Zealand, which is great because it is very important to get used to listening to lots of different accents in English. This channel has been producing videos for over 5 years! What I really love about this channel is that the videos are about interesting things – I’m watching and learning from their New Zealand Summer Tour. Also, the English is clear and you can read the transcript of every video on the blog.
Next, EnglishClub.com is a huge resource for English learners and teachers but EnglishClub is also on YouTube and there is one specific series that I find very interesting – The Learning English Video Project. This project visits school and language institutes to ask learners and teachers about their experiences, goals, problems, solutions and achievements as well as getting tips and advice from them.
Like the Daily English Show, I love these videos because they are really interesting. Again, visit the website for the transcripts and lots of other things to help you when you are listening to the videos. The project covers the UK, Brazil, China, Spain, America, Romania and Morocco.
Try this first video from Granada, Spain.
A Couple of Other Useful Channels
Daily Dose of English is a channel that provides short videos describing a few English phrases (usually with a common word or topic). There are now enough ‘doses’ (or videos) for one every day for 5 months. However, it is a good idea to watch one or two, take notes, write some example sentences to help you remember and then watch the same video again a week later. How much do you remember?
You can go to the website for transcripts and to download the mp3s. Unfortunately there are advertisements on the website but this is still a good resource.
By the way, a “dose” of something, refers to ‘a small amount of something that you take regularly’. This word is usually used to talk about medicine but we use it for metaphors and other phrases sometimes as well.
Use Phrasal Verbs is another channel of short videos by Linguaspectrum (who makes the Daily Dose of English videos as well). Each video talks about one specific phrasal verb. There is a website as well but I think it is quite confusing to navigate (meaning that it is not easy to understand where to find the information you want).
I like these two channels, Daily Dose of English and Use Phrasal Verbs, because you learn useful vocabulary and phrases but more important than that, you will get at least 5 or 10 minutes of listening practice (actually more than 10 minutes if you watch the videos more than once, which you should do if you really want to remember anything),
Next time I will look at websites you should be following with RSS – and if you don’t know what RSS is, I’ll explain it!
RSS - We see this sign on many websites, but
what does it mean and how can we use it?
Learning a language is not just about the words we say, it’s also about how we say them. Listen to the different ways that this question is asked, “Is that your car?”
Did you hear the differences? Each of these questions has a different purpose and a different meaning. We understand these differences from context and from intonation.
Intonation is very important.
Look at the different focus of each of these sentences in the slides.
Did you understand the slides? If we stress that ‘David wanted to buy a red shirt.’ that means we are focused on David, not someone else (meaning another person). Take a look at the sentences again, can you complete the sentences based on the stressed word?
As well as understanding, it is important to focus on intonation for reasons of politeness. Some languages change the words used based on who you are talking to – there is a formal form and an informal form. In fact, I know that in some languages it is even more complicated than that! In English, we don’t change the verb form to show formal respect (like in Spanish, for example) but we do have polite phrases and we depend on polite intonation.
“Would you mind helping me for a moment?” is a polite request for help but if I speak with my friends I will probably say “Can you give me a hand for a sec?” (where ‘give me a hand’ means help, and ‘sec’ can mean ‘second’ but often just means a short period of time, not an actual second).
There are other examples that are much shorter. “What?”, for instance (‘for instance’ being another way to say ‘for example’). ‘What’ is a great word and ‘What?’ an easy way to get more information. BUT be careful, because how you say it will give your audience a lot of extra information. Look at this video about all the different ways one man can say “What?”
In these examples you can identify confusion, frustration, anger, disbelief and amazement. Sometimes he asks this to mean ‘Repeat what you said, I didn’t hear you.’ and this is a different “What?” than ‘Explain what you said, I didn’t understand you.” and these are both different from “What?” to ask ‘Why are you unhappy/angry with me?’ Watch again and see if you can identify these specific differences.
Obviously, when you are talking with friends intonation and polite phrases are not so important because you all know each other but if you are talking to someone you don’t know or you don’t know them very well (meaning you aren’t close friends) then this is important.
Try practising the different ways you can ask the same question. Try practising the different ways you can ask “What?” However, sometimes it is safer to not use “What?” and to use another, more polite phrase.
How many alternative phrases to “What?” can you find in this short video?
Many thanks to Kevin Cuckow for inspiring this post by sharing the Horrible Histories video, and thank you to Martin Sketchley for his wonderful blog and the example sentence for intonation.
Lewis kindly agreed to a small interview, answering a few questions about himself and the book.
If your students were to describe you with 3 adjectives, what would they be? I hope they would say: fun, hard-working and passionate about teaching. But some would say 'strict' as well, I think!
You’ve just finished writing a book together. Why did you write it? We've been teaching IELTS for about 15 years between us, and there are lots of good IELTS books available, but we couldn't find one book that had everything students need to pass the writing part of IELTS. So we started writing our own exercises, and over the last few years we've written hundreds of exercises that we use in class to help our students get a good writing score. We decided to put all our ideas into a book, and hopefully it will help lots of students to get at least 6.5 in writing.
Who is the book for? Well, the idea of the book is to show students step-by-step how to get a good writing score, in particular 6.5 or above. We wrote the book so that you can use it as a self-study book, or with a teacher in class. We know that lots of people don't have time to go to a language school to study an IELTS course, so the book is designed so that you can study it by yourself if you want to. For example, many nurses or doctors who want to work abroad need to get a 7.0 in IELTS, but maybe don't have time to go to a school because of their jobs. This kind of student can use the book at home. We think it's clear and easy to read, and helps you improve your writing step-by-step. Of course, you can also use the book in a class with a teacher, and in fact this is one of the best things about the book - every exercise in it has been tried out in class by us many times, so we know that it works. Hundreds of students in our classes have got high scores using our material, so we feel confident it can help many other students as well.
If you weren’t a teacher, what might your profession be? It's hard to say, I've been a teacher for 13 years, and I love it, I can't imagine doing another job, but I really enjoy writing, so maybe journalism.
What was the last book/movie you read/saw, and what have you seen/read way too many times? At the moment I'm reading a book called 'Solar' by Ian McEwan, which is fantastic, but the book I re-read all the time is 'Catch 22' by Joseph Heller. It's the funniest book I've ever read. If you haven't read it, I recommend it.
What do you like to do to unwind (relax)? I play tennis a lot, which helps get rid of stress. Drinking beer helps too!
Why are you an English language teacher? I think learning a foreign language is a really beautiful thing, which helps you to understand other cultures and ideas, and also of course to be successful in your studies or job. When I was 23, I lived in France for a year, and the experience of learning to speak in French was wonderful. Also, I really enjoy working with people from different countries, and I feel really proud when my students improve their English, and do really well in IELTS, for example.
Final Questions
If there were one thing you could remove from the English language to make it easier for learners of English, what would it be? Articles. Most languages don't have articles, and you don't really need to use articles - people will understand you whether you use articles or not.
Where will students be able to buy your book? In September it will be on Amazon.com and in all good bookshops, or you can look at the website of our publishers for more information about how to buy it in your country.
Thank you for the interview, Lewis. I’m sure the book will be a great success and help many students around the world. Here are the links to the various Amazon sites where the book is available now:
Basically, good English is not always good forexams. However, this is not a bad thing. Let me explain. (Also, if you are not preparing for an exam, keep reading because not all of this post is about English for exams.)
What is authentic language?
Authentic language is real language. Authentic English language is unplanned and unchanged language from native speakers. It’s the language that is used between two fluent speakers in a natural conversation.
What is the purpose of an exam?
The purpose of an exam is to test and assess language ability. You have to show how much you can do with your English in short period of time for the speaking (11 minutes for IELTS, 14 minutes for FCE, 15 minutes for CAE, 20 minutes for the TOEFL speaking test) and a limited number of words in your writing (400 words for IELTS, 330 words for FCE, 480 words for CAE, 525 words for TOEFL).
So within this short period of time you really have to show off (meaning to demonstrate) your English and use all the different forms you know as well as a good variety of vocabulary. Remember, if you don’t use the language during the speaking test then the examiner won’t know that you have it.
Good English does not always pass!
Sir Winston Churchill, Prime Minister
of Britain (1940-45, 1951-55)
(Picture from Wikipedia)
Here is part of a very important speech in British history. This speech by Winston Churchill, the prime minister of Britain during most of World War 2, was incredibly important in motivating the people of Britain to continue fighting during a time when Britain was losing the war. I don’t want to give you a history lesson but this speech was possibly the most important speech in Britain in the 20th century.
However, this speech recently failed an English assessment! Read and listen to the most famous part of the speech here.
"We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France,
we shall fight on the seas and oceans,
we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air,
we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be,
we shall fight on the beaches,
we shall fight on the landing grounds,
we shall fight in the fields and in the streets,
we shall fight in the hills;
we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old."
The computer system that marked the speech didn’t like the repetition. The speech uses the phrase “We shall...” at least 12 times. The repetition was a very important and useful part of the speech, but for an English exam it is not good. Repetition is a tool that we use in spoken and written English to emphasise a point and it is used a lot in speech writing, especially by politicians. However, for English exams, it does not help you because it only shows a small part of your language knowledge.
Have a mental checklist
Make checklist in your mind for
your speaking and writing.
(Photo from Flickr)
So it is a good idea to have mental checklist. A list in your head of things you should try to include when you are speaking and writing in the exam. Here is a short list for you to start with (there are plenty of other things to add):
Conditionals (e.g. If you learn how to use these different forms of English, you’ll have no problems in your speaking and written exams.)
Passive Voice (e.g. This blog post was written to help learners of English understand and prepare for their English exams.)
Relative Clauses (e.g. This blog, which started in February 2011, exists to help learners of English.)
Adverbs (e.g. Both the teacher and the students were 'terribly pleased'* when everyone passed the exam.)
Comparatives/Superlatives (e.g. The CAE test is definitely designed to be more difficult than the FCE test but the CPE is certainly the hardest test of them all.)
Reported Speech (Gordon said that the CAE test was definitely designed to be more difficult than the FCE test but the CPE was certainly the hardest test of them all.)
So all of these are useful parts of English to use in your speaking and writing to show the examiner what you can do.
If you are not taking an exam, this is still useful
Yes, even if you are not doing an exam, focusing on these parts of English is still very important. It is important for your accuracy to practise these parts of English separately sometimes.
Here are some videos to explain. The first video shows a martial arts drill. A drill is an exercise of repetition, where only one action is practised and repeated again and again so that the student can focus and improve on one specific area. This is not an authentic fight but it is an important part of martial arts training.
You can see that this action alone would not be very useful in a fight. However, when you put this action together with other actions then you can get something like this! (One of the most exciting martial arts fights I’ve ever seen! - Just click on play, it will start at the exciting part.)
So from this martial arts example, it is easy to see that the same rules apply to language learning. You've got to do the drills, practising your conditionals 'over and over and over' (meaning again and again and again), practising your use of passive voice over and over and over, practising your comparatives and superlatives over and over and over. This way they become better and better, you use them with more accuracy and fewer mistakes.
Then when you put them all together you get a grammatically accurate piece of writing or a grammatically great conversation.
* "terriblypleased" - Although 'terrible' is a negative word, we can use the adverb 'terribly' to mean 'very' in a positive way. So this actually means "very pleased" and it is a positive sentence. You can see the same use with 'awfully'.
I think most of us have a secret desire to write novel. If you think about it, a lot of our lives and conversations are spent telling stories: what you did last night, a funny incident when you were 8 years old, how you met your husband/wife, saying what you bought at the supermarket. They are not all good or interesting stories but they are all stories. So I think that most of us have the desire to write a whole novel, a big long story that we hope will become world famous.
If you are one of these people, then the next time you decide to try and do some writing you should take a look at this website.
Oh, and if you want to know how to start and complete a novel then you might want to try Matt Cutts's suggestion. I showed this video in a previous post but I've put it here again, in case you missed it the first time.
On July 1st 2011 my students tested me in a fun event to improve vocabulary and raise money for charity. This is how and why we did it!
During June this year, I spent at least half an hour every day trying to memorize 1000 new Spanish words and phrases. This was for an event to raise money for a local charity, Asociación Promover, in Argentina, where I am teaching at the moment.
The idea was simple: I had 1 month to learn the words and on July 1st my students tested me to see how many I could remember. Sometimes they gave me the English and I needed to give them the Spanish translation, and sometimes they gave me the Spanish and I gave them the English translation.
It was a fun event and I think everybody who helped improved their vocabulary!
We raised money by asking each person to donate for every word I remembered correctly: $0.02 for 1 word, $0.04 for 2 words, etc. A lot of the students helped by donating as well as helping me to find 1000 Spanish words and phrases to learn. Thank you very much to them!
To know about how I learned and memorized the vocabulary, take a look at my post, No Magic Please (Learning Vocabulary). In future posts this week, I will give some more information about the challenge, the motivation and how much I remember now, 2 months later.
Thanks for everybody’s messages of support. They were very much appreciated. :-)
If you are still a bit confused, here is my video explaining the challenge.
Let's think about imaginary situations; these are situations that are not real. These situations are very common when we speak in English. Lots of our conversations talk about things which might happen and we have other conversations about things that probably will not happen, but we like to imagine and dream about them.
Imagining Situations in the Present
For example, in the future I will eat, but this depends on me being hungry or not. If I'm hungry, I eat. This is a common and normal situation. However, in English we also like to talk about situations which are not normal. Let’s think about Superman.
Superman isn’t real... sorry to disappoint you. :-) He is imaginary so a lot of conversations about Superman are imaginary.
I like to be Superman = Something I enjoy regularly. Hmmm... I can't be Superman so this is not a good sentence.
I would like to be Superman = This talks about something I want. I can't be Superman but I can want to be Superman.
This is NOT possible - I will never be Superman... :-(
... but if I had Superman's powers then I would be very busy saving people all the time.
Or... if I could fly like Superman then I would save a lot of money.
Or... if I wore Superman's costume, I'd be embarrassed most of the time!
Or... if I were* Superman, I'd probably need to shave.
Let’s look at a few more examples.
Here is a young man thinking about money.
If I won the lottery, I'd buy a mansion. If I had lots of money, I would move house.** If I were* very rich, I would get a big red house.
(Pictures from Flickr: Man, Money, Mansion)
Do you see the patterns here? It is a little bit confusing but I will explain.
Start with 'If I', 'If you', 'If he', 'If she', 'If we', 'If they' and then the past form of the verb (have, had, had; can, could, been able to; wear, wore, worn; etc, etc.)
Continue with 'I would' or 'I'd', 'you would' or 'you'd', 'he would' or 'he'd', etc. and then the basic form of the verb (be, was/were, been; save, saved, saved; buy, bought, bought; get, got, gotten).
Look at the sentences again. Do you see the pattern? Do you understand the imaginary situation in each sentence?
If I had Superman's powers then I would be very busy saving people all the time. If I could fly like Superman then I would save a lot of money. If I wore Superman's costume, I'd be embarrassed most of the time! If I were* Superman, I'd probably need to shave.
If I won the lottery, I'd buy a mansion. If I had lots of money, I would move house.** If I were* very rich, I would get a big red house.
NOTES:
* 'If I were' - Usually we say 'I am, I was, I have been' but when we talk about imaginary/unreal situations we use 'If I were'. This is grammatically correct English but you will hear a lot of native speakers using 'If I was'. This is your choice; lots of native speakers use the 2nd option but the 1st option is grammatically correct.
** 'to move house' - This phrase does not mean to physically move a house. It is the phrasal verb we use to describe changing your accommodation.
Imagining Situations in the Past
Let's look at imagining situations in the past. Usually these are regrets; bad situations in the past that we wish we could change. Here is a picture of a young boy who obviously had an accident.
If I hadn't ridden my bicycle, I wouldn't have broken my arm. If I had been more careful on my bicycle, I wouldn't have broken my arm. If I hadn't fallen off my bike, I wouldn't have broken my arm. If I hadn't worn a helmet, my injuries would have been worse!
(Pictures from Flickr: Bicycle, Boy with Broken Arm, Arm)
Again, this is an area of English that we use a lot. We often try to imagine things in the past being different. Can you see the pattern here?
Start with 'If I had/If I hadn't' or 'If you had/If you hadn't' or 'If we had/If we hadn't' and then the past participle (ride, rode, ridden; break, broke, broken; fall, fell, fallen; wear, wore, worn).
Continue with 'would/wouldn't have' and past participle again.
'If the boy in the picture had been Superman, he wouldn't have broken his arm.'
The 2nd and 3rd Conditionals
You probably recognize these as the 2nd and 3rd conditionals. I don't like these names for this grammar. I think it's better to think of this grammar as imaginary situations in the present and the past. Or, if you want to think about it in a different way: 'unreal present' (2nd) and 'unreal past' (3rd) conditionals.
More Practice with the 'Unreal Present'
A World without Planes - This article/story imagines a world without planes and air travel. It is a great composition to read if you want more confidence with your conditionals.
Change the World by Eric Clapton - This song has a lot of examples of conditionals. However, some of the lyrics have some confusing mixed conditionals. Can you find them and fix them?
On Time - This short film is 6 minutes long and you can practise your 'unreal past' by talking about this video with a friend. Share it with another friend who is learning English and use the 'unread past'/3rd conditional to have a conversation about it.
Enjoy these very useful parts of English! Please comment below and let me know how successful your studies are.
Did you know about this? Thank you to Tom Walton for sharing this on his blog.
This video has lots of numbers in it, lots of big numbers. Did you understand all the information in the video? I have a small challenge for you.
Try watching it again and identify the significance of each of the numbers below. I've done the first number for you as an example.
0.2 is the number of grams per second of carbon that is generated by 1 second of online video. 2,000,000,000 4,000 44,000,000 2% 130,000,000,000 10% 2,500,000 1,065 100,000,000 350,000,000 20,000,000
Are you surprised by any of this information?
At the moment I am editing the video of my recent charity event. For this reason I started to look at the other videos I have posted on YouTube. You might have seen them already... but have you watched them with the English subtitles?
Believe me, the subtitles make the experience a bit... different, and it makes me think I need to speak more clearly the next time I make a video for this blog! :-)
Simply follow one of the links below to play one, or all, of the videos in YouTube. At the bottom of the video you should see a button that says "CC". Click on it and select "Transcribe Audio". Then sit back, watch and listen, and see if you can understand what I am saying better than YouTube can. :-)
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