Learn Useful Expressions in English | International House Bristol Check out IH Bristol’s extensive list of over 1000 of the most useful expressions in English, available for free for Beginner/Elementary students to Advanced speakers. Learning English is one of the best ways to improve your life and the prospects of getting a good job. English is used all over the world as the language of education and business and it is becoming normal to expect everybody to be able to speak it. IH Bristol has more than 30 years’ experience of teaching English as a foreign language, of helping students to pass Cambridge Exams, to achieve the right score in IELTS or OET or just to learn to communicate more effectively in the language. Whatever your reasons for learning English, we know the kind of language you need to learn. However, not everybody can come to Bristol to learn in person. How to use the Useful Expressions 1. The more you use them, the more you will improve!
UK slang for international students | Education UK (Global) By Sophie Cannon at Education UK, 27 January 2014 'Hiya mate, fancy a cuppa and a chin-wag?' 'I can't sorry pal, I'm skint. Gutted!' When you first arrive in the UK for your studies, you might be mystified by some of the words and phrases local people use. Don't worry, this is completely normal and you will soon be fine! People here often use slang – especially with friends. To help you cotton on (slang for 'understand'), here are some common words you may hear. Greetings, please and thank you Alright? People, friends and family Don't be confused if someone calls you pet, duck, sweetie, love, chicken, chuck, chucky-egg or sunshine. Other common slang and dialect terms you will hear are: Bairn = Baby or young child. Descriptions and exclamations There are lots of slang and dialect words to say something is good or cool – for example, in Wales you might hear people say tidy or lush, while in Birmingham you might hear bostin. If something is uncool, people may say it is naff or cheesy. Money
Online English Vocabulary Size Test Ever wonder about your vocabulary size? Even if you are a daily English speaker or a native English speaker, you still might find this test challenging! We conducted academic research and looked at online resources to design the model of this quiz. Loading... Seven steps to vocabulary learning You might expect that, after having been exposed to a word in ten, twenty, or maybe at the very most thirty, contexts, a learner will gradually piece together the word's meaning and start to use it correctly, appropriately and fluently. Classroom context Seven steps to vocabulary learning Conclusion Classroom context Of course we cannot expect a learner to acquire difficult words in the same way as a young child acquires their first language, but, perhaps as teacher we can somehow help learners to arouse their 'learning monitor' by, for example, providing rich contexts containing the target language and by giving our learners time to reflect on what the language item means. Seven steps to vocabulary learning Here are some practical steps that I have used to help my students. Step 1 I get my students to listen to the word or phrase in authentic-sounding dialogues Here are the dialogues I use for 'actually': Do you want a chocolate? Step 3 I discuss the meaning in plenary. Paul Bress
Question words with the verb to be Many students struggle with the basic question words even when they are at pre-intermediate level. That is why I have come up with the following post. There is a mind map explaining the meaning of the question words with examples. Question words – mind map Study the question words and examples. I think that students should translate the question words into their mother tongue too. Both of the following quizzes will play on your mobile device, however, you will not be able to play the games in the first quiz. In the first quiz you should complete and create the questions. The second quiz is fully in HTML5. Question words – Quiz (HTML5) There have been several requests from people who wanted to share the games on their website. Learn Vocabulary – envocabulary.eu You can learn some new vocabulary at our new site
66 Facts You May Not Have Known About The English Language The English language is, quite literally, the greatest language in the world. Great in terms of size - the current edition of the Oxford English Dictionary contains 615,000 entries. Great in terms of scope — it’s an official language in seventy-nine countries and territories. And great in terms of, well, greatness — it’s just one fantastic mishmash of borrowings, inventions, corruptions, misinterpretations, misspellings, alterations, words you’ll never need, and words you never even knew you’ll never need. Since December 2013, @HaggardHawks has been trying to prove precisely this by tweeting odd words, word origins and language facts everyday. 1,300 tweets later, it turns six months old this week and so to celebrate, here are 66 random facts from our first semester that hopefully go some way towards showing how great — and how downright bizarre — the English language can be. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 31.
5 cartoons of confused words Do you like walking around with bear feet? What would you take with you to a dessert island? There are many words in the English language that sound the same, but have very different meanings. These cartoons will show you just how awkward it can get with even the slightest spelling mistake… Bear feet or bare feet? Bear and bare are often confused when used as verbs. Find out more about how to use bear and bare correctly and take our quiz to test yourself. A stationery car or a stationary car? Another very common mistake is to confuse stationary and stationery. Find out more about how to use stationary and stationery correctly. A dessert island or a desert island? While the prospect of stranding on a dessert island may sound quite appealing to some, you’d probably be more likely to end up on a desert island after having survived a shipwreck. A supermarket isle or a supermarket aisle? There may be no such things as dessert islands, but what about supermarket isles?
Know your Latin: i.e. vs. e.g. | Grammarly Blog How would you feel if you got a text message that ended in SWAK? Many of the parents who took a quiz on texting acronyms weren’t sure what it meant. While some teenagers may laugh a little at the older generation’s inability to master texting lingo, the truth is that many of them would be hard-pressed to explain the difference between i.e. and e.g. Here’s what everyone from student to professional writer needs to know about these meaningful letters. E.g. is short for exempli gratia, a Latin phrase which means “for the sake of example.” “Should that happen to poor, as-yet unaffected places (e.g., most of South Asia and Africa) the suffering can be great,” it added. There’s a common view that Malcolm Turnbull’s ‘30-minute city’ is yet another slight variation on the many terms we already have for a more sustainable urban form e.g. compact city, walkable city, smart growth, new urbanism, urban consolidation. What about i.e.? What’s the difference between i.e. and e.g.?
Games With Words: Which English? Is Throw me down the stairs my shoes a good English sentence? The answer depends on where you live. Many people in Newfoundland find that sentence perfectly grammatical. By taking this quiz, you will be helping train a machine algorithm that is mapping out the differences in English grammar around the world, both in traditionally English-speaking countries and also in countries like Mexico, China, and India. At the end, you can see our algorithm's best guess as to which English you speak as well as whether your first (native) language is English or something else. In this quiz, you will decide which sentences are grammatical (correct) and which are not. Do not worry about whether the sentence is formal or 'proper' or is what you learned in school. Focus on your gut instincts. This experiment is being conducted by researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. About the research: This experiment examines people's knowledge of English grammar. Calculating score...
IB English B: Related Conditional phrases There are a number of commonly-used phrases which are in fact 'hidden' or 'embedded' if-structures. There is not much point in learning these through the full application of the Conditional rules: it is best simply to learn them as 'chunks' and use them automatically without thinking too much about the grammar involved. Each of these chunks is introduced below, with a few examples to illustrate the idea. qBank exercises Conditional phrases provides a set of Basic and Middling question items, covering the range of phrases below Negative if : reasons why not unless = ... examples Note that the 'unless' usage is shown in red; with the formal formal 'if' usage is shown in blue We're going to have a picnic unless it rains. We're going to have a picnic, if it doesn't rain. He's going to fail the IB unless he starts working properly. He's going to fail the IB if he doesn't start working properly. You can't access your bank account unless you have the proper codes. Taking precautions : Preferring