The Zero Conditional We can make a zero conditional sentence with two present simple verbs (one in the 'if clause' and one in the 'main clause'): If + present simple, .... present simple. This conditional is used when the result will always happen. So, if water reaches 100 degrees, it always boils. It's a fact. The 'if' in this conditional can usually be replaced by 'when' without changing the meaning. For example: If water reaches 100 degrees, it boils. Here are some more examples: See this page about the first conditional to learn about the difference between the first and the zero conditionals. Click here for an exercise about making this conditional Click here for all the conditional exercises Don't miss my free ebook (PDF) about advanced conditionals.
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Keith Chen: language that forecasts weather — and behavior By Keith Chen How are China, Estonia and Germany different from India, Greece and the UK? To an economist, one answer is obvious: savings rates. Germans save 10 percentage points more than the British do (as a fraction of GDP), while Estonians and Chinese save a whopping 20 percentage points more than Greeks and Indians. Economists think a lot about what drives people to save, but many of these international differences remain unexplained. Keith Chen: Could your language affect your ability to save money? In late 2011, an idea struck me while reading several papers in psychology that link a person’s language with differences in how they think about space, color, and movement. In a nutshell, this is precisely what I found. Back when my first paper on this topic circulated, many linguists were appropriately skeptical of the work. Rain is likely this weekend. It will likely rain this weekend. What does this mean?
Online Spell Checker - SpellWeb.com Say What? 5 Ways to Get Students to Listen Ah, listening, the neglected literacy skill. I know when I was a high school English teacher this was not necessarily a primary focus; I was too busy honing the more measurable literacy skills -- reading, writing, and speaking. But when we think about career and college readiness, listening skills are just as important. So how do we help kids become better listeners? Strategy #1: Say it Once Repeating ourselves in the classroom will produce lazy listening in our students. Of course you don't want to leave distracted students in the dust so for those few who forgot to listen, you can advise them to, "ask three, then ask me." Strategy #2: Turn and Talk One way to inspire active listening in your students is to give them a listening task. Strategy #3: Student Hand Signals Asking students to pay full attention and indicating that they will follow this with a non-verbal signal is a wonderful tool for sharpening those listening skills. Strategy #4: Pay Attention, Pause, Paraphrase
5 examples of how the languages we speak can affect the way we think Keith Chen (TED Talk: Could your language affect your ability to save money?) might be an economist, but he wants to talk about language. For instance, he points out, in Chinese, saying “this is my uncle” is not as straightforward as you might think. “All of this information is obligatory. This got Chen wondering: Is there a connection between language and how we think and behave? While “futured languages,” like English, distinguish between the past, present and future, “futureless languages” like Chinese use the same phrasing to describe the events of yesterday, today and tomorrow. But that’s only the beginning. Navigation and Pormpuraawans In Pormpuraaw, an Australian Aboriginal community, you wouldn’t refer to an object as on your “left” or “right,” but rather as “northeast” or “southwest,” writes Stanford psychology professor Lera Boroditsky (an expert in linguistic-cultural connections) in the Wall Street Journal. Featured illustration via iStock.
The ESL Commando: Best English Listening Websites Here is a quick run down of all of my favorite listening websites for English learners. Please be sure to check out my top ESL listening activities here on the ESL Commando too! Enjoy! ELLLO - English Listening Lab Online. Randall's Lab - Great Main Ideas and cloze exercisesLyrics Training - Learn English through songs. Thank you! This will help us improve your ad experience. Report a problem This item is...
Listen to English - learn English! - The podcast website for people learning English A special steam train at Farringdon station, to celebrate 150 years of the London Underground. Photo by diamond geezer/flickr. Here in Britain, we have been celebrating a birthday. Not the birthday of a person, however, but the birthday of a railway. One hundred and fifty years ago, in January 1863, the first underground railway in the world carried its first passengers. It ran for 6 kilometres from Paddington in London to a place close to the City, which is the name we call London’s main business district. The new railway was controversial and unpopular with many people. Steam engines pulled the first underground trains. More underground railway lines opened in the following years. To celebrate the 150th birthday of the London Underground, one of the old steam engines came out of its retirement home in a museum to pull a special Underground train. To finish this podcast, here is some Underground vocabulary for you to learn. Dogs must be carried on the escalator! Categories podcasts Tags
Listen A Minute: Easier English Listening and Activities