Vicki

Teacher of professional and technical English, writer and teacher trainer.

Practice Speaking English and be in a YouTube video

Teaching ideas and lessons No Responses »

Mar 092019

This is your invitation to practice speaking English with us and appear in one of our videos! Make a short video where you’re speaking in English, and we’ll share it with the world.

Here’s how it works:
1. You make a short video of yourself speaking – just a few sentences. Tell us who you are and your English goals.
2. You send the video to us, or send us a link where we can download it.
3. We put your videos into one longer video that we publish on our channel.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR MAKING AN ENGLISH VIDEO

WHAT TO SAY
Keep your video short – just a few sentences is fine. Tell us:
1. Who you are
For example: Where are you from? Are you a student? What are you studying? Or are you working? What’s your job?
2. Your English goals:
For example: Do you have an exam you want to pass or a job where you need English? Or maybe you’re planning to travel somewhere or perhaps you’re learning English for fun?

HOW TO SEND IT
If you have a YouTube channel, post your video there as unlisted or public (not private) and send us the link. The deadline is Monday March 24th, 2019.
Please check the video for Vicki’s email address or use the contact form on our website: www.simpleenglishvideos.com.

Here’s a link to some videos our viewers sent us last year: https://youtu.be/onkJlnpmo44

Zero conditionals – English grammar

Teaching ideas and lessons No Responses »

Mar 082019

Zero conditionals are a really useful and simple English grammar structure.
We often use them to talk about scientific facts, but that’s not their only use.

In this video lesson you’ll see lots of zero conditional examples and learn how you can also use the structure to talk about habits and routines and even the past.

Zero conditionals have two clauses: the condition and result.
We’ll show you how to form them, make negatives, punctuate them and reverse the order.
You learn about when and if in zero conditionals and cause effect relationships.
And just to check that all is clear, we finish with a zero conditionals quiz.

Sickness and Illness vocabulary in British and American English

Teaching ideas and lessons No Responses »

Mar 052019

Watch this English lesson to learn vocabulary for health and sickness.
We’ll also show you how some words we use to talk about illness are different in British and American English.

You’ll learn vocabulary for:
– cold and flu symptoms like fever, sore throat and blocked or runny nose
– germs and bugs
– symptoms like feeling nauseous, having diarrhea and having constipation
– different kinds of aches in English
– different ways to say vomit in English
– the different meanings of sick and ill in British and American English

And on top of all this great stuff, you’ll also see a funny parody ad for cold medication. Enjoy!

Laughing and learning English with a comedy sketch

Teaching ideas and lessons No Responses »

Mar 022019

Here are two videos with a comedy sketch about British and American English differences.

The premise is Jay (who is American) is attending a meeting where he presents some art work he’s prepared to two British people. Things start going a little crazy when we discover he has misunderstood the instructions he was given.

Along the way your students will learn what a boot and a plonker is in British English, and also pick up some British slang and colloquial phrases like pants, cheers and knock up?

There are two videos in the series. In the first one they test themselves and see if they can spot ten British expressions that cause confusion. In the second one, they see the video again and then get explanations of all the words.

Video one

Video two

Dish or plate? English vocabulary and prototype theory

Teaching ideas and lessons No Responses »

Mar 012019

We received a great question from a viewer: What’s the difference between a plate and a dish in English? (In some languages there’s just one word.)
It’s not a simple answer because the meanings of words often overlap.

In this English lesson we explain when we say dish or plate and look at the features of:
– plates, dishes, cups, mugs and bowls
– different kinds of games

We show how the meanings of words can be fuzzy at the edges and it leads us to prototype theory in linguistics.
We draw on the work of two different writers:
– the philosopher Wittgenstein and his work on words that share a family resemblance
– the psychologist Eleanor Rosch and prototype theory

If you’re interested in this topic, another great book to read is ‘Words in the Mind’ by Jean Aitchison. She explores how we store words in our brain.

Make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel.
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Who and whom – when and how to use these words

Teaching ideas and lessons No Responses »

Mar 012019

Learn the difference between who and whom in this English grammar lesson.

Who is a subject pronoun and whom is an object pronoun and we’ll show you:
– how who and whom work
– a test to see if who or whom is correct
– when it’s appropriate to use whom in formal writing
– when it’s not appropriate to use whom (Whom can sound pompous)
– how we use whom in constructions with prepositions

We’ll also show you lots of examples of who and whom in action.

Make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel.

The trickiest word in English – Quite!

Teaching ideas and lessons No Responses »

Mar 012019

Quite! It’s such a common word. Americans use it, Brits use it, and it’s the same word, right? Well no, not quite. Have a look at these sentences. Both Americans and Brits could say them all, but two of them mean different things, depending on whether an American or a Brit says them. Which ones?
1 This is quite interesting.
2 Quite fascinating, in fact.
3 I’m usually quite good at this kind of exercise.
4 But you’re quite correct. This is tricky.
One common meaning of quite in both varieties is ‘completely’. (See 2 and 4 above.) These two sentences mean the same in American and British English.
Fascinating and correct are both ungradable adjectives, so things are either fascinating/correct or not. There’s no half way about it.
But there are other adjectives that are gradable, so for example, there can be different degrees of good or interesting. And that’s where things get complicated and quite means different things. (See 1 and 3 above.)
Watch our latest video to learn more.

What to say when you make a mistake

Teaching ideas and lessons No Responses »

Nov 092018

Would you like to learn some swear words alternatives?
Or maybe some phrasal verbs?
Or perhaps you’d like to learn the different uses of ‘fault’ as a countable and uncountable noun?

You’ll learn all that an more in this video.

Politeness styles in the US and UK

Teaching functions and speech acts No Responses »

Nov 022018

When I moved to the US from the UK, I had to adjust some of the vocabulary I was using and learn some new expressions, but it was fun. And of course the grammar was much the same, so that was easy. The tricky thing for me was learning a new style of politeness. Really! The US and UK have rather different styles of politeness.

In American English it’s often important to show warmth and friendliness. That’s true in British English too, but in the UK we sometimes place more emphasis on not intruding or interfering.

It’s not that one style of politeness is better than the other, but it can lead to some funny differences when it comes to when we give compliments and how we receive them.

There’s a branch of linguistics called pragmatics which studies the hidden or secret meanings behind the words we choose. It looks at the intentions behind the things we say, and as a result, it has prompted a lot of research and discussion about linguistic politeness.

In this video we look at some ways that face issues impact politeness when it comes to compliments.

We haven’t tried to go into the technicalities of positive and negative politeness, but we show some issues in action that we think will be useful for English learners.

If you’ve enjoyed this video, here are two more we’ve made on some pragmatic features of English.
Why it’s hard to understand English speakers: https://youtu.be/HeDyRUkQA5Q
3 ways to get what you want in English: https://youtu.be/4jJ5zvfxRgc

The B2 First (FCE) Speaking Test

Uncategorized No Responses »

Aug 182018

B2 First is often known by its former name, FCE or Cambridge First Certificate.

When we ask our students what makes them most nervous about the exam, they often say the FCE speaking test so we’ve made a series of videos about it.

In this first video we provide an overview of the B2 First speaking exam, showing how it works and explaining the marking criteria.

In our later videos we’ll go through the four parts of the exam in detail, demonstrating what to do and what NOT to do and providing tips and practice activities for each part.

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