We write ‘it’s’ with an apostrophe when it’s a contraction of ‘it is’ or ‘it has’. We don’t use an apostrophe when ‘its’ is a possessive pronoun.
Native speakers sometimes get this wrong and of course it’s tricky for English language learners too. I think people muddle them up because they confuse possessive nouns with possessive pronouns. We explain the difference in this video and also show you how not to rob a bank.
We love getting messages from our viewers of our videos and would love to get to know everyone better. So this week we issued an invitation.
We’re inviting everyone to make a video of themselves speaking in English and to tell us:
*who they are
*where they are from
*what they do.
We will compile all the videos we receive into one video that we’ll post on our Simple English Videos channel on YouTube. We’ve never tried anything like this before and we’re really looking forward to seeing the videos people make. If you would like to rise to the challenge, or if you know an English learner who would like to try this, we’ll be delighted. The deadline is Monday March 12th, 2018 and here’s a video with all the instructions.
Hoping to hear from you!
One of these sentences is incorrect, but would your students know which one?
1. Please explain.
2. Please explain me.
3. Please explain me this word.
Of course number 2 is wrong, but lots of students make this mistake when they are learning English. And it’s not a simple one to explain because there are situations where we can say things like ‘Explain yourself’ or ‘I didn’t explain myself properly.‘
We aim to fix the problem in our latest video. Enjoy!
Last Sunday the Philadelphia Eagles won the Super Bowl for the first time and the city went crazy. People have been partying all week and yesterday there was a big parade. Here’s a video we made with happy excited Eagles fans on the streets of Philadelphia as they celebrated yesterday.
It provides listening practice with natural spoken English and includes some informal colloquial expressions and slang, such as, ‘It was lit’, ‘We had a blast’, and of course, ‘Go Birds!’
It was an interesting video for us to make. We’ve found gathering vox pop interviews in the street a bit hit or miss in the past. Some days we stand there begging people to be in a video and nobody is interested and then other days it’s great and we meet some really nice people. There was one glorious summer day last year where we actually had a queue of people forming! But other days we’ve come home with just one recording or nothing. Yesterday it was easy because everybody was in such a good mood and we could have found a hundred fans willing to help us.
It was also an interesting video for us to make because we turned it around very fast. \We shot the footage at lunch time yesterday and then I had to write and record a script and get it edited over night for Jay to audio edit this morning. With more time, I think I could have written a better script, but it was good to know we could make a video that fast. And while I was editing it I was wondering whether this sort of video could make for very helpful listening practice. I’d love to know what you think because we could try to make more like this when the weather gets nicer.
Connectors (or conjunctions) signal how our thoughts are connected, so of course they’re valuable for understanding spoken English and for speaking too. They’re also valuable if you’re taking a speaking exam for IELTS or Cambridge First Certificate. Using them correctly can boost your score.
In this video lesson we tell a funny story and show some of the most common connectors in spoken English in action. We also compare a couple that my students sometimes muddle up: so and because.
We started the year with a couple of videos about how to learn English.
I’ve been teaching English for forty years and I’ve always found second language acquisition research interesting so I reasoned it was time to share some secrets – things I’ve found work for my students that could work for yours too. At the heart of it, I think, is motivation but good goals and good plans can really help the learning process speed up.
There are lots of things I love about the holiday season and getting together with friends is definitely a highlight.
This year I was able to get together with friends on line as well to make a holiday season video. Jennifer of JenniferESL is based in New England in the US, I’m originally English of course, and Emma of MmmEnglish is based in Australia.
We thought if we get together we can tell everyone about the different customs we follow at this time of year. So here’s a holiday season vocabulary lesson and on the way you’ll learn about Christmas trees in America, English Christmas turkey dinners and Australian New Year’s celebrations.
Make sure you follow Jennifer and Emma if you don’t already! I’ll put all our contact details below.
You can see the transcript for this post here, and if you have holiday traditions to share, please do.
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