Join Vicki Hollett and Jason R Levine (Fluency MC) for The English Show. This week looked at how to sell your ideas and persuade and convince people in English. Come and join us every Sunday!
Jan 302017
Vicki
Jan 242017
How many English tenses are there? Well, technically speaking, there are just two: the past and the present. When we talk about the future we often use a present tense or a modal verb (like could, will or might) or expressions like ‘going to‘, ‘about to‘ and ‘bound to‘. And we have verbs we might use as well like ‘hope‘ or ‘expect‘. Find out more in this week’s English Show where we practice lots of these words and phrases, play a game and rap with FluencyMC as well.
The English Show is streamed live on YouTube every Sunday at 11 am NYC time and 4pm London time. Everyone is welcome so come and join us! To get notified 10 minutes before it starts, sign up to our mailing list by clicking here.
Jan 232017
When President Trump’s press secretary gave his first press briefing, he made statements about the crowd size at the inauguration that were false. When questioned about it later, another Trump spokesperson, Kellyanne Conway, claimed he wasn’t lying. Rather he was presenting ‘alternative facts’. Her interviewer objected and said ‘Alternative facts are not facts. They’re falsehoods’. Falsehoods is a slightly more gentle way to say ‘lies’.
Calling someone a liar is a hostile act in English (and in any language). Admitting you lied is difficult too, so people will often look for ways to soften how they say ‘I lied’ or ‘He/she lied’.
Can you match these statements to their meanings?
1. They made a misstatement. They misspoke.
2. They hyped it a little. It was a slight exaggeration.
3. They were economical with the truth.
4. They were fibbing
5. They falsified the figures
a. They changed the data so it was no longer true.
b. They deliberately withheld important information.
c. They said something in a way that was not clear or accurate.
d. They told a small harmless lie.
e. They made it seem better or more important than it was.
Jan 152017
Jan 082017
Have you seen The English Show yet? We’re broadcasting live on YouTube every Sunday at 11 am New York time, 4 pm London time and 1 am the next day in Tokyo.
The English Show is designed for #ESL English learners and it’s packed with conversation and language practice, games, puzzles, raps and great tips to help you learn faster. Ask questions, get fluent and make friends in the live chat every Sunday. There’s no other show like it.
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And watch our latest English Show here:
Jan 072017
Dec 272016
One of the things I love about video is it allows us to present language in context. We’re not limited to a classroom setting and we can venture outside and show a variety of people and different situations. We can show the relationship of the speakers and who has the power and that matters because it affects the language choices we make. So in my view, video is a wonderful medium for teaching pragmatics.
Lots of pragmatic research has been done on requests, not surprisingly, because they pose all sorts of potential for loss of face. We manage the possible social pitfalls in some interesting ways with pre-moves and indirectness, and of course anglo-Englishes have all the peculiar whimperatives structures like ‘Could you possibly…?’, and ‘Would you mind…?’
So I’ve been wanting to make some videos about requests for ages. Here’s an introductory video on the subject of directives that takes a broad sweep view of three basic ways we get people to do what we want. Hope you like it!
Dec 202016
Dec 132016
Can you guess what the happiest songs on earth are?
Scientists reckon one of them is Good Vibrations
To feel good, apparently we like major chords, an upbeat tempo that’s a bit unusual, and something a bit more complex than a standard three chord song. Click here to find out more about the scientific analysis.
But while we’re on the subject of Good Vibrations, it also happens to be a great song for teaching our students about the (very common and useful) suffix -ion. Here’s our new video about that:
Dec 122016
We tried streaming live on YouTube for the first time today. 20 minutes before the start we’d run all the checks and our lights, camera and sound all worked perfectly. Apart from a few butterflies in my stomach, we were set to go.
4 minutes before the start my mike stoped working, Jase’s audio connection fell out of synch and our dog Carter heard someone outside and went nuts.
It was chaos! But Jay got us up and running and the audience was great and we were able to communicate in the chat. Our featured guest @Jason R Levine was the BEST. So instead of wanting to give up, I feel like I want to do another one!