This one always catches students out. I’ve tried to be as step by step as I can in this video and hope it’s clear…
As always, you can see it with a clickable transcript at Simple English Videos dot com
Oct 182014
Oct 152014
Getting ready to serve some spooky stuff up to your students? ‘Alone’ and ‘Lonely’ are two handy words for ghost stories. In fact they’re not just handy for ghost stories. Hopefully your students will find them useful any time of year.
As always, the video is available with a clickable transcript over at www.simpleenglishvideos.com. Enjoy!
Oct 092014
The next time you’re working on conditionals, why not teach ‘in case’? Maybe it’s my cautious streak, but it seems like such a handy little phrase to know to me.
There are a couple of things about ‘in case’ that students may find tricky. First they need to know how its meaning differs from ‘if’. And then there’s the issue that we don’t follow it with ‘will’ or ‘would’. But that seems like another good reason to teach it, to me. We rarely use ‘will’ in the ‘if-clause’ in conditionals either, so it gives us another opportunity to practise that.
Hopefully this video will help students get a good handle on ‘in case’. As always, it’s available at the www.simpleenglishvideos.com website with a clickable transcript. Enjoy!
Quick update!
Just in case it comes in handy – here are some questions you can ask…
Tick all the correct endings in the sentences below.
- Take an umbrella in case …
- it should rain.
- it will rain.
- it would rain.
- it starts raining.
- Take your phone, just in case …
- she will call.
- she needs to call you.
- she calls.
- she would call.
- I wrote the number down in case …
- we would forget it.
- we would forgot it.
- we forgot it.
- we should forgot it.
- Bring your driving licence, just in case …
- you need some ID.
- you should need some ID.
- someone asks to see your ID.
- someone would ask to see your ID.
- I reserved the room till 5pm in case …
- the meeting went on longer than expected.
- the meeting goes on longer than expected.
- the meeting would go on longer than expected
- the meeting will go on longer than expected.
Oct 072014
Lots of teachers use the context of daily routines to practise the simple present tense, so we thought it might be useful to show you Carter’s daily routine. The teaching idea is pretty simple. Students have to:
- watch the video
- say what Carter’s morning routine is
- describe their own morning routine
The video is available with a clickable transcript at https://www.simpleenglishvideos.com . Feel free to copy and use the transcript to create worksheets and exercises, and if you have any good teaching ideas for the video, please add them there. They might help other teachers. The video is also available on YouTube at http://youtu.be/tPDSjoCFd9k.
OK, over to Carter… CLICK THE PICTURE…
Sep 302014
Some things just cry out for pictures and diagrams when we’re trying to teach them. And the cool thing about video is you can animate diagrams. Here’s our latest video on high and tall…
It’s also available with a clickable transcript at https://www.simpleenglishvideos.com
Jul 012014
One of the things I love about teaching Business English is I learn so much from my students. In fact I suspect I’ve often learnt more from this lesson, than my learners. What about you? Have you taught it? And what might a prototypical lesson for pre-work learners be like?
We’ll be exploring this topic and many more in the iTDi course on ‘Breaking Into Business English’. It’s a 4 week online course and we’ll be having our first ‘live’ webinar this Sunday (July 6th, 2014). Click here for more details. Oh, and did I tell you? You can also get certified!
http://itdi.pro/itdihome/vicki.php
Apr 042014
The grammatical rules we follow when we use phrasal verbs and verbs with particles are so complicated. There’s a wonderful video of Dave Willis talking about the futility of teaching them at the 2010 IATEFL conference in Harrogate. (So not this year’s conference, but the one four years ago.) Sadly Dave has passed away since then. I’m so glad his talk was captured because it gave me a chance to see him in action again. Not only does he make perfect sense, but he was a lovely guy.
So how can we teach two and three part verbs? I recommend presenting them in context so the meanings are clear, pointing out the tricky word order patterns and then practice, practice, practice. So when I saw Jason R Levine (aka Fluency MC) performing a catchy rap for practising some, I got the camera out.
Here’s a video we made which presents ten common two part verbs in context and demonstrates how the word order works.
And here’s the second one we made where you see Jase’s rap and where students can sing along for lots of practice, practice, practice.
Hope you like them and thanks to Jase for the inspiration. As always, both videos are available with clickable transcripts at the Simple English Videos website.
Mar 182014
Many languages have one verb that performs many of the functions of both ‘make’ and ‘do’ in English, so they can be tricky for students to master.
But they’re also tricky to make a video about in some ways. There are some general patterns and rules English speakers follow when they use them, but in lots of cases, it’s a matter of usage. We use one verb and not the other because … well, that’s what we do. So as well as learning the general rules, learning common collocations with ‘make’ and ‘do’ seemed important too.
And that’s why we’ve made two videos about them. The first one covers the basic rules English speakers follow when they use the verbs and here it is:
The second has examples of some common collocations with ‘make’ and ‘do’ and here it is.
Hope they do the trick and make learning these verbs fun. As always they are available with clickable transcripts at our Simple English Videos website.
Feb 282014
A simple rule of thumb for safety and security is:
safety: preventing accidents – security: preventing theft.
But in these days of terrorism, organised crime and breaches in information security (not to mention Sarbanes Oxley, compliance and all the rest) life has got a lot more complicated.
We reasoned that if you were using technical English or English for business, you’d probably need to go a bit deeper, so we wound up making two videos. Here’s the first one which has a simple explanation that will hopefully answer key questions for most pre-intermediate students.
And here’s the second one for students who need a deeper understanding.
You may have your own thoughts on these words and if so, do please add them to the comments below. Who knows – maybe a third video is required here…
Both videos are available with clickable transcripts at Simple English Videos dot com. Hope you like them!
P.S. Many thanks to Stephen Charles for suggesting this topic! And don’t forget to tell me if you have any ideas for video topics folks.
Feb 112014
Check and control can be tricky verbs for students. At passport control you’d think they’d control our passports, but of course they don’t – they check them instead.
And in this age when security and compliance are big issues, they seem like very handy verbs for business English students to master to me.
So here’s our video on Check and Control. As always, it’s available with a clickable transcript at Simple English Videos and also on YouTube.