Performance reviews are a great context for looking at the present perfect. In our latest video English lesson we look at how to form it and when use it.
We go through the three uses of the present perfect:
1. Unfinished actions that started in the past and are still continuing
2. Life experiences that happened at an indefinite time
3. Past actions that are important now because they are news or because their results matter in the present.
But best of all we show it in action in a comedy sketch. This story is great for business English students.
We had a request from a viewer who said the thing he found trickiest in English was how we use will, (be) going to and the present continuous. They are tricky! Sometimes their uses overlap and sometimes they don’t. In this video Madame Victoire unlocks the mysteries of these three future forms.
Take the quiz and see how good your British slang is. Along the way we’ll explain the meanings of words and phrases like kerfuffle, go spare and butcher’s hook.
Have you ever given your students a list of phrases to use to disagree and then winced when you heard them practising them?
Have you ever heard your students say ‘I disagree’ or ‘I don’t agree’ and thought, hmm, that sounds a bit too formal?
In this video we look at how we disagree in everyday conversation and look at some steps students can follow to sound more like a native English speaker.
Click here to see our video on 12 ways to agree in English
Why do people learn English? Come and meet students from all over the world who are winners of this year’s SEVY awards.
Speaking in English is a challenge. You’re bound to think, ‘Am I making mistakes?’ or ‘Am I saying this right?’ Now imagine you’re not just talking to one or two people, but you’re talking to the world!
A few weeks ago we set our viewers a challenge. We asked them to record a video where they’re speaking in English and we’ve been blown away by the response.
So now we’re very proud to share their work and introduce you to some of the wonderful people who watch our channel, and to learn about why they’re learning English and their goals.
Is it possible to fall in love in just one conversation? Maybe if you ask and answer the right questions.
In this video English lesson we ask and answer 11 English questions that can lead to love and explore some words of love and romance along the way.
You’ll learn English vocabulary for talking about love and relationships including:
– words for describing relationships:
compatible, close, treasured
– things lovers might do as they get closer such as:
to impress, to be compatible, to get along, to be trying to hard, to share, to reveal
– euphemisms for death and distress:
to lose someone, disturbing
– adjectives for describing physical appearance:
good-looking, beautiful, pretty, handsome, hot, fit
– adjectives for describing personal qualities:
loyal, sensitive
This lesson was inspired by some real psychological research into 36 questions that can make strangers connect, get close fast and even fall in love.
Our latest lesson looks at the second conditional and when we use it. We explore how the second conditional is different to the first and see lots of examples in action in a funny story.
In this video your students will learn how to use who, whose and who’s correctly and fix a common mistake.
We compare the pronoun who and its possessive form, whose, and show examples in action.
We look at:
how to use who and whose in questions
how to use who and whose in relative clauses
the difference between whose and who’s.
To make most nouns possessive in English, we add apostrophe ‘s’. However the pronoun who is different because its possessive form is whose.
To check they know whether to write whose or who’s, we finish with a whose who’s quiz. Click here to see our video lesson on who and whom.
How do we say numbers like twenty, thirty, forty, fifty etc. in English?
Well, it depends. There are some curious differences between how I say them in British English and how Jay says them in American English.
For example, twenny vs. twenty. Jay often drops the middle t in twenty and says twenny.
Then there’s thirty. There he says the t but it sounds like very fast d sound – commonly known as a flap t. You’ll hear lots of examples of the flap t in numbers in this video
Do you ever say free instead of three? We’ll tell you about three vs. free pronunciation in England.
We’ll also show you the difference in how we say numbers like thirteen and thirty, fourteen and forty, etc.
When we’re counting in English a number like fourteen sounds different to when we say it on its own. We’ll show you how native speakers change the word stress to distinguish between numbers like fourteen and forty.
And best of all you’ll meet Super Agent Awesome for a numbers quiz.
