How many syllables does the word literally have? And do people use it too much? And what different meanings does it have?
We explored some of these questions in our latest video.
May 172019
Apr 122019
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
Apr 052019
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.
Apr 022019
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.
Here’s a link to the Arthur Aron et al study and a great article about it from the New York Times.
If you want to try out the 36 questions with a partner, here’s a website that makes it easy to go through the questions.
Mar 292019
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.
Mar 282019
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.
Mar 252019
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.
Mar 252019
In some languages you can translate ‘it is’ and ‘there is’ with just one phrase. Wow! That’s bound to be confusing.
So what’s the difference? Well, it may seem simple, but actually, it’s quite complex because we can use both expressions as dummy subjects in English.
In this video we explore how we use them, provide lots of examples and share lots of classic old waiter, waiter jokes that should make the language more memorable and lots of fun too. It’s great to be able to see the language on context.
Mar 222019
Play along with our British English slang quiz.
You’ll learn 10 slang words and colloquial expressions including:
– bloke, meaning dude
– quid, not quids
– bog and bog roll
– a tad meaning a little
– knackered and clapped out
– skint meaning broke
– hard cheese meaning hard luck – often ironic
– peckish meaning a little hungry
– cheeky meaning disrespectful or funny
We also look at two old-fashioned slang words that you can use as a joke:
– spiffing meaning splendid
– tickety-boo meaning fine and dandy
Mar 162019
We made a video a while ago on how we say can and can’t in British and American English. You can see it here.
It was very popular but many of you wrote saying you were worried about saying the right the vowel sound in the word can’t in British English. If you get it wrong you could say a rude word!
Some of you said you say cannot instead. That’s clear, but it will sound a little strange. Cannot is more frequent in written English than spoken. The way to solve the problem is to work on the vowel sounds so you can say AH and UH – the ɑː and ʌ vowel sounds.
We show you how to do that in this video and demonstrate some ah uh minimal pairs. We’ll also show you how we pronounce words differently in British and American English.
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