‘Lie’ and ‘lay’ are so confusing that native speakers sometimes muddle them up. When Bob Dylan sang ‘Lay lady lay’ he should probably have been singing, ‘Lie lady lie’ – it doesn’t sound as good though.
We’ve made a video lesson about the two verbs. Please share it if you think you know some people who would find it handy.
As always, it’s available on our Simple English Videos website, and also on our YouTube channel.
There’s a hand gesture I find myself making when I’m teaching. It goes like this…
I hope it’s not rude in Italian or any other languages, but I find it jolly handy for showing students when I want them to switch the word order around. Now, of course, it doesn’t work too well as a still image. If you could see me actually moving my hands around it’d be much clearer.
And it’s the same with whiteboard text. I can draw lines and arrows, but without moving type, I can’t actually show my students how words need to be moved around. But video changes that. It’s a cool feature of video – you can animate text.
I made an earlier version of this video a while back and we’ve just upgraded the text animations, audio, lighting and we’ve added a couple of gags. Don’t get too excited. This is not a laugh-a-minute-video, but I think it’s full of solid learning matter. See what you think.
It’s also available at our Simple English Videos website with a clickable transcript. Hope you like it!
Teach them the difference between cook and cooker!
Also available on our award winning Simple English Videos website with a clickable transcript.
Our Simple English Videos website is the joint winner of the 2014 David Riley award for Innovation in Business English and ESP. YAY! We’re thrilled to bits!
If you haven’t visited our site recently, go check it out because it’s had a make over and we’ve been adding LOTS of new videos. Of course we have our YouTube channel as well, but at Simple English Videos there’s extra support like a clickable transcript and a dictionary tool. And go here to see one of the coolest uses of the videos that I’ve heard of.
We were very proud to share the stage with the other winner of the award – Newsmart – a terrific resource for students.
The idea behind Newsmart came from the insight that News Corp had unique access to the best business content in the world through the Wall Street Journal, as well as the best ELT content through Collins Learning. Using authentic texts and video from the Wall Street Journal, users can work through comprehension, grammar and vocabulary tasks to score points and earn placement on a leaderboard. Go check it out, if you haven’t already!
…and also how to use the structure ‘have something done’. Our latest video…
As always, it’s available with a clickable transcript at Simple English Videos. Enjoy…
One of the many things I love about video is the way it allows us to animate text and diagrams. Being able to show a dynamic image often makes things clearer.
Here’s our latest video on the prepositions ‘by’ and ‘until’. I’m very fond of this one for two reasons . Firstly, I could animate the time line diagrams. Second, Zehra and Zeynep kindly reprised their boss and manager roles. They’re so good! Enjoy!
As always, this video is available with a clickable transcript at Simple English Videos.
If you’d like to see Zehra playing our unrelenting boss in another video – check out this one about ‘on time’ and ‘in time’. It received some great comments so we made a follow up that’s here.
If you teach any business English students, you’ll know that language we use to talk about time, schedules, and deadlines is jolly useful. With that in mind, we decided to take a systematic approach to teaching the verbs ‘take’ and ‘last’. We made three videos.
Here’s the first one and it’s about the verb ‘take’:
Here’s the second one and it’s about the verb ‘last’:
The third one compares the two verbs and has one of my favourite gags – watch out for Jay playing my dentist!
Fortunately, learning the difference between ‘take’ and ‘last’ is a lot quicker than a tooth extraction. As always the videos are available with clickable transcripts over at Simple English Videos Dot Com.
Enjoy!
Do you have any intermediate or advanced level students who would like to know more about British and American English? If so, I have just the class for them!
On November 19, 2014 (or 19th November, if you’d prefer) I’m teaming up with Jennifer Lebedev to run a live webinar on WizIQ. I’m British and she’s American – so together we’ve got the two varieties covered.
It costs $10 and includes pre and post class discussions and quizzes, along with access to the recording of the live webinar (in case you can’t make it on the day).
Do your students sometimes get confused about the past tense of feel? And do they sometimes say fall down when they mean fall?
Here’s a video to help them get it right.
As always, it’s available over at Simple English Videos dot com with a clickable transcript.
If so, perhaps our latest video on the verb ‘concentrate’ will help.
As always, you can find it with a clickable transcript at Simple English Videos Dot Com