I had to learn some new words when I went shopping for clothes in the US. Asking for a jumper, I’d be directed to pinafores and requesting a UK turtle neck would deliver polo necks. I couldn’t cover all the differences in this short video (it’s only 90 seconds) but it contains a list of some of the different words we have for clothing in British and American English.
What words do your students find hard to pronounce in English? In this video we look at 10 words that English learners find tricky and look at how we say them in British and American English.
Let me know what other words your students find hard. Perhaps we can make another video about them.
This video tells a story that I’ve found really useful over the years because it illustrates some key ways our memories work. It’s great when you’re looking at ways to learn vocabulary and my students have always enjoyed it and found it helpful. Hopefully yours will too!
We’ve had several requests for a video on how to use these verbs. I’m not surprised. They are tricky. There’s a lot to cover so we’ve broken it in two parts. Here’s part one:
And here’s part two:
This video takes you through how we use these verbs to ask for permission and how to respond, with lots of examples and a few gags along the way.
Are you ready for some grammar? I hope so! One of the reasons students have difficulty with ‘grow’ and ‘grow up’ is to do with whether they’re transitive or intransitive.
If you’re like me, you’ll want to keep grammar explanations simple, and I’ll often try to avoid the metalanguage of subjects and objects by talking about whether we (verb) or we (verb) something. I found doing that with these two verbs was too much of a challenge sometimes, but hopefully it’s still clear.
Here are links to some other commonly confused verbs where transitive and intransitive is an issue.
Raise and Rise
Lie and Lay
This week’s video is about how we pronounce ‘can’ and ‘can’t’ in British and American English and it explains one of the (many) reasons why I find it hard to understand Jay.
Here’s a video that’s packed with ideas for learning English – 26 to be precise – and they cost nothing so if your students have no money, they can still try them out! To download links to the free materials click here.
To sign up for our Simple English Videos mailing list and get a link to a free download of Fix It, at the same time, click here.
Sometimes teachers or students ask us a question and I think, ‘Oh we can answer that quickly’. But then when I start, I realise there’s a lot to explain. The phrase ‘of course’ is one of those!
This time the question came from Saraswathi in India and they said:
Hi Vicki and Jay. You have produced good videos. So far, I have not understood when we use “of course”. Could you produce a video about ‘of course’.
Thank you so much for asking us this Saraswathi. It was a great question!
The thing is, ‘of course’ is not always polite. I expect other teachers have experienced this too. We’ve asked a question and our student has answered ‘Yes, of course’, but it wasn’t quite right. In fact sometimes it was down right rude! Here is our video about why that can happen.
These verbs have very similar meanings so you might not REALIZE their meanings are different! Or perhaps you’ve NOTICED? Watch our latest video to FIND OUT more!