This Week's Lessons

Guess which words fit in the blanks to complete each key sentence. Answers are at the bottom!

1. Do you know a phrase that means "something like that"?
“I was thinking a shark or something ___ those ___.”

2. What do you say when you accidentally make a pun (a joke using two words that sound alike but have different meanings)?
“I'm on a roll! No pun ___.”

3. This word means to talk about a topic that needs to be discussed:
“Have you guys ___ exponents yet?”

4. This is a way of saying that there's too much information:

The 5 levels of incorrect English

What does it mean to say that something is "wrong" in English? Sometimes readers ask me things like "Is this sentence correct?" and I have trouble answering directly. That's because there are actually several different meanings of the words "correct" or "incorrect", "right" or "wrong".
Here are some of the different categories of "incorrect" English that I've found:

Level 1: Unintelligible English

Something that people just can't understand is "unintelligible".
Here's an example of unintelligible English:

This Week's Lessons

Guess which words fit in the blanks to complete each key sentence. Answers are at the bottom!

1. Say this when someone is upset and you want them to calm down:
“___, ___. No need to get all melodramatic.”

2. A person who gets annoyed and complains a lot is called...
“Gosh, I feel like I'm turning into a ___ old man.”

3. What do you call someone who's really helpful and does a good job?
“She's a tremendous ___ to the team, and we're lucky to have her.”

Subject: The Hotel Bill

A married couple is traveling by car from Victoria to Prince George . Being Seniors, after almost eleven hours on the road, they were too tired to continue, and decided to take a room at a hotel. But, they only planned to sleep for four hours and then get back on the road.
When they checked out four hours later, the desk clerk handed them a bill for $350.00.

Americans pronounce these two words the same way, making the short "e" vowel sound. "Ben", of course in the nickname for Benjamin, while "been" is the past participle of the irregular verb "to be." The American "been" has the same sound as the words: bet, let, get and sweat and, of course, the nickname Ben. The British "been" rhymes with: seen, teen, queen and bean.

Many Russian students get confused over the sound of the short "i" vowel sound and the long "e" vowel sound. Words like - it, bit. kit and difficult sound like - eet, beet, keet and deef-fee-kult.

Как-то слышал, что в Томск приезжали с Америки миссионеры для проведения проповедей на английском языке. Была реклама, что каждый желающий улучшить свои знания языка, может прийти и послушать пастора. Действительно отличный способ.

1) Читать английские книги вслух.
2) В Интернете есть программы, которые помогают проверять произношение(почти как караоке).
3) Можно тренировать напротив зеркала движения губ, языка и челюсти- чтобы достичь правильного произношения.

Различия между Американским английским и Британским.

Правописание - это очень трудоемкая и глупая работа, но в конечном итоге у нас у всех есть слова, которые мы не можем правильно написать по той или иной причине.

Аудирование - это одно из самых трудных навыков при изучении языка. Когда Вы слушаете, Вы полагаетесь на качество и чистоту произношения говорящего. Здесь несколько советов помочь Вам развить это умение.