Languagelab.com Blog

What is this:?  I am not asking you about the question mark.  I am asking you about the two dots that came before the question mark.

A colon is a type of PUNCTUATION.

Use a colon

We use it before a list, summary or quote.

1) Before a list.
I could only find three of the ingredients: sugar, flour and coconut.

2) Before a summary.
To summarise: we found the camp, set up our tent and then the bears attacked.

3) Before a quote.
As Jane Austen wrote: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”

We also use it to complete a statement of fact.  It adds a little variety to your writing and allows you to experiment: it is used in place of the following or thus. Here is an example:

There are only three kinds of people: the good, the bad and the ugly.

If you would like to continue to learn about the colon try reading newspapers, books or articles and observing if and when the colon is used.

Teachers of English use lots of strange words that may not always seem clear. The words are used as a ’short cut.’ They’re labels that educators define so that next time you hear the word you can understand the whole meaning behind it. I suspect that if you asked a teacher of English they might not always be able to explain ALL the words in a way that would make you understand them because the meaning is too technical or has been misunderstood.

Take the word TENSE, for instance. I still have nightmares about the time I first started teaching and said to my students ‘Today we’ll look at the present perfect tenses.’ I hadn’t realised that they would need more than an explanation of the ‘present perfect’ when a student said ‘Miss Miss. What does ‘tense’ mean?’ I knew what it meant and how to use it but I couldn’t explain it in a clear and simple manner for an elementary student. I said ‘Er … erm … when we look at the present perfect the meaning of the word ‘tense’ will become clearer.’

Today I’m giving myself a second chance to explain the NOUN ‘tense’ and here it is:

It is an expression of a location of an ACTION in TIME.

Does that help? Of course there is much more to it than that but as long as you remember that it is about the time or the ‘kind’ of time, you’ll be all right.

When you are choosing the right word to say or to write it is quite understandable for you to hesitate and wonder whether to use ‘talk’ or ’speak,’watch’ or ’see.’

This week I wanted to give you a very small set of useful words with definitions.  Please do reply to this blog with your own pairs of words or with questions about words.

Here are 3 sets of words:

Affect and Effect:

affect means ‘make a difference to’, whereas effect means ‘a result’ or ‘bring about (a result)’.

Desert  and Dessert:

Dessert is a waterless area and dessert is thethe sweet course!

Councillor and Counsellor:

a councillor is a member of a council, whereas a counsellor is someone who gives guidance on personal or psychological problems.

Commonly confused words can be learned with a little help from a teacher and a little work from you.  When you are not sure what they mean, do go to a dictionary and read their definitions.  Remember, building your word power is an important step in your development as a language learner.

After a well deserved holiday Salsita Almendros is back this week and will resume her popular TOEFL speaking practice classes. Join her on SL Sunday, Monday and Tuesday from 11am to 12 pm in the garden at the museum.

Languagelab currently holds the record in Second Life for raising the most money in 24 hours for charity – over $1,000 USD and in total $2,000 USD. This was last year for the China Earthquake Fund.  Some of our students and helpers wanted to help their fellow citizens and we had a great 24 party with singing, dancing and special guests. So this year we want to break our record for fund rasising and help even more people!

On Friday 13th we are having a fundraising event to raise money for the charity ‘Comic Relief‘. This is a charity whose aim is to help free the world from poverty.

This is a quote from their website:

“The money we raise is allocated to a wide range of grants and social investments aimed at delivering real and long-lasting change to the poorest, most vulnerable people at home and across the world; as well as informing the public and young people in particular about global citizenship and the underlying causes of extreme poverty”

Our theme is the circus so we will have fun, games and lots of music  – dress up as the ringmaster, a lion or put on your red nose and donate for a good cause!

For more information on how you can help visit our welcome area or email info@languagelab.

We need your help – if you are a DJ in SL or have some great costumes you want to share come along everyone is welcome all day on Friday 13th at our Welcome area.

See you there,

Jessie Teacher

Languagelab would like to extend a very warm welcome to students of Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) who are joining us at Languagelab.

The students are using English City as part of their study programme based in Second Life and will improve their English while exploring what it is like to study in a virtual world.

KAIST teacher Chris Surridge has made this possible and we would like to welcome them to our student community.

A vocabulary challenge – impress with your long, long words

We’ve all been in the situation, where someone wants to impress someone with the breadth of their knowledge.

I’m going to give you 10 horribly long words.  Can you match the word to its synonym?  The first one has been done for you. It is 1. e)

1.    munificent
2.    parsimonious
3.    lachrymose
4.    litigious
5.    pusillanimous

a)    poor-spirited
b)    penurious
c)    contentious
d)    tearful
e)    lavish

munificent – Very liberal in giving; generous.
Synonyms: lavish, overgenerous, prodigal, too-generous, unsparing, unstinted, unstinting
Usage: Munificent as life was to me, I added to that munificence.

parsimonious – Excessively unwilling to spend.
Synonyms: penurious
Usage: He was, I had discovered, parsimonious about small expenditures– a trait absolutely inconsistent with his general character.
L
achrymose – Weeping or inclined to weep; causing or tending to cause tears.
Synonyms: dolorous, weeping, tearful, sorrowful
Usage: He was by turns devout and obscene, merry and lachrymose.

litigious – Related to or tending to engage in lawsuits or disputes.
Synonyms: contentious, disputatious, argumentative
Usage: The aide had been so litigious that she was eventually fired for insubordination.

pusillanimous – Lacking courage; cowardly.
Synonyms: poor-spirited, unmanly
Usage: This counsel was indignantly derided by Grammar Girl as pusillanimous.

I have been guilty of using big words to impress my colleagues but  I also believe that it’s also all about knowledge. You must make yourself easy to understand.  Before you decide which path to choose, have a look at this great site.

Grammar Girl bids you adieu !

This morning I saw a great blog posting on Bettina Tizzy’s blog Not Possible in Real Life, it is a video of a man who uses holographic tools to build in a virtual world. The video was made by Bruce Branit.  Can you imagine if you could do that in Real Life?….

Watch the video and answer the questions afterwards:

World Builder from Bruce Branit on Vimeo.

1. Who is the man?

2. Who is the woman?

3. What do you think happened to the woman?

4. When do you think the film is supposed to be set?

5. How do you think the man feels?

6. Does this film remind you of any other short films?

7. What adjectives can you use to describe the film?

8. Did you like the film? Why or why not?

9. Have you seen any other films about virtual worlds?

10. Have you seen any good Second Life Machinima?

If you know any good links please post them for us to see!

Jessie Teacher

Singing is a great way to improve your English -it is easier to remember words from a song that you love than remembering a vocabulary list.

When we are relaxed it is easier to remember things and singing is also fun!

Don’t worry if you don’t understand the words, you can look for them on the internet and print out the lyrics and translate and follow them.

• Listen to music for the fun of it.
• Visualize what you hear – Try to make a picture in your head of what the singer is talking about.
• Practice the vocabulary in English city – use the new words you’ve learned.
• Improve your pronunciation and intonation through pronunciation practice. The rhythm of music provides a fun and easy way to memorize.
• Learn more about the culture of English-speaking countries.
• become familiar with structures by singing a song many times.
• Write a story for the English City News Blog based on the lyrics of a song.

Here is a very cute video of an X-Factor contestent singing in English – think you can do better ? Come into English City and show us!

Yes, I am back with more and more on grammar and how you can improve your English, as a whole, through pronunciation, spelling, reading, writing and speaking.

Most of the learners of English that I meet are adults.  They already know how to communicate in English very well.  Generally, I find their questions harder to answer because they are so specific.  One question that I am often asked is about choices of grammar in writing.

Yes, you can choose which type of grammar you want to use, depending on what or how you want to say something!!

The most common question I am asked is whether they should write their formal essays in the ACTIVE form or the PASSIVE form.  For example, should the sentence be:

Grammar Girl wrote an essay. (ACTIVE)

OR

The essay was written by Grammar Girl (PASSIVE)?

This is a difficult question to answer and all I can say is that it depends on what you want to say, the type of writing, how clear you want to be OR on how much information you have.

Except in scientific journals or police reports (and I am neither a scientist nor a police woman), I prefer the ACTIVE voice.  I would say that you should use active voice whenever possible. The active voice means the subject is performing the verb.  The ACTIVE voice is a bit more modern, clearer, more concise, more concrete.

In most non-scientific writing situations, the active voice is preferable to passive for the majority of your sentences. Even in scientific writing, the overuse of passive voice or use of passive voice in long and complicated sentences can cause readers to lose interest or to become confused. Sentences in active voice are generally–though not always– clearer and more direct than those in passive voice.  The passive voice is BORING (I think :-))

But let’s not neglect the passive voice completely.

In scientific writing the passive voice is more readily accepted since using it allows one to write without using personal pronouns or the names of particular researchers as the subjects of sentences. This practice helps to create the appearance of an objective, fact-based discourse because writers can present research and conclusions without attributing them to particular agents. Instead, the writing appears to convey information that is not limited or biased by individual perspectives or personal interests.

I won’t recommend any particular website to help you with the active or the passive this week because I believe the choice is yours.  Free your grammar.

Grammar Girl