Languagelab.com Blog

If you are wondering about the difference between fourteen hundred hours (14.00) and 2pm, then this is for you.

There are twenty four hours in a day.  In the world clock, http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/, you’ll see that times are written this way, from zero hundred hours (00.00) to twenty-three hundred hours (23.00).

There are other ways to talk about and write about the time.  The more commonly used format is am and pm.  Am refers to the time between midnight (00.00) and noon, or technically until 11.59.  Noon (12pm) to 11.59 pm is the afternoon.  Am and pm are abbreviations for Latin (ante-meridian and post-meridian).

Of course, it doesn’t end there.  What is the difference between two thirty and half-past two?  The answer is nothing.  They are both 2.30.  You also have two fifteen and quarter past two (2.15) and quarter-to-three or two forty-five (2.45).

You’ll find http://www.teachingtime.co.uk/ very useful because it explains the differences in more detail and gives you some practice.

Until next time …
- Grammar Girl.

We’re back to the subject of commonly-confused words and this week we’ve got three or possibly even four.

Poor is an adjective, normally meaning that the person described has little money. But it has a second meaning as well which is that something is not very good.  “This is a poor effort, Kingsbury!”

A pore, on the other hand, is a tiny opening, normally on skin. It’s pores that give you acne! It can also be used as a verb, meaning you’re studying something closely.  “David pored over his books when he was preparing for his exam.”

Finally, pour means to make flow, normally a liquid.  “Please would you pour the milk?” asked Jessie.

Don’t forget that the hands and feet of animals are often called paws!  If you are from London or the South-East of England, ‘paw’ might sound like ‘pore.’

If you are worried about which word is being used, listen to the rest of the sentence or the context.

See you soon !

Grammar Girl

It’s summer here in London.  When the sun shines it shines brightly.  Oxford street is heaving with tourists, which means it’s rising up, as if pushed.  There are tourists from almost everywhere in the world here.  London is particularly popular with Japanese and Korean tourists.  A lot of single, young students come to London to shop, to have fun and to study English.  They come to the UK for the summer because they believe in a concept called ‘language immersion.’

In language immersion, you don’t follow a traditional language course to learn.  You do every-day activities in the target language.  You live, breathe and eat in that language.  In other words, you go to where it is spoken.  This is why students come to the UK.

What do you do if you can’t afford to take time off work or your studies, or if your Daddy can’t send you to Oxford Street?  The answer is that you download Second Life software for free, and you visit English cities in Seccond Life.  It’s so much cheaper.  And you can speak to real people in English.  Go to Languagelab and ask for Grammar Girl.  I’m there at least three days’ a week at 4am PDT.

I was working away on my island in Second Life and doing my best to make it easy for visitors to find their way round without getting lost. To do this I went to every location and ‘installed’ teleporter pads. If you are from my generation you’ll remember the old Star Trek episodes on the television, where Captain Kirk said ‘Beam me up, Scottie.’ Those beams looked and sounded like my teleporter.

So I ‘installed’ teleporter ‘pads,’ which means I placed objects round the island. These objects would ’send’ people from one object to another, without the person having to move on their own. All they would have to do would be to ‘right-click’ on the object and select ‘teleport. Thus, ‘teleport’ is a verb and ‘teleporter’ is a noun.

Once you have chosen a location (or as we might say ’selected a location from the menu’ or selected a location from the ‘list’) you click on the word that says ‘energise.’ This squeezes you into a little ball and sends you to another location.

These space age words have become common vocabulary in virtual words. Here they are again:
install
teleporter
pad
teleport
menu
energise.

If you haven’t been to Second Life before, you might want to visit this virtual world so that you can experience what these words mean. You can to do that by going to http://www.secondlife.com. But Captain Kirk would probably say that he’s been using these words for years.

Hi Languagelab students,

My friend sent me a funny clip yesterday…. Take a look:

I thought that Mary Poppins was kind and friendly? Hmmm….

What adjectives could you use to describe this clip?
Do you remember anything about the original Mary Poppins film?

See you soon and don’t be scared !

Jessie Teacher

The past simple describes a complete event that took place in the past. If a verb is irregular, the past simple is a different word with different spelling. Some examples of this include run (run becomes ran) and get (get becomes got).  If a verb ends in ‘ed’ in the past simple then it is a regular verb.

Sometimes it may be a little difficult to pronounce regular, past simple verbs, which is quite understandable when you realise that there are three ways of pronouncing the ‘ed.’  You can pronounce it with ‘t,’ ‘d’ or ‘id.’

Here is a rule to help you along the way:

The only time you add a syllable is when the base form of the verb ends with a -t or -d:
start à started [star tid]     fold à folded [fol did]

The final sound is changed to t      Final sound is changed to d
when the last sound of verb is:     when the last sound of verb is:
k, ck, ch, sh, s, x, p, f              m, n, l, z, b, g, r, v
talk à talked [talkt]                     blame à blamed [blamd]
check à checked [chekt]               plan à planned [pland]
search à searched [searcht]                 pull à pulled [puld]

Next week, we’ll be making our way back to vocabulary.

Nouns and Verbs ending in /s/

Observing the spelling of a word might help you improve your pronunciation of the word.  For example, the endings -s and -es are pronounced as /s/– /z/, or as an extra syllable /iz/  at the end of third person singular verbs and plural nouns. The pronunciation depends on the final sound of the simple form of the verb or noun.

Here are some examples of verbs and their pronunciation:

slice   —-  slices (c = /s/)

lose    —-  loses (s = /z/)

wash    —-  washes

watch   —-  watches

judge   —-  judges

relax   —-  relaxes (x = /ks/ )

Here are some nouns:

price    —- prices (c= /s/)

size     —- sizes

dish     —- dishes

garage   —- garages (ge = /zh/

inch     —- inches

language —- languages.

Next week we’ll look at a rule for the pronunciation of ‘ed.’

Last week’s conversation class about the novel Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen was quite successful. We met at the Egdgware arms pub in Second Life and spent about an hour discussing the first chapter. We mostly spoke about social changes, particularly the role of women in society in the past 200 years. The discussion was based around the opening quote of the novel.

Conversational English at the Edgware Arms

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

We talked about what the statement might have meant to the characters in the novel, to the narrator, to Jane Austen and to people living in the 21st Century in general. At times the debate got quite heated and I was pleased to find that the students who attended had strong opinions and really wanted to express them.

I’m not sure how we will manage to read the entire book, especially seeing that at the rate of a chapter a week it will take about three years! But people were really keen to continue the discussion this week, so we will keep going with this book until we tire of it.

This week we will talk about chapter two of the novel. Read chapter two here.

When? On Sunday the 3rd of May at 11 pm PST – Convert this time and date to your timezone here

Where? The Edgware arms pub. Click here to see the schedule and location

This class can be attended from anywhere in the world. All you need is a good internet connection and headphones with a microphone. If you would like to join us then be sure to do the following things:

1) Join languagelab.com

2) Read this post to find out how you can read Pride and Prejudice for free online

Shakespeare once wrote,

“What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;”

What does this mean? He is trying to say even if a rose was called a daisy or a sunflower it would srill smell beautiful.

So what about ’swine flu’ ? There was a story today in the news talking about some people wanting to change the name of the disease to ‘Mexcian Flu’ or its medical name of H1N1 flu.  Do you think that names and labels are important? What do you think it should be called? Have you been affected by this illness?

Read more about the swine flu here.

Last week I promised to follow up on the discussion of ‘at’ and ‘in’ with some interesting expressions that you may find them in.  By learning the whole expression you’ll also learn the grammar girls. As I’ve mentioned before, you can use vocabulary to learn about grammar and grammar to learn about vocabulary.  Intermediate and Upper-Intermediate students shouldn’t really be separating the two.  They should be escaping grammar rules and I should really be Grammar/Vocabulary Girl.

Here is an expression that use ‘at:’

If things are AT SEA, or ALL AT SEA, they are disorganized and chaotic.  So, if you don’t organise your understanding of grammar into rules you might find yourself all at sea.

Here is an expression with ‘in:’

If something vanishes or disappears without trace, IT VANISHES INTO THIN AIR; no-one knows where it has gone.  So Grammar Girl’s glasses have finished into thin air. You won’t see them in her picture any more.

I’ll finish this week with the answer to the question in the subject line, which is that Grammar Girl lives in the English City and not ‘at.

See you soon !