Languagelab.com Blog

Hi Students,

I have been looking on the web this week for stories about music and world news. I am sure you have all heard about the earthquake in Haiti and how many people are still missing. Here is a positive story showing how social media can help people.

Read the article and answer the questions:

Former Fugees rapper Wyclef Jean’s charity text appeal for victims of the Haiti quake has reached a staggering $1m in just a matter of days.

Wyclef jean was one of a number of celebrities who took to social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook urging fans to pledge their support to the crisis. And it certainly seems to have worked.

The rapper, singer and producer had encouraged followers on Twitter to donate £5 (£3) text messages to the Yele for Haiti charity, with over 200,000 followers donating to the cause.

According to ABC news, fundraising experts claim the response has been truly staggering and breaks all previous records so soon following a disaster. A total of $1 million was raised by all charities through text donations in 2008.

“This is a watershed moment. It’s historic,” said Albe Angel, founder and CEO of Give On the Go, whose company is helping Jean raise funds for his Yele Haiti Foundation, said. “This has been remarkable in every way.”

On Tuesday the poverty-stricken Caribbean island was hit hard by a massive tremor measuring 7 on the Richter Scale that struck just south of capital city Port-au-Prince.

Wyclef Jean isn’t the only celebrity who moved quickly to help ease the crisis. Hollywood super couple Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have donated £1m from their foundation to Doctors Without Borders to help the organization’s emergency medical operation in Haiti.

Other stars lending their name to the relief effort including Oprah Winfrey, Paris Hilton, Ben Stiller, Lindsay Lohan, Coldplay singer Chris Martin and hip hop star P Diddy.

Questions:
1. How much were the text messages?
2. How much money did they raise?
3. What band was Wycleff Jean from?
4. What is the charity called?
5. What social networking sites did Wycleff use to promote the charity?

If you would like to join a discussion about this topic come and talk to Lane the English City journalist.

New music in China – News story from the BBC.

We don’t just use our voices to talk, you can sing, shout or even make music using your voice! Watch the video and answer the questions afterwards.

Questions:
1. What instrument does Lian Bo use?
2. How old is he?
3. How did he learn to beat box?
4. What city is he from?
5. Is beat boxing popular in China?
6. What songs does he name?
7. What is the reaction from the audience?
8. How many beat boxers are there in China?

If you want to try singing in English visit Griffin’s class at English City every Thursday and Friday.

EFL stands for ‘English as a Foreign Language’ and it refers to how you learn and are taught English when it is not your mother tongue.

If you want to learn English and don’t know where to start, you can order a book by going to http://www.eflbooks.co.uk/.  Most of these books have been designed for teachers.  They give guidance to teachers and give them material with which they can teach you.

This is not always helpful for a student. If you are a student, then you should look for a book with a CD-ROM for listening practice, an answer key and a work book for extra practice.  Visit this site, where the books have been categorised, depending on what you want them for, whether it is for exam practice or for improving your vocabulary.

My favourite, all round book is ‘Cutting Edge’ but if you are a student who wants to improve your grammar then go to ‘Inside Out.’

If you are not sure what level to choose then always go for ‘pre-intermediate’ because that usually covers important, easy-to-understand areas.

Happy reading and to practice what you have learned in these coursebooks come and visit Languagelab.

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.

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 !

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

A wise woman once said that both ‘who’ and ‘whom’ mean the same thing.  When you choose one over the other, all you are doing is changing the word order and the formality or informality of the sentence.

Personally, I find ‘whom’ very nineteenth century and would like to throw it in the bin BUT if you are writing for an international examination (like IELTS), writing a thesis or an academic article, you might want to vary your sentence structures with a little bit of ‘whom.’

Here is the answer and an example of each one.

Use the he/him method to decide which word is correct.

he = who
him = whom

Examples:     Who/Whom wrote the letter?

He wrote the letter. Therefore, who is correct.

For who/whom should I vote?
Should I vote for him? Therefore, whom is correct.

We all know who/whom pulled that prank.
This sentence contains two clauses: We all know and who/whom pulled that prank. We are interested in the second clause because it contains the who/whom. He pulled that prank. Therefore, who is correct. (Are you starting to sound like a hooting owl yet?)

We want to know on who/whom the prank was pulled.
This sentence contains two clauses: We want to know and the prank was pulled on who/whom. Again, we are interested in the second clause because it contains the who/whom. The prank was pulled on him. Therefore, whom is correct.

And there you have it.  There is more to ‘who’ or ‘whom’ than that of course, but this little method should send you in the right direction.

Bye for now,

Grammar Girl

Want to come and visit English City ?

Never learned English in a virtual world ?

If you want to visit English City for one day and meet our ‘English City People’, students and teachers why not get a Day Pass – for the special reduced price of $2,500 Lindens which is less than $10 US dollars you can try all the classes and activities for 24 hours and also get help from our team on how to use your voice and move around in English City.

So to visit us:

1. Register

2. Visit our welcome area

3. Join the group Languagelab Day Pass

Start learning now !

Jessie Teacher

Last month I wrote about the spelling of words with long and short vowels.

I think that the best way to improve your spelling is to read, observe the spelling of new or difficult words, copy them down and learn them.  Keep doing a ’spell-check,’ which my recommendation for the week should help you with.
Check out this site - Fun brain

Rules can be very difficult to follow unless you have got the concept itself in your head.  So today, I’m going to keep it short and sweet.

I want you to think about how reading and observing the spelling of a word can help you with grammar.

I’m going to give you 8 words.  Look at the letters at the END of each word to tell me whether it is a noun, a verb, an adjective or an adverb.

The first one has been done for you:
1.    advertise – VERB
2.    musical
3.    dangerous
4.    nursery
5.    already
6.    recommendation
7.    recommend
8.    audible

Do look them up in a dictionary to find out what they are and/or what they mean.  The answers are below.

Now, when you see words ending in ‘ise,’ ‘al,’ ‘ous, ‘ery,’ ‘y,’ ‘ion,’ ‘end’ or ‘ible’ you’ll know what they are.

Answers:
1.verb 2.adjective 3.adjective 4.noun 5.adverb 6.noun 7.verb 8.adjective

Here are the riddles and answers from my Tweets !

1. I am lighter than a feather, yet no man can hold me for very long. What am I?
2. Three guys run into a bar, the fourth man ducks. Why does he duck?
3. All of the animals go to a meeting for the Lion King. One animal doesnt show up. Which animal doesn’t come?
4. You come to a river that aligators live in. There is no boat, raft, bridge, nor material to make them. How do you get accross?
5. A fifteen foot rope is tied to a horse. The horse is 25 feet from a stack of hay. How can the horse get to the hay?
6. From what number can you take half and leave nothing?
7. How can you drop an egg 3 feet without breaking it?
8. How can you make a fire with only one stick?
9. How can you tell the difference between a can of chicken soup and a can of tomato soup?
10. Can giraffes have babies?
11. What has four wheels and flies?
12. Feed me and I live, give me something to drink and I’ll die. What am I?
13. What has eyes but cannot see?
14. When is a door not a door?

Answers:

1. Breath
2. He didn’t want to hit the bar
3. The elephant, he’s in the refrigerator
4. Jump in, swim accross, get out. The aligators are at the meeting
5. The rope isn’t tied to anything but the horse
6. 8. Take the top half away and the “o” is left
7. Drop it 4 feet, the first 3 feet the egg won’t hit anything
8. Make sure it’s a matchstick
9. Read the label
10. No, they have giraffes
11. A dumpster
12. Fire
13. A needle, a potatoe, a storm, or true lovers
14. When it’s ajar

Hello Languagelabbers !

Here are some of the Twitter answers from the other day – if you want to keep up to date with little tips and tricks follow me on Twitter – Languagelab.

Answers to the Twitter questions about the video:

1) What does to poke and prod mean? Poking is an action of tapping and/or softly jabbing another person with the tip of one’s finger or a sharp object. This is usually done to gain the other’s attention and to prod is like to nudge or to push against gently.

2)What are gadgets? A gadget is a small technological object (such as a device or an appliance) that has a particular function.

3)How many square feet is the exhibition? 1.7 million

4) How many football pitches is it ? 38

5) What is the little teddy bear called? Tune Animal

6)How many surfers walked past? 4

7)What is the tradition at CES? To have the biggest TV

8) How many people are there? 100,000

10)What does the verb ‘traipse’ mean ? To walk or tramp about usually without much purpose.

And the other videos answers are:

Questions are:
1)How do you move the ball? With your thetawave output – in other words your mind.

2)What is the game called? Mindflex

3) What is a zen master? Is someone who teaches Zen Buddhism to others

4) Which company realeased the game? Mattel