Documentaries in English

The weather in the UK has been extraordinarily good. The reason for this is that the Wimbledon tennis tournament in London is underway and they have spent millions on a roof over the main court. Of course, usually it pours down with rain and nobody can play but now that they have the roof – yes, you’ve guessed it – the weather is perfect and they don’t need it!

I know that many students will be arriving in the UK over the next few weeks for summer courses and pre-sessional courses. I’ll say a bit more about how to manage a summer course over the next couple of posts but today I want to point out a particularly interesting site with lots of readings and documentary videos in English. This site is great for practising your English skills: there is a good variety of topics, the videos are not too long and the readings are accessible. If you are trying to find research material on popular contemporary topics you will find this site useful.There are also suggestions for how these materials can be used by teachers. The Frontline site is here and I’d like to remind you about Damian Rivers’ English Language Resource Website where I got the link from!

Don’t forget to visit the new discussion boards to say hello, chat, browse and join the GM food debate!

Vocabulary learning

A few readers have been asking about vocabulary learning. Expanding your vocabulary is essential to improving your English! But what words should you learn? You cannot just study the dictionary! The only way to learn new words is to get engaged in talking about some topics in English. What I mean by this is finding an interesting topic and reading, listening, talking and writing about that topic. You need to get a vocabulary notebook to note down the new words you see. Write a definition and an example sentence using the new word in your notebook. Carry your notebook around with you so that you can look at it whenever you have a chance (when you are waiting for the bus!) and so you will see those new words again and again and they will start to become part of your active vocabulary. You need to take the long view – don’t try to learn too many new words at a time. Five new words a day is plenty. Five new words a day over a year is a lot of words!

So my advice today is to take a look at the ISSUES forum and join the GM food debate! ISSUES is a new forum which I have started for English language practise. The first ISSUE is GM food. I just can’t decide whether I should welcome or oppose scientists changing the DNA of our food. That’s why I would like to know more about this issue. Why don’t you join me in finding out about this topic and practise your English too? The forum with some reading and a news report on GM food is here.

Improving your vocabulary

Did you know that English now has a million words? A million! You’re probably thinking – well I am anyway – how on earth anyone has managed to count them all! A company in the USA which analyses words on the internet claims that a new word is created every 98 minutes and that means we are coming up to our millionth word. I think that company must be congratulating itself on a very good publicity campaign because I have heard this story in lots of places (even though it’s nonsense!).

However, it does a good job of reminding us how important it is to learn more and more vocabulary when we want to improve our language proficiency. One good way of doing this is to read regularly, and to read English which uses appropriate new words. Good resources may even have appropriate new vocabulary already highlighted and picked out for you with definitions provided. Today’s link is to a very good resource which I would definitely recommend you to make regular use of. It’s the “Words in the News” part of the BBC Learning English site. You’ll see a news article with an audio report, and key vocabulary highlighted and explained below. The article in this section is, of course, about the millionth word in English! Check out the resource here.

Yasmina won! And Sir Alan doesn’t use subject – verb agreement

If you live in the UK you have probably heard about – and maybe have even been following – the TV programme ‘The Apprentice’ over the past few months. Well, of course I said right from the start that Yasmina would win (if it wasn’t Kate, or Lorraine or Howard that is). At least it wasn’t Debrah, Philip or Ben though! Phew.

I have been thinking about the English third person ’s’ – that is the ’s’ on the end of the verb as in:
Yasmina runs a restaurant
Debra uses a lot of bad language.
and I’ve been thinking about this because Sarah wrote to me the other day asking why I didn’t put an ’s’ on the end of the word ‘like’ when I said:
“the younger half of the population like drinking and the older half like decorating”.
You can see Sarah’s comment and my answer here.

Now I’m paying attention I realise how many people don’t use it, even famous people on the TV! Watch and listen to Sir Alan at the start of ‘The Apprentice’:

If you didn’t catch it, this is what he said:
This is a job interview from hell. First prize – you get to work for me. Second prize – don’t exist!

Don’t exist?? Doesn’t Sir Alan know that is should be: Second prize – doesn’t exist!
What is the world coming to?

Here’s an exercise on the third person ’s’ from The Grammar Aquarium here.