This web site not only shows you, through colorful, interactive cartoons, the way tenses are used in English, it also gives step-by-step rules of how to form the structure and when to use it, as well as common phrases used with the tense. For those of you have difficulty understanding the English tenses, this is a must have.

Source www.englishtenseswithcartoons.com

What is LibraryThing?

LibraryThing is a site for book lovers.

LibraryThing helps you create a library-quality catalogue of your books. You can do all of them or just what you’re reading now.

And because everyone catalogues online, they also catalogue together. LibraryThing connects people based on the books they share.

Source www.librarything.com

English Pronounciation

Author unknown

Multi-national personnel at North Atlantic Treaty Organization headquarters near Paris found English to be an easy language … until they tried to pronounce it. To help them discard an array of accents, the verses below were devised. After trying them, a Frenchman said he’d prefer six months at hard labor to reading six lines aloud. Try them yourself.

Small Talk

In most English-speaking countries, it is normal and necessary to make “small talk” in certain situations. Small talk is a casual form of conversation that “breaks the ice” or fills an awkward silence between people. Even though you may feel shy using your second language, it is sometimes considered rude to say nothing. Just as there are certain times when small talk is appropriate, there are also certain topics that people often discuss during these moments.

Small Talk: Conversation Starters

Source www.englishclub.com

Verb

to chat (third-person singular simple present chats, present participle chatting, simple past and past participle chatted)

1. To be engaged in informal conversation.
2. To talk more than a few words.
3. To converse on a talk show.
4. To exchange text or voice messages in real time through a computer network, as if having a face-to-face conversation.

Source www.wiktionary.org

Do you have little time or are you working from home and need the flexibility of being able to study English with a native English teacher on your schedule from the comfort of your home or office? Then consider learning English online. I offer customized lessons that work with your level of skill and comfort and allow you to work at your own pace. Levels intermediate and above are welcome. For information and a schedule that works to suit you contact infotheenglishteacher@gmail.com

‘TYPICALLY BRITISH’ TRAITS, THE TOP 50

1. Talking about the weather

2. Great at queueing

3. Sarcasm

4. Watching soaps

5. Getting drunk

6. A love of bargains

7. A love of curtain twitching

8. Stiff upper lip

9. Love of all television

10. Moaning

11. Obsession with class

12. Gossiping with neighbours over the garden fence

13. Obsession with the traffic

14. Enjoying other people’s misfortune

15. Inability to complain

16. Love of cheap foreign holidays

17. Working long hours

18. A soothing cup of tea to ease worries

19. Eating meat and two veg

20. Looking uncomfortable on the dance floor

21. Feeling uncomfortable when people talk about their emotions

22. Clever sense of humour

23. Obsession with property values

24. Pandering to political correctness

25. Road rage

26. Being unhappy with our weight

27. Wanting a good tan

28. Being proud of where we live

29. Not saying what we mean

30. The ability to laugh at ourselves

31. Washing the car on a Sunday

32. Taking the mickey out of others

33. Asking people about their journey

34. Inability not to comment on how other people bring up their children

35. Jealousy of wealth and success

36. Being overly polite

37. Texting instead of calling

38. An inability to express our emotions

39. Obsession with the Royal Family

40. Fondness for mowing the lawn

41. Love of rambling through the countryside

42. A love of all things deep fried

43. Emulating celebrity lifestyles

44. Leaving things to the last minute

45. Irony

46. Keeping our homes neat and tidy

47. Take decisions and accept the consequences

48. Achieving against all odds

49. Wanting our sportsmen / teams to fail

50. DIY on a Bank Holiday

Source www.telegraph.co.uk

A past edition of time magazine as seen above mentions the tool that has made a lot possible, this is the World Wide Web. As of today I will be offering you the chance to buy package lessons of 5, 10 or 30 (unlimited)  online English lessons. For any of you who don’t know how this works, it’s simple, a quick sign-up registration to www.myngle.com check out my profile here

Myngle is ….

….free for students and teachers to sign up and provides an online environment for live individual and group lessons for basically any language and level from any type of teacher. You can choose your own teacher or student depending on your specific needs, availability and price! If you are a student, you can try out a demo lesson with your selected teacher before you have to pay anything.

….whether you are a complete beginner or require advanced conversational practice, Myngle will have a solution for you. And you can take or give language lessons from the comfort of your home at the times when you desire. Whether one evening lesson one week and 3 morning lessons the following weeks, you decide! There will be no more need to find a native speaker near your home location and no more traveling time. No need for a physical classroom any more. Myngle also eliminates the need for face-to-face interaction between students and teachers.

Source www.myngle.com

etymology (n) an account of the origins and the developments in meaning of a word.
Concise Oxford Dictionary.

Once limited to blasphemy, ‘bad language’ has evolved over many thousands of years to represent both the lowest and the highest forms of human expression. Such words can cause the greatest offence if used casually and repeatedly, at an inappropriate time or place, or in the wrong company. Yet often, a well-timed swear-word can make people laugh. Among friends, almost any word might be considered acceptable, while even the mildest of curses might be distressing if heard coming from the mouth of a child. Even something as simple as the type of voice a person has can affect how the word is received. Should a British Royal swear it might be considered witty, while the exact same phrase coming from an East-end garage mechanic might be interpreted as crude and base. And words that might once have been commonplace are nowadays considered entirely unacceptable.

Two nations divided by a common language.
Oscar Wilde.

With swearing, context is everything. Words that are in common use in the UK are indecipherable to American ears, and vice versa. It takes more than just a simple ‘bloody’ (a corruption of ‘By your Lady’, a religious exclamation from the Middle Ages’) to swear like a Brit. Most British swear-words have a history longer than that of the United States itself, evolving out of even older European languages such as Norse, High German and Latin (hence British phrases like ‘a stream of Anglo-Saxon’ or, most commonly, ‘pardon my French’). For instance, the word ‘ass’ in American-English, meaning buttocks or anus, evolved from the British word ‘arse’. Before WW1, people in southern English would pronounce the word ‘ass’, meaning donkey, with a long ‘a’, making it indistinguishable from ‘arse’ in spoken English. Considered only moderately vulgar in the UK, it can be put to a number of different, often contradictory uses… The phrase ‘can’t be arsed’ signifies apathy or a lack of enthusiasm, yet to ‘get your arse in gear’ means to become organised or to ‘hurry up. ‘Arse over tit’/'tip’, ‘arse over apex’, ‘arse up’ or ‘arse about’ are all phrases which describe a spectacular prattfall or clumsy action. The word ‘prattfall’, incidentally, also means ‘arse over tit’; ‘pratt’ being an old word for ‘arse’ that has come to lose its meaning over the years. The word ‘pratt’ is still, however, used to this day to mean a fool. A ‘Smart arse’ (signifying someone who is too clever for their own good) can be used either affectionately or to cause offence, while ‘Silly arse’ merely means a fool. To ‘arse about’ can also mean to play the fool. A ’short-arse’, however, is someone with short legs.

A less-offensive term for ‘posterior’ in the UK is ‘bum’, which in America might referred to as ‘butt’. It made its first appearance in around the 14th Century, and was put to good use by Shakespeare: In Measure for Measure, Escalus asks Pompey what his second name is. ‘Bum, Sir’ replies Pompey. To which Escalus replies ‘Troth, and your bum is the greatest thing about you; so that in the beastliest sense you are Pompey the Great.’ (They don’t tell ‘em like that any more - thank goodness). However, in America the word as a noun has come to means tramp or hobo, while as a verb to mean ’scrounge’ or borrow’.

Just for fun, one of my classic favourites Two Ronnies Swear Box

Source www.bbc.co.uk

English grammar is a body of rules (grammar) specifying how phrases and sentences are constructed in the English language. Accounts of English grammar tend to fall into two groups: the descriptivist, which describes the grammatical system of English; and the prescriptivist, which does not describe English grammar but rather sets out a small list of social regulations that attempt to govern the linguistic behaviour of native speakers.  Prescriptive grammar concerns itself with several open disputes in English grammar, often representing changes in usage over time.

Punctuation is everything in written language other than the actual letters or numbers, including punctuation marks. Punctuation marks are symbols that correspond to neither phonemes (sounds) of a language nor to lexemes (words and phrases), but which serve to indicate the structure and organization of writing, as well as intonation and pauses to be observed when reading it aloud. In English, punctuation is vital to disambiguate the meaning of sentences. For example, “woman, without her man, is nothing,” and “woman: without her, man is nothing,” have greatly different meanings, as do “eats shoots and leaves” and “eats, shoots and leaves.”

The rules of punctuation vary with language, location, register and time, and are constantly evolving. Certain aspects of punctuation are stylistic and are thus the author’s (or editor’s) choice. Tachygraphic language forms, such as those used in online chat and text messages, may have wildly different rules.

Source www.loregate.com www.wikipedia.com