Games to help students learn English.
My students are online all the time. Through the internet they are flooded with information, but whenever I ask them about any current affairs they know nothing. They have no idea who or what I am talking about. ADVERT: [showmyads] In my opinion, this “dementia” is caused by two factors. First, all the news on…
Many students struggle with reported speech. They feel that there are many rules they have to follow and they often get confused. In this post I try to simplify the rules about the reported speech (or indirect speech) as much as possible. There is mind map describing the basic rules, a video and two games…
In my last post I try to teach 11 common similes in English. However, as some students still feel that they need more practise, I have decided to produce this post too. This post contains a visually appealing demonstration of all the 11 similes, a short film to learn the phrases and a dictation exercise….
A year ago George Woolard published a book called Messaging. There he suggests that learners of a foreign language should learn the whole phrases and sentences. By learning the whole chunks the students will later be able to produce the language quicker and more precisely. ADVERT [showmyads] I think that I can agree with this…
Many verbs in English are often followed by the same preposition. Therefore it is best to learn them togehter from the beginning. However, even if you do this it is neccessary to sum it up from time to time. ADVERT [showmyads] The following summary was created for my elementary students of English and it contains…
Recently I have published a post on giving advice. And our post on modal verbs won the British Council blog award. This post will deal with three ways to express the modal verb SHOULD. The different means are HAD BETTER and OUGHT TO. Both of these have the same meaning as SHOULD. This grammar point…
First conditional is very similar to time clauses. However, I would say that first conditional is easier than time clauses. First conditional is used if we speak about two possibilities in the future. After the conjunction IF we use present simple tense and in the other clause we use WILL. You can see the explanation…
Have you ever tried to memorise the following list of verbs to know when you should use TO and when the ending ING? ADVERT: [showmyads] Honestly, I have never been able to commit the list to memory. And even when I thought that I know the verbs I was not really sure which form follows…
Phrasal verbs make many students feel hopeless. Even advanced students struggle with them and to be honest, I am not very comfortable with them either. Moreover, they seem very hard to memorise. That is why I have prepared the following post. There is a story where all the verbs are used. Thus you can see…
For and since are often given as the key words which signal that present perfect tense should be used. It is not 100% true but it makes life easier for elementary and lower intermediate students. However, sometimes it is difficult for learners to know which word they should use. The rule is simple. FOR is…
There are many ways to speak about future in English. We have already dealt with two ways here. In the first blog we tried to distinguish between Will and MAY and Might on the basis of certainty that an event will happen. ADVERT: [showmyads] In this post I would like to demonstrate the difference between…
I remember struggling with this grammar when I was at secondary school. As it is possible to translate the words IF and WITH with the same word in my mother tongue I couldn’t see the difference in English. ADVERT: [showmyads] To help my students avoid this problem I have created the following mind map and…
Recently I have been dealing with the modal verbs. First I created a mind map depicting all the modals in present and past tenses. That post was suitable for intemediate students. Then I wrote a post about the modal verbs Must and Should which was for elementary students. In this post I would like to…
There have been many different attempts to explain the difference between the past simple and present perfect tenses to learners of English. I have tried to do this for example in my posts on present perfect basics, Present perfect tense vs Past simple or present perfect infographics. In the textbook New Inside Out pre-intermediate they…
This is one of the easiest grammar points for the Czech students because in their mother tongue there exists a structure which is similar to infinitive of purpose. Because of this, I am not going to spend too much time and energy on this grammar point. Advert: [showmyads] There is just a mind map explaining…
The environment is one of the most frequently discussed topics in the world. However, to be able to speak about this topic you need some basic vocabulary. In this post I try to introduce some words related to the topic of Environment. Later you can practise the new words in games. ADVERT: [showmyads] In this…
In this post I would like to introduce about 20 new words connected with towns. These words are neccessary if you want to speak about the place where you live or stay. The vocabulary is for elementary and pre-intermediate students and it covers different basic features which can be found in towns and cities. ADVERT:…
This post deals only with the basic usage of the modal verbs SHOULD and MUST. I have recently written a post on Modal verbs. This post was aimed at intermediate students and it demonstrated the usage and meaning of all the modal verbs in present and past tenses. You can find here a graphical presentation…
Finally, Easter is here. I have been looking for this holiday for weeks and it has arrived. I am really happy. Last year I and Lynne Blackburn devoted a lot of time to our project called ELM (English Learning Magazine.) We created a full 14 page long magazine about Easter. The magazine contains two articles…
Students usually understand the usage of the modals in present tense very quickly. However, when they start speaking about the past, they use the present tense or some non-existent forms, like “musted”. Here I’ve tried to create a simple overview of all the modal verbs and their usage in present and past tenses. I hope…