Learning American English

Bab Mansour Gate in Meknès, Morocco Hi all.   Well, it happens:  the end of the semester, entrance exams, finals and their subsequent corrections, calculating grades, translations of academic research articles (I'm working on one parallel to this blog post...), and all after having gone through some pretty heavy personal changes this winter -- most for the best, thankfully -- all means that I needed to take some time off.   Hence , Morocco and for nearly 3 weeks*.   Vacation (US) or holidays (GB) are a crucial necessity and allow one to take a break from one's everyday and occasionally humdrum routine and think about other things:  sights, sounds, smells, all of the senses are called into play in beautiful Morocco. Medersa Bou Inania, Fez, Morocco The country remains challenging for the Westernly minded, and in fact if you go there one day, it's best just to drop all of your preconceived notions of how life "should be," and accept the fact that in

Some More Advanced Vocabulary My students each year take the TOEFL exams for several reasons:  mainly so that they can go abroad and study at one of my institution's partner universities -- as in any other higher learning institution -- but also as a measure of their skills and ability.  Some advanced students need to be pushed a little farther, so I have developed and continue to develop some more advanced vocabulary exercises for them, and I thought I would share one of them with you today.   Below, you will find a series of words and the review exercises to go along with them.  Take your time going through these exercises, as I did write them for a clearly upper intermediate to advanced (C1-C2) level.  If they are too difficult for you, leave them for a while until you make some progress, then come back to them.  Take as many notes as you want, and don't hesitate to consult one or another online dictionary or thesaurus for some help. The answers will be fort

Do you have this look of sheer terror on your face when you think about irregular verbs?   Oh come on, they're not that  bad, are they?  Chances are, you've been memorizing them in a list where you almost have to recite the three mutations (conjugations) to be able to use the second one or the third one.  This is an acceptable method if you are able to use the three without hesitating too much.  And if you have a lot of time to recite the three forms of the verb each time you need to use one. However, there are better ways.  Contextualization is the key, in my opinion.  Below is a first series of irregular verbs in different sentences, including sentences (answers) that you will need to construct.  Take the time to go through them and really do them, i.e. thinking about each answer.  Take as much time as you need before checking the answers which will be at the bottom of the page ... eventually.  Then, once you have finished the exercises, try using the verbs apart f

Brat So now I turn to one of my father's favorite words, which says a lot for my brothers, my sister and myself -- brat .  A brat is basically a bad child, and according to the Collins Dictionary etymologicial listings comes to us from the O.E. bratt , a poor child's piece of clothing, which in turn is from the Celtic brat  meaning a piece of cloth one wore just to cover the body. I shouldn't really mention that I'm referring to my students when I think of this word, but suddenly it just popped into my head.  A brat , and especially the stronger spoiled brat , is an obnoxious, misbehaving child who demands things -- notably attention -- and whose behavior is far from decorous.  Perfect examples of brats , including the spoiled variety, would be Justin Bieber*, Paris Hilton*, any of the Kardashians*, most professional soccer players* here in Europe, and of course One Direction*.  All you want to do is slap them across the face and send them packing or make them

Feeling a bit Irregular with your Verbs? Are you down?  Feeling irregular?   Out of sorts ?  Not yourself lately?  Try taking an irregular verb or two and having a rest... Enough of this advertisement-inspired silliness.  As you know, English is a Germanic language, and thus -- like all of the Germanic languages in fact -- it contains a relatively large number of irregular verbs .  (If it's any consolation German and Dutch do too.)  This means that, to speak the language properly, you have to learn all of the different parts: Infinitive -- for most of the verbs, the infinitive will either be the same or very similar to the verb in all of its present simple forms, except for the mandatory "-s/-es" for the third person singular. Past-tense conjugation -- for all of the verbs, this will be the only form that you will need to make references to things, events, times, etc. in the simple past.  Most of the changes will be made in this category. Past participle -

Hi all, I've just found the infographic about languages below and thought I would pass it on to you.  Very interesting "factoids." Enjoy! How Learning Languages Affects Our Brain [Infographic] [Infographic] by the team at Sunbelt Staffing

Hi all, Log on to this site from PBS for some good materials on writing argumentative essays! Enjoy, P.

So our favorite time of the week has arrived -- the weekend!  Naturally, this got me thinking and then I wondered if I shouldn't write a short blog post:  what difference is there between the  weekend  and the end of the week ?  I mean, they're practically the same thing aren't they? Not quite: The weekend is, in most western countries, made up of Saturday and Sunday.  Traditionally, outside of the retail industry, most people do not work on these days, reserving them for family or personal activities.  Below is a scene from Downton Abbey , which shows that in former times and for a certain "sector" of the population, there was virtually no difference between the activities people did during the week and on the weekends.  The dowager 's question was absolutely sincere and she was by no means making fun of Matthew, the blond man. Different from the weekend is the end of the week , which should actually be called the end of the "workin

Don't Get Familiar with Me! Like many students know, English has only one 2nd person way of addressing people, both singular and plural:   you.   But what does this word mean? Well, as it so happens, many languages have both a familiar and a formal term to use when addressing others: *Brazilian Portuguese has nearly totally lost all trace of the familiar tu  to standardize the você  form for both formal and familiar, with the plural being vocês . English, contrary to the above languages but like other languages such as Brazilian Portuguese, no longer makes a difference between formal and familiar.   Did you catch that adverbial?  " No longer ."  This means that English did indeed at one point have a different 2nd person.  English kept  the formal way of addressing others you  and lost the familiar!  You might think this odd, but actually it is quite common:  on the French island of Réunion in the south Indian Ocean near Madagascar, the local creole