You can read my latest posts below or use the tools on the right hand side of the page to search for posts that interest you.
What makes good writing?
How do readers decide if something is written well? I think the most important thing is, did I understand it? Then one can consider style, humour, tone and all the rest. It’s a lot easier to write a confusing sentence than a simple one. Here are some quotes from authors (and a grammatician) to keep you motivated when the going gets tough! I found the first three while I was preparing last week’s post on style guides, they are in the introduction to the Economist’s introduction. Mark Twain described how a good writer...
read moreWrite like a pro: use a style guide
How do you write about the person who plays music on the radio or at the club? Is it DJ, D.J., D. J., deejay or dee-jay? Should there be 3 commas or 4 commas in the list above? Should I have written three and four in the sentence above this one? Should I have written “three” and “four” in the sentence above this one? Is it better to write from 2-5:00 pm or from 2:00 pm to 5:00 pm? Do you write the abbreviations for meters, kilograms, etc. next to the number or leave a space? 100m or 100 m? It’s confusing for...
read moreReal-world dictations
If you want to improve your listening (and spelling) skills, try out this site: Listen and Write. They have taken media from a wide range of sources, found transcripts, and made them into dictation activities. This means that you can listen to (or watch, many of the sources are on youtube) a news report, an interview, a song, a film trailer or a TV show and then listen to it in “chapters” so you can focus on 5-10 seconds of text at a time. It’s a great way to practice your listening while following your...
read moreFree audiobooks–Librivox
We all need to practice our listening skills, but it can be difficult. Listening to the news can be boring. Watching films or TV shows can be fun, but do we really understand what they said? Can we remember it? Sometimes we want to check if we really heard everything. Librivox is a community of people who are trying to record all of the books in the public domain. This means that all of their resources are 100% free and legal! It also means that you won’t find Harry Potter there, but for a free resource it is really excellent. How...
read moreAsk a teacher
You’ve checked your dictionary and your grammar books and you still don’t know the best way to say something. Or maybe you know the “right” way to say something, but you want to know why it’s the “right” way. You might have problems with an idiom, slang or phrasal verbs; or you just want someone to check some sentences you’ve written. Here are two great forums where English teachers and native speakers will answer your questions for free! I post on these forums because I like to learn more...
read moreFree spelling and grammar checking software
We all use a spell-checker when we write, but most of them don’t notice when we write the wrong word. If I wrote, “I had a bear at the pub last night,” all of the words are spelled correctly but I should have typed “beer.” Ginger is a new kind of spelling and grammar checker that checks the context of your words, not just the words in isolation. Ginger notices “pub” in the sentence and offers to correct it for me. Try it here: World’s Leading Grammar and Spell Checker Learn More Ginger...
read moreTest your vocabulary and donate to the UN World Food Programme
Freerice.com seems like a simple game: you just match the word you see with a synonym. But for every correct answer you get, the game gets harder. When you choose an incorrect answer, the game gets easier. The real challenge is trying to remember if the words are nouns, verbs or adjectives… it’s a lot harder than it seems! This is a good way to practice for Part 4 of the Cambridge English: Advanced (CAE). The game is run by the United Nations World Food Programme. For every correct answer you get, you donate 10 grains of rice...
read moreTest your pronunciation in this game
Here’s a silly game for you to try: http://easywaytest.com/ Just pronounce the word on the screen (into your microphone), if you do it correctly you’ll see the next part of the cartoon. The game understands the other things you say too, so be polite!
read moreHow to pronounce English names
English names are notoriously difficult to pronounce when you can only read them. For example, how many syllables are there in Loughborough or Leominster (these are towns in England)? Two! I know it’s strange, it’s strange to me too. I come from the US, where our cities have normal-sounding names (that’s just a little joke!). So what can you do? Here is one of those times when you just need to know the international phonetic alphabet (IPA). Do you remember it? Here’s a very nice interactive page from the British...
read moreCAE writing style guide: review
5 of 5, click the buttons to read more about the the different styles of writing you may have to do in the exam: Essay Email/letter Proposal Report This is a short summary of some style points to keep in mind when attempting the tasks in the Cambridge English: Advanced writing section. Review Who is the audience? The audience for this question is usually an interested consumer or magazine reader. What is the purpose of the writing? You need to describe something (or some things) and give your opinion. Is it formal? No. Should I use headings...
read more
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.