Tuesday, 8 November 2011
Can birth order determine your personality and career?
Read the article and note down how your position in the family can affect your personality.
Saturday, 5 November 2011
London 2012
Kevin talks about all the preparation needed to get London ready for the Olympics. This video is from www.podcastsinenglish.com, the efl/esl site for learners and teachers of English.
Saturday, 29 October 2011
Past Perfect
I/you/we/she/it/ we/they had= I'd etc./ he'd + past participle (gone/seen/ finished)
If we want to talk about things that happened before an action in the past, we use the past perfect.
e.g. When I went to Sue's she had gone out.
The man sitting next to me on the plane was very nervous. He'd never flown before.
We arrived to work in the morning and found that somebody had broken into the office during the night.
Past simple /Past continuous
We form the past simple of regular verbs by adding -ed to the main verb. watch-watched
We form questions and negations with the auxiliary verb did/did not (didn't), the subject and the main verb without -ed.
e.g Did you watch TV last night? I did/didn't watch TV last night.
Spelling rules:
-verbs ending in -e take only -d dance-danced
-verbs ending in a consonant+ y, drop the y and take -ied. try-tried
- Verbs ending in a vowel +y, take -ed. play-played, stay- stayed
- Verbs ending in one stressed vowel between two consonants, double the last consonant and take -ed. plan-planned, but open-opened
- Verbs ending in -l double the l and take-ed. travel-travelled, quarrel-quarrelled
Pronunciation of the suffix -ed
/ Id/ when the verb ends in / t/ or / d/
/ t/ when the verb ends in /k/,/s/,/tʃ/,/ʃ/,/f/ or /p/ sound.
/ d/ when the verb ends in any other sound, arrived, prepared, showed, robbed.
Listen
http://eslus.com/LESSONS/PRONUNCI/EDENDING/ED1.HTM
http://www.englishpronunciationpod.com/podcast_31.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/radio/specials/1413_gramchallenge26/
Irregular verbs do not form the past simple by adding-ed
We use the past simple:
- for actions which happened at a definite or stated time in the past; that is, we know when they happened. e.g. They graduated four years ago.
- For actions which happened repeatedly in the past but don't happen any more. In this case we can use adverbs of frequency (always, often, usually etc,) e.g. He often played football with his dad when he was five.
-for actions that happened immediately after the other in the past e.g. They cooked the meal and ate it with their friends.
Time expressions used with the past simple include: yesterday, last night/week/year/Monday etc. two days/weeks/months/years ago, then, when, in 1992 etc.
Past continuous
We form the past continuous with was/were and the main verb with the -ing suffix.
We use the past continuous:
- for an action which was in progress at a stated time in the past. We do not know when the action started or finished. e.g. At three o'clock yesterday afternoon we were washing tha car.
- for a past action which was in progress when another action interrupted it. We use the past continuous for an action in progress (longer action) which interrupted it (shorted action). e.g. He was reading the newspaper when he heard a terrible noise.
- for two actions which were happening at the same time in the past (simultaneous actions) e.g I was cooking lunch while my children were playing outside.
- to give the background information in a story.
Practice
http://www.oup.com/elt/global/products/headway/int/a_grammar/unit03/hwy_int_unit03_1/
http://www.oup.com/elt/global/products/naturalenglish/int/a_grammar/unit09/neint_grammar09_exp/
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