Welcome to our 2020 review! It’s a video where we look back at the year we’ve had (oh, what a strange year!), talk about clips from some of the videos we’ve made and look ahead at things to come. It’s a long video with lots of comedy sketches, so grab a coffee and make yourselves comfortable. We’d love to hear your requests for 2021 and answer any questions you may have. Hello and welcome to
In this video lesson we’ll show you how the word ironic is used in action. It seems to mean rather different things to different people. Normally we use ironic in a couple of different ways. One is to describe how we say things. When we use words with the opposite meaning to their literal meaning, we’re being ironic. And the other meaning is similar. We could describe observations or comments as ironic when words are
Learn 11 English idioms about food and see how we use them in action.Idioms are expressions where words take on different meanings. You’ll learn; a piece of cake butter someone up the best thing since sliced bread selling like hotcakes one smart cookie taking candy from a baby as easy as pie a fine kettle of fish (and a different kettle of fish) to cost/pay/work for peanuts a lemon your goose is cooked Click here
Feeling lonely in the pandemic, we decided to have dinner with our Google Assistant. In this video you’ll find out how she rated as a dinner guest and learn about pragmatics – the study of hidden meanings. So does the Google Assistant make a good dinner guest?Her plusses:She was attentive, informative and energetic. She struggled with Vicki’s British accent sometimes but that was probably because she hadn’t been programmed with her voice.Her negatives:She failed when
Learn some common words and phrases we use to talk about lies and lying in English. We look at some things we say when we think other people are lying like: You’ve got to be joking You’ve got to be kidding We explore lies we tell other people like fibs and white lies, and also things we say when we kid ourselves. And we also look at some idioms like: lying through your teeth stretching/bending
In this video lesson we look at the issues we expect people to be talking about, so you can join in the discussions. We look at words you’ll need for topics like: voter fraud voter suppression and intimidation the electoral college And also words to do with some recent events: the presidential debate the death of Ruth Bader Ginsberg President Trump’s corona virus diagnosis We can’t predict what will happen in this year’s US election.
Take our US elections English vocabulary quiz and learn the words you need to join in discussions about the US elections. As well as the voting process, we’ll explain: – the race metaphor – terms for the political parties – blue, red and purple states – who can and can’t vote – some effects of COVID-19 – common collocations like hold an election and going to the polls – the primaries – words like platform,
Welcome to quiz 6 in our series about common English mistakes that ESL learners make. In this video we’ll ask you to identify 7 common English mistakes and choose your answer before the clock stops ticking. Then we’ll explain what’s wrong and show you examples of the correct English in action. We’ll also direct you to videos if you want more help with grammar and vocabulary. In this video we look at: – how we
Word pairs make your English more colloquial and conversational. (To see our first video on word pairs, click here.) The technical term for these expressions is binomials and English is full of them! In this video you’ll learn: – what some of them mean – the common patterns they follow – how to use them in action We’ll show you phrases for things you’ll often find together like: – soap and water – shoes and
Our video on the English TH sound is here at last! In this lesson you’ll: learn how to pronounce the tricky TH sounds (Yes, there are two of them!) see how we move our mouth and tongue watch examples of common mistakes, so you can avoid them learn which mistakes matter and which don’t The English TH sound Toe/So? Though. Though. Though. We’ve had lots of requests for a video on the TH sound. And
