Fun Ways to Learn English

Tea's Irregular Past Tense Spelling Game

2011-11-13T17:09:00.001+01:00

Check out my Irregular Past Tense Spelling Game!
I made it because I have always missed something from the ones I found on the net, mainly the amount of words they make you practice. So I decided to make one myself :)
You can practise 60 irregular past tense verbs with it.
There are 5x12 verbs, each goup is set in a short story. There are 3 or 4 tasks for each group of verbs (16 tasks altogether. Here's how it goes:

You must find the present equivalent of the verb in the given sentence. If your answer is right, the verb will disappear.
The same, only a bit more difficult: the verb will not disappear, you will only hear a sound if the answer is right
You must complete the sentences with the proper past tense verb

I have already tested it on some of my students, it seemed to be effective :) Come on, TRY it!

Learn English and fight hunger at the same time

2011-03-11T18:16:00.000+01:00

Learn English vocabulary and help to fight hunger by playing Free Rice.
For each answer you get right, 10 grains of rice will be donated through the United Nations World Food Program.
You can choose between English vocabulary or grammar, as well as a few other subjects (geography, math, chemistry, art, languages).
You can register or login with your Facebook account.

Instant Business letters

2011-01-20T12:28:00.003+01:00

Generate your English business letters by clicks. Choose the template and mark the checkboxes for the sentences you want to use in your business letter. The result can be copied into the clipboard or saved as TXT or RTF file.

Enquiry
Offer

Order

Order Confirmation

Dispatch Note and Acknowledgement of Receipt

Invoice and Overdue Notice

How to Respond to "Thank You"?

2010-09-26T10:40:00.001+02:00

Most languages have an automatic response to thanks.
The British don't automatically respond to thanks, but Americans do. A response is not necessary in British English, but is becoming more frequent.

Some of the ways of responding to thanks are:
You're welcome. (mainly US)
Not at all. (Formal, UK)
It's my pleasure.
Don't mention it.
Any time.
That's alright/okay.
No problem.

Learn English with VOA News

2010-07-10T16:09:00.014+02:00

Learn American English and Much More. Read, listen, learn!
With VOA News.

The Special English Web site is an excellent tool to practice and improve your American English.

VOA Special English radio programs are broadcast every day of the year on the VOA network. Each broadcast starts with world news, followed by a short feature report and a 15 minute feature.
Throughout this site you will find radio scripts from these feature programs and the matching audio file of the text as it was delivered on the radio. They also offer both RealAudio and MP3 downloadable audio files that you can save and play over and over again.
Find a report that interests you. You can find the scripts by topic or by the name of the radio program.
Read along and listen to the audio report. At the same time you will learn new information about a variety of subjects from issues in the news to American history.
Click here for a list of radio programs.

More listening skills.

Football English

2010-06-21T12:09:00.001+02:00

BBC Learning English has some cool stuff connected with football.

How good are you at listening to authentic English football commentaries?
Try the Commentary Box quiz to find out.

There are five different audio clips connected with the World Cup for you to test yourself.

Or learn some football vocabulary.

Chat with Egon

2010-05-22T10:02:00.000+02:00

If you don't have anyone to chat with to practice your English, why not chat with Egon?
He is a funny creature, he always has something to chat about.

Learn with comedy: Watch Monty Python!

2010-02-20T10:53:00.024+01:00

Monty Python: nutty, zany, crazy!

It was 40 years ago today that the first episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus appeared on the BBC. The show ran for four seasons, cranking out 45 episodes and unleashing their zany, crazy sense of humor on the world. The group's influence on comedy has been compared to The Beatles' influence on music.

Here's one of their most famous sketches: Ministry of Silly Walks

You can watch it, read it, learn it, perform it if you like. You can find the script of the sketch here.

A few other unforgettable sketches are “Nudge, Nudge,” “Spam,” “The Lumberjack Song,” or “Dead Parrot“.

Test Yourself by Games

2010-01-28T13:12:00.002+01:00

Test yoursef by these games from oup.com:

anteater game (elementary: prepositions)
dolphin game (pre-intermediate)

These are only my favourite ones, but there are more
-for elementary students: here
-for pre-intermediate students: here.

Have fun and learn!

More online practice
More games.

Watch TED! So motivating! So wonderful!

2010-01-01T16:31:00.014+01:00

Watch TED - Ideas worth Spreading !
It is a collection of riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world.
It's so motivating. So wonderful!

Although many talks are difficult to understand for a language learner, there are subtitles available in a lot of languages.

Here's one of my favourites: Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford Commencement Address. Steve Jobs is the CEO and co-founder of Apple and Pixar.

I have copied the transcript below the video to help you with the English, too. (highlighting: Tea)

Thank you. I'm honored to be with you today for your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. Truth be told, I never graduated from college and this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation.
Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories. The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first six months but then stayed around as a drop-in for another eighteen months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out? It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife, except that when I popped out, they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking, "We've got an unexpected baby boy. Do you want him?" They said, "Of course." My biological mother found out later that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would go to college.
This was the start in my life. And seventeen years later, I did go to college, but I naïvely chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, and no idea of how college was going to help me figure it out, and here I was, spending all the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back, it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out, I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me and begin dropping in on the ones that looked far more interesting.
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms. I returned Coke bottles for the five-cent deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example.
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer was beautifully hand-calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and sans-serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me, and we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts, and since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them.
If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on that calligraphy class and personals computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do.
Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college, but it was very, very clear looking backwards 10 years later. Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards, so you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something--your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever--because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference.
My second story is about love and loss. I was lucky. I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents' garage when I was twenty. We worked hard and in ten years, Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4,000 employees. We'd just released our finest creation, the Macintosh, a year earlier, and I'd just turned thirty, and then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew, we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so, things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge, and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our board of directors sided with him, and so at thirty, I was out, and very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating. I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down, that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure and I even thought about running away from the Valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me. I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I'd been rejected but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods in my life. During the next five years I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the world's first computer-animated feature film, "Toy Story," and is now the most successful animation studio in the world.
In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT and I returned to Apple and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance, and Lorene and I have a wonderful family together.
I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful-tasting medicine but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life's going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love, and that is as true for work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work, and the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking, and don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it, and like any great relationship it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking. Don't settle.
My third story is about death. When I was 17 I read a quote that went something like "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself, "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "no" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important thing I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life, because almost everything--all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure--these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago, I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctors' code for "prepare to die." It means to try and tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next ten years to tell them, in just a few months. It means to make sure that everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope, the doctor started crying, because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and, thankfully, I am fine now.
This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept. No one wants to die, even people who want to go to Heaven don't want to die to get there, and yet, death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It's life's change agent; it clears out the old to make way for the new. right now, the new is you. But someday, not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it's quite true. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalogue, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stuart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late Sixties, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and Polaroid cameras. it was sort of like Google in paperback form thirty-five years before Google came along. I was idealistic, overflowing with neat tools and great notions. Stuart and his team put out several issues of the The Whole Earth Catalogue, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-Seventies and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath were the words, "Stay hungry, stay foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. "Stay hungry, stay foolish." And I have always wished that for myself, and now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you. Stay hungry, stay foolish.
Thank you all, very much.

More for building listening skills ...

Merry Christmas!

2009-12-19T14:09:00.003+01:00

Have you ever wanted to start reading the Bible, but never really got down to it? You can do it now with the help of The Bricktestament. It is illustrated with LEGO and it is really really cool. If you find the language difficult to understand, you can follow from a Bible in your own language, since it goes sentence by sentence most of the time.

Why don't you check out the Christmas story for a start?

More on holidays ...

Finding a job

2009-11-19T14:35:00.010+01:00

If you're thinking about finding a new job, a well written covering letter is a key element.
This activity from BBC Learning English helps you with the vocabulary needed in a covering letter.

More business English.
More online practice.

A Game for Business English

2009-10-13T13:26:00.009+02:00

To practise your Business English check out this cool game at oup.com.

Help the businessman text his collegues.

There are some more here.

More business English.
More games.

Chocolate Quiz

2009-09-14T14:42:00.004+02:00

Another fun thing from BBC Learning English:
chocolate quiz
Here you can check how much you know about chocolate.

More vocabulary ... More games...

Ever Wanted to Understand the News?

2009-08-20T12:57:00.007+02:00

News aren't easy to understand for a language learner. CNN Student News helps you with that by offering transcripts, maps, questions, quizes and other learning activities for the pieces of news you can watch there. For intermediate (or above) students.

More listening skills building.

Holidays or Vacations?

2009-07-26T14:00:00.019+02:00

It is holiday in British English and vacation in American English. Is it true or false?

The situation is a bit more complicated:

In America:
holidays (="Holy Days"): eg. Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, Independence Day. Not official national holidays (although most people do not work).
vacations: breaks from work once or twice a year

In Britain:
holidays: Christmas, Easter, etc. They are official national holidays (so called bank holidays).
holidays: breaks from work once or twice a year
So the British call both type of days holidays.

And have you heard of the term staycations?

More holidays ...
More vocabulary ...

A Game to Learn Numbers

2009-06-28T11:16:00.008+02:00

Here's a game to practise the most problematic numbers for most students: 11-20. (Click on the picture)

Instructions: click on the number you hear, then on the letter at the end

(by Oxford University Press)

More online practice. More games

But I'm sitting in front of the computer all day!

2009-05-28T12:05:00.015+02:00

Then read on your compuer! Anything. Blogs, for example. To keep yourself motivated, it is extremely important to find ones that you can understand and like at the same time.
If you have no idea what to look for, I'll recommend you one with simple language:
Bodri the Pooh - the daily life of stuffed animals... They go on vacations, organize their Plush Olympic games, hold elections, go to school, watch Formula 1, etc.

More on reading skills.

I Don't Read Because I Hate Using Dictionaries

2009-05-21T11:55:00.003+02:00

Don't use dictionaries! Or at least don't overuse them.

It is important to find a book that you can read relatively easily (see previous post about graded readers). While you read don't look up words in the dictionary, because it will spoil the fun of reading! Try to guess the words from the context! Only look it up if it is holding you up or you really want to know what it means. You'll remember that word for life!
However, it can help to pause from time to time and look back, just to check you are clear about what is happening.

More on reading skills.

Vocabulary Building by Graded Readers

2009-05-15T11:37:00.013+02:00

One of the best ways to build your vocabulary is reading. Not only your reading skills are developed by reading, but all 4 basic skills: reading, writing, speaking and even listening.
However, it is a hard job for a language learner to understand a book written for native speakers.
This is why graded readers have been found out: these books are specially designed for esl, efl learners: the idea is that they are graded according to the level of grammar and vocabulary used in them, so that every learner can find books to his or her own level. They are designed to get students read, so there is a variety of motivating topics available. It's good to know that most libraries have them, in case you do not want to spend too much on them.

What level to choose?
It is important that you should read easily. If the book is too difficult for you, you'll give up. It doesn't matter if it is too easy - you can move on to a higher level next time. Here's an example of an easy one (Funnybones by Allan Ahlberg):

You can check your local library for them or you can as well go to my EFL store at Amazon to buy some. (See sidebar, too.) In the store you will find graded raeders grouped as Easy, Intermediate or Advanced. The first items of each group are the easier ones. You can even look into most of them to see how difficult they are.

Start reading and have fun!

More on reading skills.

A Quick English Lesson: 6 Minute English

2009-05-12T13:24:00.004+02:00

Try 6 Minute English on BBC Learning English:
a short reading, listening and vocabulary practice on an up-to-date topic. (Do you know what staycation means? I didn't.)
There is also a quiz to check how much you can remember.
A good practice for learners of English.

More for building listening skills ...

Mini Phrasebook for Travellers

2009-05-07T09:23:00.005+02:00

Have you ever wanted to have the basic conversations together at the same place?

Oxford University Press has these cool downloadable mini phrasebooks for their New English File series. They are okay to use without the coursebook as well.

Download them, print them take them with you:

elementary (buying things, checking in and out, ordering a meal, asking for directions)

pre-intermediate (at immigration, asking for info, making phonecalls, buying tickets, etc.)

You can also practise them at the Practical English sections:
elementary
pre-intermediate

More on holidays

Practice online with your coursebook

2009-05-05T08:55:00.008+02:00

If you are an esl (English as Second Language)or efl (English as a Foreign Language) learner, I would strongly advice you to use a good coursebook. Oxford and Cambridge are the leading names, but other publishers have some good stuff, too.
I like using coursebooks from Oxford University Press because of the wide range of activities they offer on the internet. They provide grammar and vocabulary exercises, tests, games, etc. to each of the units of their most popular coursebooks. (I'm not paid to say this - I simply like them...)

Here's the list of the coursebooks they offer online practice for.

For example, if you are learning from Headway Elementary, you can choose Headway, then Elementary, then you'll be offered different fields of practice, and then a list of the units. Eg. you can find the grammar practice (present simple) for Unit 4 here.

Some of the exercises are okay to be used without the books. I'll add some of them later.

More practice online.

Help! My favourite song is full of slang!

2009-05-04T15:26:00.003+02:00

Sometimes slang makes it difficult to understand song lyrics. There is a good dictionary, though, which makes things much easier: www.urbandictionary.com
But please keep in mind that there are really dirty things in it (as most slang words are made up to describe dirty stuff...)

Learning with song lyrics

2009-05-04T14:31:00.004+02:00

This is my very favourite way of learning English, because this was my main motivation in my teen years. Nowadays, with the help of the internet it has become very easy to access song lyrics: you just type the name and performer of your favourite song + the word "lyrics" into the browser and there you are. You can print it and sing along while listening to it!

If you really want to learn a lot this way, it is essential that you understand what the lyrics mean: go through it, translate the sentences, look up the key phrases in a dictionary. After that all that is left is to listen to it a thousand times (which is not really a sacrifice if it is really a favourite song of yours) and try to sing along with the singer. You'll surely learn the phrases and grammatical structures of the song for life!

There's even an easier way: on Youtube you can find the karaoke version of some popular songs: you can see the lyrics and listen to the song at the same time. As an example I've added a Massive Attack song (Teardrop) here, but you can search for your own favourite ones.