A Christmas Story: A free audio e-book for you!

Posted on December 17, 2008 by admin

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Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! And I send this to all of our readers, no matter whether you celebrate Christmas in your culture or not – may you all have a wonderful and prosperous 2009.

Christmas is almost on us again. For many thousands of people this Christmas is not going to be quite as shiny and happy as those in the past. A lot of people will be facing an uncertain future or are worried about what 2009 will bring. Well, maybe this gift from us, an e-book version of one of the most celebrated stories of hardship, poverty, redemption and generosity will help make this Christmas a little brighter and remind us all that at the heart of this celebration is the idea of sharing with others, bringing goodwill and happiness into our lives and those of others and re-affirming the bonds of caring and feeling between us .

This is a completely free e-book that you can run on your desktop with all of the audio files installed on your computer or you can choose to view and listen to it on our website.

The English4Today e-book version contains full text as well as a complete reading of the book so that you can either just listen, just read or do both!

We’ve provided the e-book in three different formats so that everyone can access it and enjoy it:

FULL Version : a software desktop edition, Windows only, with ALL sound files – 117MB – this is a big download but you will have all of the sound files on your desktop and it is an ideal format for schools, libraries and ‘on the road’ reading.
LITE Version: a software desktop edition, Windows only. Exactly the same as the FULL version but you will need an Internet connection to listen to the sound files. The advantage? Well, it is only a 4.5MB download compared to the 117MB of the full version.
ONLINE Version: a web-based version with the same contents but no downloadable components. Listen and read online.

And here are a couple of screenshots of a Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens an audio e-book from English4Today:

Christmas Carol Screenshot

Christmas Carol Screenshot 2

Finding an Online English Language Teacher

Posted on October 17, 2008 by admin

By Anthony Hughes MLitt., Cert TESOL
CEO English4Today

From the English4Today series on online learning

More and more websites and Internet services are offering to find you the ideal English language teacher. Many of them are very good and offer excellent technical and teaching services. But how can you tell the good ones from the bad?

IDENTIFY YOUR NEEDS

Well, it is important to first of all decide what you need and want:

Do you need English training for your job or to prepare for a job interview or entry into a foreign institution?
Do you need to pass an English language assessment examination such as CAELT, TOEFL or IELTS?
Do you need English to satisfy immigration requirements?
Do you need training for a highly specific purpose? For example, you may be giving an important presentation in English or preparing a technical report in English or being sent by your organization to negotiate in English.
Do you just want to practice your conversation skills with someone who is a native speaker?
Do you want to study English for your own pleasure?

If you answered ‘yes’ to 1,2,3 or 4 above then I’d advise you to select online lessons with a professional and qualified English language teacher rather than just someone you meet on the Internet who can speak English.

Professional teachers may cost a little more but you will be learning a lot faster, with better direction and understanding of your needs and from someone who really knows how the English language works. Just because you know how to drive a car it doesn’t mean that you know how the engine works or can explain how to drive to someone else! And so it is with a lot of people who are native English speakers – ask them why we use the Simple Past instead of the Present Perfect and they’ll be hard pressed to answer … let alone give an explanation that you will understand.

If you answered ‘yes‘ to 5 or 6 then a native English speaker who isn’t a teacher will probably do and you can find people willing to do this on many of the sites that provide a meeting space for people interested in language learning. The advantage here is that you can usually get this sort of practice free of charge or in exchange for helping someone practice your language.

You also want to be sure that the teacher and the organization that you choose can teach you what you want – not all teachers can teach you presentation or negotiating skills in English or teach academic writing skills if you need to prepare for university.

ASK ABOUT YOUR TEACHER’S QUALIFICATIONS

Don’t hesitate to ask questions about how the teacher works, what their experience and qualifications are and what materials they will use. Some questions you may want to ask are:

What qualifications does my tutor have?
Do they have experience teaching the skills I want to learn?
What materials are used for the online lessons?
How is my progress assessed?

ASK ABOUT THE ‘TOOLS’ YOU NEED AND THE LESSON FORMAT

It is equally important, with online learning, that you are sure that you and the teacher can communicate properly using the tools that you both have. Again, ask questions and avoid problems and disappointment later on:

How long is each lesson?
How do I talk / communicate with my teacher?
What Internet and document tools do I need? (e.g. Skype or MSN, Flash or video plugins, Powerpoint, Acrobat Reader etc.)
What time zone is my teacher in?
Do they (and you) have a high-speed, reliable Internet connection?
Can I try a 10 minute technical test with my teacher before deciding to pay for my lessons?

ASK ABOUT THE COST AND PAYMENT METHODS

The cost may be very important to you as well but when judging the hourly rate of a lesson make sure you factor in how quickly you will get to your goals with the teacher you select and how their experience may, in fact, end up saving you money by getting you where you want to be a lot faster than a less qualified teacher.

Hourly rates for online teaching vary between around $15 an hour up to around $70 for highly specialized training. Remember, it’s not always the cheaper rate that offers the best value! Some questions to ask about cost and payment include:

What is the rate per lesson and how long is a lesson? (online lessons usually go from 30 – 60 minutes)
What are the payment methods accepted (e.g. online with an organization such as PayPal, bank transfer, Western Union etc.)
What are you refund policies?
What are the lesson cancellation policies?
Can I get an invoice to claim back money from my employer for training?

If you’ve got a good idea of who and what you are looking for before you start you, and your teacher, are likely to avoid disappointment and to build a useful teacher-student relationship that will help you quickly improve your English language level.

If you would like to contribute an article on a subject to do with learning English please send your article along with a brief biography to the English4Today editor. Your article will be fully credited.

Hear and Listen: Easy confusion

Posted on February 13, 2008 by admin

Question from Khadija in Morocco:

What is the difference between ‘hear’ and ‘listen’?

Answer:

Hi, Khadija. Thank’s for your question, I’m sure that the difference between ‘listen‘ and ‘hear‘ is not clear for a lot of English language learners.
Let’s have a look at them:

Listen is used to talk about or describe sounds that are being made around you and which you are making an active effort to focus on. For example:

Did you listen to the news last night on television?
She was listening to music on her iPod when I walked in.
Mike listened to his teacher and then repeated what she had said.
‘Just listen to yourself! You talk such rubbish!’, she said angrily.

Note that ‘listen‘ is nearly always followed by ‘to‘ – you listen to some sound.

Just to repeat an important point; listening is active – that is you are making an active effort to listen to the sound.

Hear is used for sounds that come to our ears, but we do not, unlike listen, need to be actively engaged in trying to listen to the sound – it can just come to your ears! For example:

Mike heard a bang in the night which woke him up.
She heard someone screaming and called the police.
I heard a loud explosion and then the building collapsed.

Note that ‘hear’ is not followed by ‘to’. But, to make it a little more complicated let’s look at this conversation:

‘Did you hear what I said’, asked John’s father.
‘No, I wasn’t listening‘, replied John.
‘Well, if you don’t listen you will never hear what I am telling you!’.

Now, that last sentence seems a little confused but also shows cleary how the two verbs are used – in this case, if John does not make an active effort to listen he will not hear his father’s advice (even if he may have heard sounds his father was making!)

Where hear and listen may seem very close is when you hear something like:

Did you hear about Jane? She got married!
I heard about the accident but I didn’t see it.

This is when information is passed to you from another source without you necessarily seeking it – in this case note that ‘hear’ is followed by ‘about’ – ‘to hear about’ something, someone or some action or event.

So, you can hear something without wanting to, but you can only listen to something intentionally.

‘How about’ vs ‘what about’ : same difference?

Posted on February 1, 2008 by admin

Question from English4Today member Khadija in Morocco

When can we use “how about” and when can we use “what about”?

Hi Khadija. This is another one of those situations, and we’ve discussed quite a few of them here, where you can use the two phrases interchangeably:

Both can be used to make suggestions.

How about going to see a movie tonight?
What about going to see a movie tonight?

Or, in the case of a non-suggestive question:

Is Mike going with you? How about Pete?
Is Mike going with you? What about Pete?
Have you finished cleaning your room? How about your homework?
Have you finished cleaning your room? What about your homework?

So, use either and the earth won’t open up and swallow you!

Hunting the possessive … again

Posted on January 27, 2008 by admin

Question from Jadie in the USA

How would the word hunter be spelled in the following sentence?
The sentence might go something like, “The hunter’s steel trap secured my foot to the forest floor.”
Would the correct spelling be hunters, hunter’s, or hunters’?
Thank you for your time,
Jadie

Hi Jadie, your question is asking how we form the possessive in English and I’d put this question in the Top 10 of questions we get asked. I’ll run through it quickly in relation to your specific example and I’ve put several links at the end of this posting to other postings about the possessive and to the section in the English4Today Online Grammar on possessives.

Firstly, I’m assuming that there is only one ‘hunter’ in which case we would show that the trap belongs to the hunter by saying the ‘hunter’s trap‘ – that is with the apostrophe s following the ‘r’ of ‘hunter’. So this sentence is correct:

The hunter‘s steel trap secured my foot to the forest floor.

Just as an extra note here: hunters is plural and not possessive and hunters’ or hunters’s is the plural possessive.

See also:

Acronyms : OMG they are everywhere!

Posted on January 24, 2008 by admin

Question from English4Today member Vin in the USA:

What is it called when letters are substituted for words, i.e., LOL stands for Laugh out loud.

Hi Vin, they are everywhere and they are called ‘acronyms‘!

An acronym was originally a pronounceable word made from the initial letters of other words. For example, NATO for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

As acronyms have invaded our lives more and more we have started to coin other shorthand versions such as TV for Television, USA for United States of America, IOU for I Owe You (a debt), MD for Medical Doctor, or CEO for Chief Executive Officer which are not acronyms in the original sense of being a ‘new pronounceable word’ made up of the first letters but which we still pull into our bulging bag of acronyms.

Acronyms are often used as mnemonics, a device for helping you remember something. You’ll often see this sort of usage in training manuals and self-help manuals. An illustration of this sort of acronym would be one that I found on a quick trawl of the Internet; taking the word ‘HOPE’ as an acronym for ‘Hanging Onto Positive Expectations’. You may remember other similar acronyms from your school days designed to help you remember a spelling rule, historical event or math equation. I remember, for example, ROYGBIV, a mnemonic acronym for remembering the colors of the rainbow – Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet – a pretty senseless sounding acronym but one that has stuck in my mind since I was around seven years old!

But where acronyms have really exploded and become a sub-language of their own is through text messaging, the Internet and email where the ‘need for speed’ has led to the creation of hundreds of new acronyms that are used globally by millions of people. Your example, LOL for ‘Laugh Out Loud’ is one of the most used of these Internet acronyms. Here is a list of some of the other common Internet acronyms used in emails, SMS and text messaging. Hope it helps, CU!

Common Acronyms Used in SMS, Text and Internet Chat:

A
AFAIK	As far as I know
AFK	Away from keyboard
AKA	Also known as
AOL	America Online
ASAP	As soon as possible
ASL	Age, sex, location
ATM	At the moment
B
B/C	Because
B4	Before
BBIAB	Be back in a bit
BBL	Be back later
BCC	Blind carbon copy
BF	Boyfriend
BFF	Best friends forever
BFN	Bye for now
BOT	Back on topic
BRB	Be right back
BTW	By the way
C
CC	Carbon copy
CTN	Can’t talk now
CU	See you
CUL	See you later
CYA	See ya
CYE	Check your e-mail
D
DIY	Do it yourself
DL	Download
DW	Don’t worry
E
EG	Exempli gratia (Latin: For example)
EOD	End of discussion
ETA	Estimated time of arrival
F
F	Female
FAQ	Frequently Asked Questions
FOFL	Falling on the floor laughing
FUBAR	Fouled up beyond all recognition
FWIW	For what it’s worth
FYI	For your information
G
G2G	Gotta go
GB	Goodbye
GF	Girlfriend
GG	Good game
GJ	Good job
GL	Good luck
GM	Good match
GR8	Great
H
H/O	Hold on
HH	Ha-ha
HOAS	Hold on a second
HTH	Hope this helps
I
IAC	In any case
IC	I see
IDK	I don’t know
IE	Id est (Latin: That is)
IIRC	If I remember correctly
IK	I know
IM	Instant Message
IMHO	In my humble opinion
IMO	In my opinion
IOW	In other words
IRT	In reply to
J
J/K	Just kidding
JC	Just curious
JK	Just kidding
K
K	OK
KIT	Keep in touch
KWIM	Know what I mean
L
L8	Late
L8R	Later
LMAO	Laughing my a** off
LOL	Laugh out loud
M
M	Male
MMA	Meet me at
MMB	Message me back
MSG	Message
MYOB	Mind your own business
N
N/A	Not Available
NC	No comment
NE1	Anyone
NM	Not much
NP	No problem
NRN	No reply necessary
NW	No way
O
OMG	Oh my gosh
OT	Off topic
OTOH	On the other hand
P
PDA	Public display of affection
PHAT	Pretty hot and tempting
PIR	People in room
PK	Player Killing
PLZ	Please
POS	Parent over shoulder
PPL	People
Q
QT	Cutie
R
RE	Regarding
ROFL	Rolling on the floor laughing
ROTFL	Rolling on the floor laughing
RPG	Role Playing Game
RT	Real-time
RTFM	Read the flippin’ manual
S
SMH	Shaking my head
SOS	Someone over shoulder
SOSO	Same old, same old
SP?	Spelling?
STR8	Straight
SUP	What’s up
T
TBC	To be continued
TBH	To be honest
TC	Take care
TGIF	Thank goodness it’s Friday
THX	Thanks
TIA	Thanks in advance
TIC	Tongue in cheek
TISNF	That is so not fair
TLC	Tender love and care
TMI	Too much information
TOH	Typing one-handed
TTFN	Ta-ta for now
TTYL	Talk to you later
TY	Thank you
U
U2	You too
UR	You are
V
VBG	Very big grin
W
W/	With
W/E	Whatever
W/O	Without
W8	Wait
WB	Write back (e-mail)
WOOT	Way out of topic
WTG	Way to go
X
XOXO	Hugs and kisses
Y
Y	Why
YRG	You are good
YW	You’re welcome
Z
ZZZ	Sleeping

Happy New Year! But where does it come from?

Posted on January 1, 2008 by admin

Donuts! You might be wondering what that has to do with New Year or the English language – well read on and you’ll find out why Homer Simpson’s love of donuts may be his personal ‘lucky charm‘.

First, Happy New Year to all of our listeners, readers, members of English4Today and English4Today students.

When you’ve grown up in a Western culture, you probably think that New Year’s Day on January 1st is a pretty universal festival. After all, January 1st is the same all over the world so the new year starts at the same time everywhere. Well, in one sense this is true as the Gregorian Calendar (the 12 month calendar we now use) is used all over the world for commercial, transport and communications purposes. But a lot of cultures still keep a place for their own calendar and most of us know that Chinese New Year, for example, does not fall on the same day as the Gregorian Calendar proscribes and that the Chinese New Year festival is a party worth getting an invitation to.

Celebration of the new year is probably one of the oldest festivals around dating back to around 2000 BC when the Babylonians celebrated the new year at the start of Spring (the Vernal equinox). Spring seems a good time to start a new year but the Romans clearly didn’t feel that this worked for them and in 153 BC the Roman Senate set January 1st as the start of a New Year where it has stayed ever since.

The Romans changed the time of year when the new year started but they hung on to some important traditions that we still continue with today. The New Year’s resolution – an undertaking to do something positive in the coming year – dates back to the Babylonians. Typically, we now make resolutions to do things like give up smoking, lose weight or become better people and typically these resolutions are pretty much forgotten about by the start of February when we fall back into our habitual patterns of behaviour.

Wishing others good luck, or wishing it for yourself is also part of the New Year tradition and we’ve carried through to the present some of the symbols of luck, usually in the form of a ring or circle as it symbolizes ‘coming full circle‘, that is, completing a year’s cycle. The Dutch believe that eating donuts on New Year’s Day will bring good fortune and the French have a special King’s Cake which is in the form of a circle and that has a small lucky token baked into it. It was also once believed that the first visitor on New Year’s Day would bring either good luck or bad luck the rest of the year.

So, that said, grab a few lucky donuts, have a Happy New Year, and I’m looking forward to sharing another great 12 months with you.

New Year’s Words and Words used in this posting:

resolution : an undertaking or promise (usually to oneself) to do something positive in the coming year
luck : good fortune arriving by chance
Gregorian Calendar : The modern calendar adapted from the Julian Calendar, conceived by the Roman’s, which fixes New Year’s day on the 1st January
Happy New Year! : traditional saying during the New Year holiday
donut : round, sweet bun usually deep-fried and coated with sugar
Homer Simpson : famous television cartoon character
lucky charm : a small object that the owner believes will bring them good luck

Scrooge : A mean piece of vocabulary

Posted on December 20, 2007 by admin

‘Scrooge‘ – not a word in everyday use, unless we have a very mean relative or friend, and a word that is perhaps drifting to the sidelines of the language a little. But at this time of the year you see the word a lot more. Firstly, it is the name of the main character in our recently published version of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol … more about that story in a minute. But Forbes magazine has also just made ‘scrooge‘ a word that more people will be seeing at the moment. They have voted Scrooge McDuck in at the 6th place on their list of the top 15 wealthiest fictional characters. Here’s his profile in the Forbes magazine:

No 6 McDuck, Scrooge

Net Worth: $8.2 billion
Source: Mining
Age: 80
Marital Status: Single
Hometown: Duckburg, U.S.A.
Education: Cluck U dropout.

Planet’s wealthiest poultry in hiding due to fear of bird flu. Thought to be in “money bin,” five-story tower in Duckburg that is world’s largest repository of gold coins. As adolescent, moved to American West from native Scotland and amassed fortune in gold and copper. Keeps most of his money in bullion. Known to enjoy swimming in money. Literally. Likely heirs Huey, Dewey and Louie (grand-nephews) now living alone in Duckburg mansion. Absent Scrooge’s supervision, Dewey spotted canoodling with Parrot Hilton. Reportedly wrote nephew Donald, a deckhand in U.S. Navy, back into his will. Member since 1947. — Matthew Herper Excerpted from Forbes Magazine Website

You might notice that Forbes has set Scrooge’s wealth at $8.2 billion but that a little research (see the cartoon left) sets it at one multiplujillion nine obsquatumatillion, six hundred and twenty-three dollars and sixty-two cents. Perhaps Forbes couldn’t track all of the assets kept in Scrooge’s Swiss bank accounts. And they’ve left out of their short bio his most important characteristic and the one that gives him his name – he is a very, very mean duck with his money and prefers to hang on to it and watch it accumulate rather than spend it.

Scrooge gets his name from Ebenezer Scrooge, the main character in A Christmas Story, which you can read, of course, free of charge, by downloading our audio e-book, and has much of the original Scrooge’s personality but has been perhaps ‘disneyfied‘ into someone a bit more lovable than the Dickens character.

But Ebenezer Scrooge didn’t just pass his name to a wealthy cartoon duck he also gave English a new noun:

Scrooge

noun

A stingy person: miser, niggard, skinflint.
Informal penny pincher.
Slang cheapskate, stiff, tightwad.
See give/take/reciprocity.

So you could say, ‘My father is a real scrooge, he never spends a cent and keeps it all in the bank.’ or ‘Don’t be such a scrooge! I’m only asking you to lend me 50 cents!‘

Not perhaps the most useful word to learn but still, at this time of the year, you wouldn’t really want to hear it directed at you. So, give a little and avoid being called a scrooge!

A Christmas Carol : New Audio E-Book

Posted on December 18, 2007 by admin