Halloween - what’s it all about?
The word ‘Halloween‘ originates from the names of old pagan celebrations - All Hallows’ Eve, the eve of All Saints’ Day.
The origins of Halloween go back to a time long before Christianity—the era when the ancient Celts inhabited Britain and Ireland. Using a lunar calendar, the Celts divided the year into two seasons—the dark winter [...]
(22 votes, average: 4.45 out of 5)
Loading ...Should Have … so many things we should have done.
He really should have taken an umbrella!
The use of ’should have’ seems to cause a lot of problems for English language learners. After learning the Present Perfect and Conditional they look at this and wonder what sort of animal it is. Well, let’s take a look at it!
Basically, we use ’should have’ to talk [...]
(109 votes, average: 3.72 out of 5)A Christmas Story: A free audio e-book for you!
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
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 [...]
Simple Past: Part 2 - Forming the Negative
Simple past : Negative form
To form the negative of a sentence in the Simple Past you need to use the past form of the auxiliary verb ‘do’ - that is ‘Forming the Negative of the simple past
To form the negative of a sentence in the Simple Past you need to use the past [...]
Simple Past: Forming the Simple Past
Video Lesson 1 of 3
Forming the Simple Past, sometimes called the Preterite tense, is really pretty easy… at least for regular verbs.
You take the subject, follow it with the verb ending in –ed and there you have it.
Example:
Subject + verb + -ed
I + play + ed
I played
And, to make it easier, the Simple [...]
Finding an Online English Language Teacher
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 [...]
More problem prepositions arriving…
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Question from Cathy in Canada:
Can we say I arrive to work at 9 o’clock or do we need to use “at”? Also can we say I was late to class or do we need to use “in”? Thank you.
Answer:
Hi Cathy, thanks for your question. The worst thing about prepositions is that there are no [...]
Hear and Listen: Easy confusion
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
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 [...]
Accepting with no regrets
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Question from English4Today member Gireesh in the United Arab Emirates:
Which one of the following sentences is correct having the meaning like “cannot accept…” ?
1) We regret to accept your letter…..
2) We regret not to accept your letter……
Hi Gireesh, I’m afraid neither one of your examples is correct. The verb ‘regret‘ is not followed by [...]
‘How about’ vs ‘what about’ : same difference?
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
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 [...]
RSS
