Sentence Your Dictionary: a great help

Dictionaries,

Hello everyone! I hope you have a  happy Monday!!

In this blog I have published a handful of links to different dictionaries  and today I want to share with you one  I’ve been using quite  a lot lately. Yourdictionary.com  has a lot of
tools to help you understand and use  a word .

It provides the user with simple and clear definitions, synonyms, quotes where the  word is used, the etymology of the word…etc,  but the tool I  like best and the main reason why I keep coming back to this dictionary is the SEE IN A SENTENCE tool, because very often, to understand  the meaning of a word  you need more than the definition. Seeing how the word is used in a sentence, seeing how the word is used in a context is a great help for the non-native speaker.

I seriously wish I had so many good dictionaries for free when I first started studying English. They would have made my life so much easier!

Word of the Day: Roast and Baked

Word of the Day, ,

Hope you are having a great week!! I can’t complain!! Apart from a visit to the hospital and another one to the doctor to have my wrist bandaged I can say that , all in all , it’s been a great week so far.

I understand  you might be a bit tired of reading about food , but that’s what I am teaching and that’s where my  brain is focused right now. In fact, I have just found a video in youtube to add to the growing list of food related posts. Keep poted !!

Today I just want to point out the difference between these two words which are very similar and therefore raise doubts

♥Both are adjectives

♥Both  mean cooked in the oven

♥Baked is used for bread, cakes and most sweet things, and also fruit and vegetables.

♥Roast  means cooked with fat, and is used especially for meat and potatoes.

LinkengPark: a nice site to practise Listening

Audio, Listening, Resources, ,

Happy Monday to you all!  And no, I am not being ironic here, I sort of “hate” Mondays like everybody else in this planet  but today I am going to share a link with you that is going to help brighten your day, especially if you like English as much as I do, or if you happen not to like it so much, yes, let’s say it, I know there are some few people out there who don’t give a damn about learning this language but still…. they need to.  So.. for both, here we have Linkengpark, a great site to help you  improve your listening skills.

I learned about Linkengpark from the sweetest person on earth, Maria Artime who, when seeing its potential, didn’t hesitate to share it with me. I thank you María. It is really helpful! Linkengpark is a very nice site to practise Listening. It offers lots of different Podcasts (6 minute English, English at work, BBC how to, ESL stories…),  Audiobooks (Pride and Prejudice, Roald Dahl ….)and Videos  (English Vid, CNN Students News, Reuters…) with transcript  so you can also practise pronunciation.   You can choose your level, from Elementary to Advanced .

A great site which I’ll be visiting very often. I hope you do, too.

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Guess Who!

Picture Description, Writing, , , , ,

Good morning folks!! I hope you are having a great week!!! Me?? So far, I can’t complain!!

Here we go once again with an activity where you ‘ll need to use your writing abilities in a game . Have a look at the mosaic below; I guess you’ll recognise most of our celebrities but if you don’t , don’t hassle , for this game you’ll need to write about one of them .

TASK.

Aim: to describe both, physical  appearance and personality, of one of the celebritities in the mosaic  without mentioning their name.

Steps

♥ Choose one of the celebrities  and without mentioning who he/she is ,write a description of both physical appearance and personality.

♥ Don’t forget to use adverbs of degree  : quite, slightly, a bit, a little

♥ Show off, I guess you can see the difference between these two sentences: I think she is 70 years old  and I think she’s a 70-year-old woman. You are an Intermediate student, let the whole world know!

♥ Write a maximum of eight lines. See what other students have done here

♥You think you have finished? Right, you haven’t !! Now,  read what you have written several times to correct grammatical and spelling errors .

♥Now that you are confident everything is Ok, click on the “leave a comment” section and write your description.

♥In class, all descriptions will be read and the celebrities guessed. Enjoy! 😉

 

 

 

 

Word of the Day: stressed or stressful?

Word of the Day, ,

Probably some  of the most popular words in nowadays society where we are always running to and fro and with little time to unwind.

Aren’t some people always complaining of suffering from stress, of having had a very stressful day or feeling very stressed?

  • Stress  is a noun.
  • Stressed and Stressful are both adjectives .

What’ the difference between Stressed and Stressful?

The difference between them is the same that exists between other pair of adjectives ending in -ed and -ing  such as interesting/interested, bored/boring, tired/tiring , annoyed/annoying…etc. Let’s see this difference:

1. Adjectives ending in -ed  express how someone feels about something (stressed)

I am interested in this book  or I am really annoyed today

2. Adjectives ending in -ing describe the thing or situation  that causes the emotion. (stressful)

It was a boring film or  The teacher’s explanation was confusing

The adjective STRESSED can be explained  as belonging  to the first group of adjectives (bored,interested…)  and STRESSFUL as belonging to the second group  (boring, interesting…)

  • Stressing is just the -ing form of the verb To Stress

Stop stressing me, please!!!

Hope it helps you improve! 🙂

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