Tag Archives: quiz

The quiz: 13 Modern Words Recently Added to the Dictionary in 2015

Dictionaries, Did you know?, Funny Stuff, Games, Slides, The English language, ,

Three years ago, a colleague of mine wrote the word “selfie” on the board. She says none of her students knew what the word meant. Nowadays, even my great grandmother, should I have one, would most definitely know what a “selfie” is, and would probably have taken one or two to send her peers.

It is said that the English language has more words than any other language in the world and it seems it might be true. The Oxford Dictionary Online stores over 600,000 words. Despite this number, new words are coined, clipped and blended all the time and although some of them are very soon forgotten, others make their way into the dictionary.
But how do they choose the words they include in a dictionary? The answer is simple: people need to use them. Basically editors watch the word for several years to see how it is used in both spoken and written English. They check to see that the word is used to express an idea clearly, and that the idea is understood. Then, when the word is seen in writing and speech regularly, it can go in the dictionary.

New words are added every year, but also words that are no longer used are eliminated.

Every year, the Oxford Dictionary selects a Word of the Year. “Selfie” was chosen Word of the Year three years ago. This year, the award has been given to the emoji (plural emoji or emojis) Face with Tears of Joy. The decision to choose a pictogram as word of the year, when it is clearly not a word, has been publicly criticized by many. But despite the selection of this word being frowned upon in many circles, the question to consider is: if words are used to communicate, aren’t emojis also used to communicate feelings and emotions in this new digital era?

So, as stated above, lots of new words enter the dictionaries every year. In this little quiz below you will find some of the most recent additions to the dictionaries

Are you up to the challenge?

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Most Common Pronunciation Mistakes Heard in Oral Exams

Common Errors, Create your own stuff, Phonetics, , , , , , ,

Even for the most confident students  taking an oral exam can be quite stressful. Twice a year, in June and September,  I  assess students’ speaking abilities acting  as both an interlocutor asking questions and interacting with students, or an assessor listening to students’ performance.

It was while acting as an assessor that I  decided to write down the most common pronunciation  mistakes students make  with the intention of  going over them ,with my own students, at the very beginning of the course.

I  have created a quiz with, what I hope, will be the last I see of these pronunciation mistakes. I hope you find it useful!

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Fun quizzes

Create your own stuff, Resources, ,

Now, as if I didn’t have enough to do I’ve become sort of hooked on this Facebook thing,which is packed with silly quizzes. I think I’m on my way to become a total nerd if I don’t put a stop to the time I spend on useless pastimes. Anyway, never in my life had I seen such a load of quiz tests . There are tests for everything , ranging from telling you what sort of person you are based on a quiz on the shoes you like to telling you what your day is going to be like when you open (virtually speaking, of course) a cookie. It can be fun at first but then it gets really tiresome.
I have found where some of these quizzes come from. Quizzes can be fun ways of learning new vocabulary and questions, at least this is the reason that has prompted me to write this post. So, visit here http://www.funquizcards.com/ and treat yourself to some fun quizzes

But there is something else : this site also allows you to create your own quiz and this is what I have done. This time a bit more educational, though.


Create A Quiz | View Scores