Home Study: Practice English with Karaoke

Learning English can be made even more fun by singing. Singing can help you with pronunciation, accent, reading, and listening. You can also build your English vocabulary with more conversation style words, and slang. 

So, let look at how you can use karaoke to enjoy learning English.

Grammar Activity: A, An, & The

"A", "An", and "The" are called articles, and they are difficult to use. Let's look at an example paragraph.

Lyon is the third largest city in France. It is near the border between France and Switzerland. There are two parts of Lyon: New Lyon and Old Lyon. Old Lyon is my favourite because of the old, 15th century buildings are beautiful. It is built around Lyon Mountain, so there are many stairways that connect the streets. The cafes in Lyon are famous for their strong coffee, and delicious. On my last day in Lyon, I had an espresso, and a strawberry tart. 

Click on "read more" for more information.

Fun In English: Play? Go? Do?

Student: I play swimming every weekend

Teacher: Oh really? You go swimming every weekend?

A common mistake. In some languages, talking about games, sports, and fitness activities is easy. For example, Japanese uses one verb "do":

"I play chess" = chesu shimasu  (チェスをします)

In English, we usually use go, play, and do. Which games, sports, or fitness activities do we use them with? Let's look at some examples.

Business English: A Great Textbook for Telephoning In English

As always, there are many textbooks using the phone (smartphone, home phone, etc) in English. In my fifteen years of ESL teaching, "Telephoning in English" is the best for ESL learners who work in an international business.

There's a lot of non-native English speakers, so ESL learners get to listen to accented English. In business, you may often speak to people from Germany, Italy, France, and other non-English speaking countries. Telephoning In English will help you get used to different accents.

Telephoning In English is not easy. The speakers talk more naturally (fast), and, again, have strong accents. This is good because that's what you will hear in real business situations.

 Telephoning In English covers taking messages, asking about late deliveries, and more. There's even a unit on ordering a pizza. So, you can practice different types of business telephone conversations.

Study Tip: If you're in an English speaking country, a good way to practice your telephone English skills is to order a pizza. The words you will need are very common (pepperoni is  pepperoni in most countries), and it's excellent practice.

You can order Telephoning In English here.

Business English: Answering The Phone & Taking A Message

Communicating on the telephone in a second language is much more difficult than face-to-face conversations. You can't see the other person's face, or body language.

In this post, we'll look at how to greet a business caller in English.

First, let's look at an example of bad telephone manner:

It's one o'clock in the afternoon. Phone rings three times at ABC Company.

Receptionist: Hello.

Caller: Hello? Is this ABC Company?

Receptionist: Yes. What is it?

Caller: May I speak to the sales manager, Bob Jones?

Receptionist: He's not in right now.

Caller: I see. Do you know what time he will be in the office?

Receptionist: Three o'clock. Please call back then.

Caller: Okay. Thank you. Bye.

Receptionist: Thank you. Goodbye.

The grammar in this conversation was fine. So, what communication mistakes did the receptionist make? Think about your answers, then click, "read more".