by Christine Burgmer | Aug 30, 2016 | Allgemein |
“They say reported speech is easy“. That’s the title of VOA’s audio on reported speech.
When we want to tell someone what someone else has said, we can do so in two ways. One is to use exactly the same words the speaker used and to use quotation marks. That is called “direct speech”. The other way is to summarise or to talk about what someone has said. This is called “reported speech”.
Have a listen to see if you can remember the rules.
by Christine Burgmer | Aug 18, 2016 | Allgemein |
British and American English have far more similarities than differences. But it’s still good to know how the languages differ.
Listen to this
audio clip discussing the differences. Did you know them all? I didn’t realise that the Americans don’t use “tag questions” as often as we Brits do. I use them a lot. Do you?
by Christine Burgmer | Jul 19, 2016 | Allgemein |
The English language is full of commonly confused words. These words may sound the same but mean different things.
Listen to this audio clip and learn the difference between “further” and “farther”, “lose” and “loose”, and “accept” and “except”.
by Christine Burgmer | Jul 14, 2016 | Allgemein |
According to VOA, every language in the world has words that express sounds. English examples are “Pow”, “Bam” or “Whizz”. Words you’ll find in comics. They’re called onomatopoetic words. More examples are the sounds a dog makes: Woof Woof! or the sounds of a cat: Meow Meow!
Listen to the audio to find out more about English onomatopoetic words.
by Christine Burgmer | Nov 18, 2015 | Allgemein |
If you’re not sure you understand the difference between the simple past (I did) and the present perfect (I have done), you might like to read or listen to the Voice of America’s useful report. A lot of language learners get these verb tenses mixed up, so you’re not alone.