Tuesday Quick Tip: Battle of the Commonly Misspelled or Misused Words

Good morning, dear students!

I hope your week is off to a good start!

I have a cool graphic for you guys today.  It compares the definitions of words that are commonly spelled incorrectly or used incorrectly in English. Take a look and see if any of these words are words that you confuse sometimes!

This graphic comes from a site called YourDictionary, a site I found recently that I would like to recommend to all of you.  This online dictionary offers dictionary and thesaurus services, and can even show you a word in a quote or example and give you a word list.  Here's an example of a dictionary entry!  This is a great tool to use, because sometimes very formal dictionaries use complex words in the definition of the original word, and the whole definition-seeking process gets really complicated. 

Enjoy the graphic and the new dictionary tool!  And tell me in the comments, which pair of these words is the most easily confused?  Which pair was new for you?

Happy Tuesday and happy studying!

Making Words Plural

Good morning, dear students!

I have a graphic to show you today, from www.allaboutspelling.com.  It shows the general rules for how to make most nouns plural.

It can be difficult, even for native speakers, to know when a noun needs to have ''s'', ''es'', or a big change when we change it from singular to plural.  Look at this chart below to remind yourself of the rules!

Happy Thursday and happy studying!

Tuesday Quick Tip: The Pronunciation of -OUGH-

Good afternoon, dear students!

I have a great little entry for you today about the pronunciation of the letters ''ough''.  It's quite a popular combination of letters in English, if you didn't know, but can produce  A LOT of different sounds. Check out this sentence below:

''A rough-coated, dough-faced thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough.  After falling into a slough he coughed and hiccoughed.''

There are 9 different pronunciations of ''OUGH'' in this sentence.

WHATTT.
I know.

Let's look at them in order (I've done the best I can to give you a phonetic pronunciation for Spanish speakers):


Rough:  Rahf
Dough:  Doh
Thoughtful:  Thahtful
Ploughman:  Plawman
Through:  Thru
Scarborough:  Scarborah
Slough:  Slaw
Coughed:  Coft
Hiccoughed:  Hikapt



Why can one combination allowed to make so many different sounds when it comes to pronunciation?  Who knows.  I don't.  I just know you have to pronounce these things correctly if you want to be understood, so here we are, dear students.

What other words have you come across lately that end in ''OUGH''?  For those of you working on pronunciation in your English classes right now, we'll be reviewing LOTS of these words over the next two weeks, because there isn't a rule to show you how each one should be pronounced.  Somewhere in the United States, a 9-year-old child is studying these words because we have to memorize the spelling and pronunciation for lots of words in English-- especially these tricky ones.  Take heart in knowing that if small children can learn it, so can you, you genius adult professional!

Check out this video from the old show, ''I Love Lucy'', (a personal favorite of mine), where Lucy is trying to correct Ricky's pronunciation (for the record, Ricky is a Cuban immigrant so the show makes a lot of jokes about how difficult English can be).

Happy Tuesday and happy studying!

English Is Crazy!

Good morning, dear students!

I hope you all had a busy, successful Monday!  I had some great classes with my Monday students yesterday-- I worked with several people on craaaaazy pronunciation rules.  Pronunciation in English can be very difficult, because English is a mixture of old languages that never quite mixed well.  Because of that, we have a lot of words that don't sound the way we think they should.  Check out this video-- It's a recitation of a poem that makes fun of this problem in the English language.  You'll see how many words can look like they should rhyme, but they actually sound very different!

I'm going to be focus on making pronunciation corrections this week, so be ready!  Our classes won't be nearly as tough as this poem, but this should give you a good idea of how common and large the problem of pronunciation in English really is.

Happy Tuesday and happy studying!

Tuesday Quick Tip: Who vs. Whom

Good morning, dear students!

Today I want to continue our Tuesday Quick Tip theme of pronouns.  Do you remember the lesson quick tip from last week about subject and object pronouns?  You might want to review it before looking at this Quick Tip.

Today I want us to talk about the difference between the words ''Who'' and ''Whom''.

Even native English speakers confuse these two interrogative pronouns, but there is a simple way to decide if you need to use ''who'' or ''whom'':

So if your question is about a subject, you must use ''Who'' -- Who gave you that necklace?
If your question is about an object, you must use ''Whom''-- From whom did you get that necklace?

''Whom'' can be considered very formal today.  Most native English speakers don't use ''whom'' correctly, if ever, and it is widely accepted to always use ''who'' no matter the circumstance.  This isn't correct in written English, but with speaking it is common.


Try out some sentences below in the comments!  We can talk about this more in class if you have any questions!

Happy Tuesday and happy studying!

Tuesday Quick Tip: A vs. An

Good morning, dear students!

Today I want to take a moment to explain the REAL rule for when to use ''a'' and when to use ''an''.  The traditional rule of looking at the beginning of the next word and choosing ''a'' for words starting with consonants, or ''an'' for words starting with vowels, is simply not good enough!

I have a better rule for you, and it's not any more difficult than the old rule!  Check it out!

Questions?  Comments?  Does this new rule make sense to you?  Leave your remarks in the comments section below, and bring any questions you may have with you to class!  

Happy Studying!

Cognates: ITY-DAD

Good morning, dear students!

Today I wanted to share with you a quick infographic that explains a common set of cognates in English and Spanish.  Remember that not all cognate rules apply 100% of the time. Because of this, I recommend using your knowledge of cognates to decipher what a word means, but not necessarily to make a word up on your own (because it's easy to ''invent'' new words by accident this way).

Many words in English and Spanish share a common base, or root.  The beginnings and endings (prefixes and suffixes) can give us more information about what the word means, and the prefixes and suffixes in English and Spanish can be very different sometimes.  So for my first post of a series of cognate-related posts, let's look at words that end in ITY(English) and how they relate to words that end in DAD (Spanish)!

Cognates: LY-MENTE

Good morning, dear students!

Today I wanted to share with you a quick infographic that explains a common set of cognates in English and Spanish.  Remember that not all cognate rules apply 100% of the time. Because of this, I recommend using your knowledge of cognates to decipher what a word means, but not necessarily to make a word up on your own (because it's easy to ''invent'' new words by accident this way).

Many words in English and Spanish share a common base, or root.  The beginnings and endings (prefixes and suffixes) can give us more information about what the word means, and the prefixes and suffixes in English and Spanish can be very different sometimes.  So today let's look at words that end in LY (English) and how they relate to words that end in MENTE (Spanish)!

Spelling, Explained

Happy Friday, dear students!

I hope you are all doing well and are getting excited about the weekend!
I want to share a short video (under 5 minutes, I promise) that shows the interesting reason that spelling in English can be so complicated.

English, with a long history and a mixed background, has been changed, translated, shortened, and altered in other ways across centuries.  The effects of these alterations are evident in the difficulty of spelling that we all face today.  Look at this short explanation of why spelling in English can be so tricky!

It won't solve all of your spelling problems, but it does give an interesting insight into why the spelling and pronunciation of English words can be so unexpected!