Test yourself: Write a sentence that contains at least one of every part of speech. The parts of speech are: nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, conjunctions, interjections, and prepositions.
Example: Hey! Are you on a comfortable chair or not?
hey = interjection
are = verb
you = pronoun
on = preposition
comfortable = adjective
chair = noun
or = conjunction
not = adverb
These activities might help you identify the different parts of speech:
The exclamation point (!) is used to express something in writing with strong emotion. A better way to describe how to use the explanation point is to think of this:
If you imagine yourself speaking, and in your imagination you are screaming or using a loud voice, if you are mad or angry, or if you are excited or surprised, use the exclamation point when you put those words in writing.
It’s so easy!
My only suggestion is that one exclamation point at the end of a sentence is enough.
Some people, like Seinfeld’s Elaine, take their exclamation points VERY seriously. Watch:
Deciding whether to use is or has when describing someone or something is very common issue for ESL students. If you don’t know whether to use is or has, follow this guideline to help you decide:
First of all, only use is and has in the present tense if your subject is third person singular (he, she, or it).
Use is when you are describing a noun. You are linking the subject to the description of the subject with the word is. Use has when the subject possesses something, a noun.
There is one more thing to pay attention to…
If the word that follows the subject is an adjective followed by a noun, use has.
Things that you can try out include: a new recipe, a restaurant that you haven’t been to, some food you’ve never tasted before, or an activity you’ve never done before (such as rollerblading or sky diving). Trying something out means to decide whether you like something.
Things that you can try on include: clothes, shoes, sunglasses, hats, and other things you can wear. Trying something on means to decide whether something fits you or whether it is your size.
Dozens of public high schools in eight states will introduce a program next year allowing 10th graders who pass a battery of tests to get a diploma two years early and immediately enroll in community college.
Students who pass but aspire to attend a selective college may continue with college preparatory courses in their junior and senior years, organizers of the new effort said. Students who fail the 10th grade tests, known as board exams, can try again at the end of their 11th and 12th grades. The tests would cover not only English and math but other subjects like science and history.
One of the goals is to move on when one is ready rather than having to spend a number of hours in a class. On one hand, it opens room for students who need the extra time, probably allowing for more individualized instruction, but how will it affect the achievement gap? Where might this leave students learning English as a second language? Modeling programs after other “high-performing” countries is a good thing, but we have to consider that those countries don’t have the bilingual education debate that the United States has.
I asked one of my students what his plans were for the weekend. His response was, “I have a plan to go to Florida.” When you talk about what you are doing tonight, this weekend, or on your next vacation, you should make the noun, plans, plural, even if you are just doing one thing.
Examples:
I have plans tonight. I’m going to dinner with my husband. (Even though I’m doing one thing, I still use the plural form plans.)
I’m sorry I can’t attend your party. My family and I have plans. (We might do one thing or many things, but I’m still using plans.)
Isn’t one of the biggest problems in the world today that we just can’t seem to be on the same page, or that through miscommunication, we constantly mistake the others’ intent or meaning? That’s one of the reasons I’m so proud to be in a field that helps people bridge the gap between what they say and how it is understood by others. As an ESL teacher, I wonder how Google’s attempts at a speech to speech translator will improve upon that?
Google plans to make its Babel Fish a lot like a human translator; the software would analyze chunks of speech, and translate them in their entirety rather than translating word for word. Franz Och, Google’s head of translation services, claims the technology could go live in a couple of years. “Clearly, for it to work smoothly, you need a combination of high-accuracy machine translation and high-accuracy voice recognition, and that’s what we’re working on. If you look at the progress in machine translation and corresponding advances in voice recognition, there has been huge progress recently,” he says.
Anyone who’s used Google Translate knows that translations aren’t (and probably never will be) perfect, but they’re very helpful when you can’t understand a word of some foreign language. However, Google’s voice recognition also has issues of its own, and I fear that these two combined would produce a very high amount of errors. The Times also mentions the issue of different accents, a problem that Google plans to solve by making the software gradually learn the speaking habits of the phone’s owner.
Whether for business, career, or friendship, are there any benefits to NOT learning the basics of the language of your communication partners? Any ESL teacher can tell you that it’s not necessary to learn other languages to teach English, but the advantages of doing it anyway are indisputable. You can reach more people, teach more diversified groups, understand their languages’ syntactic patterns to better assist them with those in English, and have better interpersonal relationships.
I’m not afraid of the obsolescence of the field of TESOL; any translation tool will be additive…like calculators in math or spell check in Word. But just as I tell students who rely on spell check yet continue to turn in papers with “to” instead of “too”, I will also advise that using technology is grand, but it can’t (and shouldn’t) replace the good old fashioned noodle to solve the world’s problems.
Download news or stories from the internet. Keep them on your MP3 player and listen to them until you can summarize what you have heard. Take it on a walk or listen while doing household chores. Surround yourself with the language.
Listen to music. Ballads are great for catching the sounds of English. You’ll become familiar with stress patterns, how sounds are linked together, and how vowels are pronounced. Singing along won’t hurt either. You can also build your vocabulary by searching for the lyrics to any particular song.
Join a group. Don’t just join a language group. Join a hobby group (like cooking, dancing, or painting). This way, you can practice English in a context that is unfamiliar. Unlike joining a speaking group for ESL students, the instructor or group leader is not trained in ESL, and will, therefore, not accommodate your language needs. Instead, you will be forced to pay attention (YIKES!). You can still ask people to repeat if you are truly lost.
Find a sitcom and turn off those subtitles! Sitcoms are great because the characters are more active and animated. Also, this will give you a chace to connect words and phrases to images and situations. If you read subtitles, your eyes are doing the work. To train your ears, turn the words off!
Go shopping! I know you love to shop online, but eventually, you will actually need to go to the grocery store or Walmart. The next time you go, practice your listening skills by choosing something to search for in the store. Then ask an attendant where you can find that item. “Where can I find lipstick?” or “Can you tell me where the pimento stuffed olives are?” Listen carefully to the response. Test yourself by seeing how fast you can actually find your way to that item.
Listen to lectures. Local colleges often have lectures that are free and open to the public. Visit one sometime and listen to the organizational patterns of speech (transitions, main ideas, support details, introductions and conclusions).
Join an exercise class. At least three days per week, you will hear the same words over and over again. This will also give you a hands-on opportunity to connect words to gestures or actions. Repition is key.
What you are about to hear is about as clearly outlined as you can get! As you watch President Barack Obama speak about education, listen for the main idea, topic sentences, and sub-topics.
What are the examples he provides to support his point?
What is his thesis?
What information does he demonstrate in his conclusion to summarize the information?
What transitional phrases did he use to introduce each new topic?
When you can outline clearly, the coherence of your speeches and essays will follow.
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