June, 2024

Red blocks spell Grammar Quiz image that links to ESL grammar practice exercises with answers related to a previous English grammar themed English blog post to learn English online

Review Parts of Speech

It’s time for another grammar quiz on our English blog! This time we are going to review the information in our earlier post about English parts of speech. Here are the parts of speech that we discussed in that post: noun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition, pronoun, conjunction and interjection.

Let’s have a look at a few examples to refresh our memories about some of these. Then we can examine a longer passage to help us get a clear view of a more complex text.

Here we go!

Let’s begin with a basic review and find the nouns in this example:

Heather likes San Francisco because it has many amazing things to see, including a crazy orange bridge, a huge park, an island with an old prison and a famous skyscraper that looks like a pyramid!

Nouns=

people places things ideas

Heather likes San Francisco because it has many amazing things to see, including a crazy orange bridge, a huge park, an island with an old prison and a famous skyscraper that looks like a pyramid!

Ok. No problem, right? Why is this important? Identifying nouns can help you find the subjects and objects of sentences and clauses. What are clauses? The short answer is: a clause is a group of words with a subject and a verb. We are going to explore clauses in some future posts. Finding the nouns in a sentence is also useful because it allows us to think about what some of the other words are and what their functions might be.

Let’s identify some of the things that are giving us information about these nouns. First, we have some CAPITALIZATION, in ‘Heather’ and ‘San Francisco’. As we saw in our previous post, capitalization helps us identify proper nouns, which are nouns that represent specific people, places and things. We also have words that give us information about nouns. What are those called? Yep, adjectives. Try to find the adjectives in the example before you scroll down:

Heather likes San Francisco because it has many amazing things to see, including a crazy orange bridge, a huge park, an island with an old prison and a famous skyscraper that looks like a pyramid!

Ok. Now we have our adjectives. How about our verbs? Let’s find the ‘action words’!

Heather likes San Francisco because it has many amazing things to see, including a crazy orange bridge, a huge park, an island with an old prison and a famous skyscraper that looks like a pyramid!

Heather likes San Francisco because it has many amazing things to see, including a crazy orange bridge, a huge park, an island with an old prison, and a famous skyscraper that looks like a pyramid!

It is important to note that the verbs we find may look very different from each other:

likes

present tense (regular verb)

has

present tense (irregular verb)

to see

infinitive

including

participle

looks like

phrasal verb (a verb whose base form has more than one word)

Ok. Now we have our bearings* a little. Let’s look again, this time for the conjunctions, which join words, phrases or clauses together. These are so important because they help us identify the main ideas in a text and understand how those ideas are connected:

Heather likes San Francisco because it has many amazing things to see, including a crazy orange bridge, a huge park, an island with an old prison and a famous skyscraper that looks like a pyramid!

In this example, ‘because’ connects the main clause:

‘Heather likes San Francisco’

With a subordinate clause that contains information about the reason for something.

We also have the conjunction ‘and’, which connects nouns.

Let’s look at another part of speech. How many pronouns do we have in this example?

Heather likes San Francisco because it has many amazing things to see, including a crazy orange bridge, a huge park, an island with an old prison and a famous skyscraper that looks like a pyramid!

That’s right, just one: it. This is because we only refer to one noun in this example after we mention it; the noun that we refer to is ‘San Francisco’.

The last part of speech from our list that we have in the example is the preposition ‘with’. Our example does not contain an adverb or an interjection. You may be wondering about the other words, ‘many, a, an’. Some sources consider ‘many’ to be an adjective, but most people who study English grammar think of it as a quantifier**. As for ‘a’ and ‘an’, they are articles, which are often not included in the parts of speech.

Let’s try a few more short examples before we look at a longer one. Make some notes about the parts of speech in each example.

1 The red fox ran quickly in the forest.

2 The man bought two very expensive fish yesterday.

3 The woman softly whispered the mysterious secret into the man’s ear.

4 She smiled hopefully as the teacher returned the difficult quiz from Tuesday.

5 Wow!

Answers

1 The red fox ran quickly in the forest because he was looking for something to eat.

2 The man bought two very expensive fish yesterday.

3 The woman softly whispered the mysterious secret into the man’s ear.

4 She smiled hopefully as the teacher returned the difficult quiz from Tuesday.

5 Wow!

KEY: The parts of speech are colored here to match the answers above.

adjective

adverb

noun

verb

preposition

pronoun

conjunction

interjection

Finally, let’s try a more advanced example for fun. Here is the first paragraph of Ernest Hemingway’s book, The Old Man and the Sea. In this example, we are not going to try to identify all the parts of speech. We are just going to choose two: verbs and conjunctions. This will help us focus on the main ideas that are presented here and how they are connected:

He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. In the first forty days a boy had been with him. But after forty days without a fish the boy’s parents had told him that the old man was now definitely and finally salao, which is the worst form of unlucky, and the boy had gone at their orders in another boat which caught three good fish the first week. It made the boy sad to see the old man come in each day with his skiff empty and he always went down to help him carry either the coiled lines or the gaff and harpoon and the sail that was furled around the mast. The sail was patched with flour sacks and, furled, it looked like the flag of permanent defeat.

He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four
days now without taking a fish. In the first forty days a boy had been with him. But after forty days without a fish the boy’s parents had told him that the old man was now definitely and finally salao, which is the worst form of unlucky, and the boy had gone at their orders in another boat which caught three good fish the first week. It made the boy sad to see the old man come in each day with his skiff empty and he always went down to help him carry either the coiled lines or the gaff and harpoon and the sail that was furled around the mast. The sail was patched with flour sacks and, furled, it looked like the flag of permanent defeat.

Bold= Verbs

Italics= Conjunctions

This example gives us an idea about how many action words are in a more complex text and helps us understand how the language is connected. When we explore clauses in an upcoming post, we will learn more about how to view complex texts in clear ways. We hope that this review has emphasized how important it is to be able to identify parts of speech in English.

Keep reading in English to become more comfortable with identifying parts of speech and use the comments section below if you have questions about the information in this post!

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/learner-english/bearings

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/learner-english/quantifier

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Grammar Quizzes

Red blocks spell Grammar image links to new ESL grammar blog posts that cover beginner intermediate and advanced English grammar topics to study English online

Understand Parts of Speech: An Introduction

This week on our English blog, we want to talk about the question: What are parts of speech? We can think of parts of speech like different shapes of building blocks (like Legos*) that children play with. We use short blocks, long blocks, wide blocks, narrow blocks, etc. Each part of speech is like a different type of block. Let’s do a short introduction to the different parts of speech in the English language.

People, places, things and ideas are called nouns.

Let’s look at an example. How many nouns are in this sentence?

The quick, red fox jumped over the lazy, brown dog.

Remember, we are looking for people, places, things or ideas. This sentence has many words, but it only has two nouns. Let’s underline them.

The quick, red fox jumped over the lazy, brown dog.

Fox is the subject. Dog is the object. They are both nouns.

Let’s try another one.

John and his loud cockatoo** live in New York, where they go for a walk in Central Park every day, and then they eat pizza while they both have daydreams about sailing around the world on a yacht.

Ok. Now we really have a lot of words, and we have more than two nouns. Let’s underline them.

John and his loud cockatoo live in New York, where they go for a walk in Central Park every day, and then they eat pizza while they both have daydreams about sailing around the world on a yacht.

Some of these nouns look a little different from the others. This is because they are proper nouns. Proper nouns are CAPITALIZED. Proper nouns are usually the names of specific people or places. In this sentence, we have John, New York and Central Park. The other nouns are called common nouns. Sometimes, though not always, you can recognize nouns because they may have an article (a, an, the) before them.

Let’s do an easy one now. Some words replace nouns. These words are called pronouns.

Let’s look again at the first example:

The quick, red fox jumped over the lazy, brown dog.

How many pronouns can you find?

The quick, red fox jumped over the lazy, brown dog.

That’s right! Zero! We only have nouns here.

How about the second example? We have:

John and his loud cockatoo live in New York, where they go for a walk in Central Park every day, and then they eat pizza while they both have daydreams about sailing around the world on a yacht.

We have the same pronoun repeated three times: they. Each time, this word replaces the nouns “John” and “cockatoo”. Let’s look at one more.

Lauren likes Humphrey.

This sentence has two nouns. We can change the sentence:

She likes him. This sentence has two pronouns.

Let’s look at another part of speech: verbs. Verbs are action words.

The quick, red fox jumped over the lazy, brown dog.

Can you find the action word?

The quick, red fox jumped over the lazy, brown dog.

Yep, jumped.

Let’s look again at the second example. How many verbs can you find?

John and his loud cockatoo live in New York, where they go for a walk in Central Park every day, and then they eat pizza while they both have daydreams about sailing around the world on a yacht.

All the verbs in this example only have one word, but many times a verb will consist of more than one word.

Ok. Now let’s look at describing words, adjectives. Adjectives give us information about nouns. Let’s go back to the fox and the dog. What information do we have about the fox and the dog?

The quick, red fox jumped over the lazy, brown dog.

How many adjectives do we have?

The quick, red fox jumped over the lazy, brown dog.

Four! Two adjectives for each noun.

Let’s have a look at a new example and another part of speech, adverbs.

While I was sleeping soundly, I had a very scary dream about a monster that was chasing me extremely quickly.

Adjectives modify nouns. Adverbs modify adjectives, verbs and other adverbs. How many adverbs do you think are in the example?

While I was sleeping soundly, I had a very scary dream about a monster that was chasing me extremely quickly.

“Soundly” answers the question: how was I sleeping?
sleep=verb

“Very” answers the question: how scary?
scary=adjective

“Quickly” answers the question: how was the monster chasing me.
chase=verb

“Extremely” answers the question: how quicky?
quickly=adverb

Next, we should look at a very horrible part of speech: prepositions. Prepositions often give us information about time, place and movement. Many times, prepositions involve connections between words.

The quick, red fox jumped over the lazy, brown dog.

Here, our preposition is “over”. This preposition is related to the verb “jump” and the noun “dog”.

How about John and his cockatoo?

John and his loud cockatoo live in New York, where they go for a walk in Central Park every day, and then they eat pizza while they both have daydreams about sailing around the world on a yacht.

Notice that all of the prepositions in this example have objects.

Let’s look at two final parts of speech. One of them is conjunctions. Conjunctions connect words, phrases and clauses. There is a famous educational video about conjunctions.***

John and his loud cockatoo live in New York, where they go for a walk in Central Park every day, and then they eat pizza while they both have daydreams about sailing around the world on a yacht.

Here we have the conjunctions “and” and “while”. In this example, they both connect clauses. We will talk more about clauses in a later post.

Our last part of speech is interjections. Interjections are different because they are usually exclamations that don’t really connect to the other parts of speech. Interjections usually communicate emotions.

Ugh! Wow! Hey! Oh!

This has been a basic introduction to parts of speech. The more you read, the more you will begin to notice the parts of speech and identify them more easily. We will review parts of speech in an upcoming post.

Keep reading in English every day!

*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego

**https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockatoo

*** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AyjKgz9tKg

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Grammar

Green blocks spell Daily life image that links to an ESL blog post focused on English conversation and vocabulary in common real world situations to learn English online

Communicate Effectively in Phone Calls

This week in our English blog: using the phone in English! We are going to have a look at something that is sometimes very daunting* to learners in any language: communicating effectively on the phone. In the 21^st century world of email, text messages and other online methods of communication, it is often possible to avoid speaking on the phone in English.

However, you will still sometimes need to have an effective conversation on the phone in order to function 100% in English. Besides, we want to feel confident when we are working with a new language, so it is important to be comfortable in many different situations because you really never know when speaking on the phone might be your only choice for making plans, solving a problem or getting help.

Improving Listening Comprehension

Our first point of focus isn’t directly related to speaking on the phone, but it something that we must discuss if we truly want to conquer ‘phone English’. It’s about listening in general. Being more comfortable listening in English will give you an immediate advantage when you are on the phone, and this involves spending time listening.

You might think of it like a new pilot who is learning to fly an airplane. It is, of course, important to learn about all the parts of the airplane and how to control it, but eventually, you need to spend (or “log” as pilots say) a lot of hours actually flying in an airplane before you are going to develop the skills and confidence you need to be successful.

Listening in English, like flying in an airplane, needs to feel comfortable, not strange. In order to achieve this, we have to spend a lot of time practicing. Fortunately, the Internet has a lot of resources for practicing listening in English. You can have a look at English Portal’s resource page for some listening links.

3 of our favorite resources are:

TED talks: these are very popular. They have talks on many different topics. These are videos that usually have helpful visuals:

https://www.ted.com

Oh, by the way, “TED” is an acronym** that stands for: technology, entertainment, design.

BBC Reel: these are also videos and usually have topics related to nature, science and technology:

https://www.bbc.com/video

NPR: these are not videos. This is 100% listening with no help from visuals, so they are very good practice. They also cover many different topics, including many different stories about news, culture, arts, tech and current events. This is an invaluable*** resource:

https://www.npr.org

Now, to the phone!

Ok. Finally, let’s talk specifically about communicating effectively on the phone in English. Spending lots of time practicing listening is wonderful, but it is also good to have some guidelines in mind before we dive into a phone call. Let’s assume that we are not calling a friend. Our phone call might be to get information or because we need a service. In any situation on the phone, we first need to do two things:

1- Introduce ourselves:

Hi, my name is…

2- Explain why we are calling:

I’m calling to…

I’m calling because…

We may also want to confirm that we are speaking with the correct person:

Is this the ____________ department?

Are you with ____________ …?

Be Ready

Using the phone in English can be stressful, so it may help us if we are prepared with some information that the person may ask us for. This could be:

Our physical address (where we live)

Our email address

Our phone number

Our account number
(if it is company that provides a service)

Our order number
(if we have a problem with something we purchased)

This is one reason why it is so important to be comfortable with numbers!

Anticipate Questions

Another part of being on the phone in English that we should be ready for is the other person asking us questions, so remember your question words and anticipate some possibilities:

Who…?

Who am I speaking with?

Who is your insurance provider?

What…?

What can I help you with today?

What is your date of birth?

When…?

When would you like to schedule that?

When is a convenient time to…?

Also, we will probably need to use several question words:

Who should I contact for help with that?

How do you spell that?

What does that mean?

Why do I need to do this?

Can you tell me more about that?

In addition to our language, using a friendly tone of voice and using strategies for polite language can be very helpful. To explore this more, have a look at our previous blog post about making requests sound polite.

Additional Considerations

Even if we are communicating successfully, it is possible that the person to whom we are speaking may not be able to help us, so they may communicate something to us about necessity, so it’s good to be prepared to hear this type of language, such as:

You will need to…

You have to…

You must…

We also need to be prepared with certain language that will help us with communication problems on the phone. There is a question that we already use when we are speaking with anyone, anywhere and don’t understand something:

Could you please repeat that?

This is one of the most useful things you can communicate when you are learning a language, and it is especially useful here. On the phone, you can’t see the person’s mouth, facial expressions or hand gestures, so communication is often more difficult.

Other ways to say this are:

Can you say that again?

Excuse me, I didn’t catch that.

What if they repeat and you still don’t understand?

I’m sorry, one more time, please.

It is even ok to be honest and say:

Sir/ma’am, could you speak a little more slowly? I’m from France/ Japan/Brazil/etc.

Don’t be shy about telling someone that you didn’t understand. This is not your first language, and you are not a robot.

Speaking of machines, you may also have a problem with something you have no control over: technology. Maybe your phone signal or the other person’s signal is bad.

If this is the case, you can say:

I’m sorry, but I didn’t catch that, you cut out for a minute.

I’m sorry. I can’t hear you! You’re breaking up!

Or just, the very common:

Can you hear me?

Conclusion

Toward the end of the conversation, you are likely to hear something similar to:

Is there anything else I can help you with today?

Finally, it is good to know how to “wrap up” (or end) a conversation:

You have been so helpful! Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

There is, of course, another possibility. Maybe the person has not been helpful. Maybe they have been really rude. If this happens, one possible response is:

I would appreciate your not speaking to me that way.

Like anything, speaking on the phone in English will become easier as you practice it more. You will get more comfortable and confident. Be sure to check out some of the recommended listening links above. Don’t be intimidated by having to speak on the phone. Your English skills are most likely better than you realize!

As usual, here are your vocabulary links:

*https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/learner-english/daunting

**https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/learner-english/acronym

***https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/learner-english/invaluable

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Daily Life

Maroon blocks spell Reading Skills image that links to an ESL blog post focused on guessing meaning of English vocabulary by using context clues or meaning from context

Use Context to Understand New Idioms

Today on our English blog, let’s combine two of our recent topics: idioms and context. In our first post about idioms, we saw that idioms have meanings that are different from the meanings of their individual words, and in our post about guessing meaning from context, we learned that the information in a text can be very useful when we are trying to understand unfamiliar words and expressions. We are now ready to combine these topics so that we can kill two birds with one stone!*

“Kill two birds with one stone” is an idiom that uses elements of nature: “birds” and “stone”. Let’s have a look at some other idioms that use words related to nature, and try to guess the meanings based on the context. Remember, when we make our guesses, it’s not so important that they are always 100% accurate. That is our goal, but right now we are trying to make sure that our guesses are logical.

Here’s an example to get us started:

It’s difficult to talk to Emily because she always has her head in the clouds. I wish she would focus!

Our idiom: head in the clouds

Let’s look at the context. Remember that context can help us understand the connotation of a word or phrase, which is how the word or phrase feels. Based on this situation, do we think that ‘head in the clouds’ is a positive thing or a negative thing? Maybe it isn’t horrible, but it doesn’t really sound positive. The person who is speaking in this situation sounds like they are a little frustrated or annoyed, so we can probably guess that ‘head in the clouds’ is not very positive.

What about the actual meaning? Which information can help us guess the meaning of the idiom?

We have:

‘hard to talk to Emily’

Why is it sometimes hard to talk to people? Maybe they are not friendly. Maybe they don’t listen very well. Maybe they are always in a hurry. There may be other reasons as well, but this is how we can approach this process, by thinking about possible ways to explain the information that we have.

We also have:

‘I wish she would focus’

Ok. Now we have some more useful information. Emily has trouble focusing. Maybe she is tired a lot. Maybe her mind moves quickly from one idea to another. We can see from this information that Emily cannot always concentrate very well on the topic that she needs to focus on. She is not always thinking about what is happening in this moment. She is thinking about other things. This is one definition of this idiom. For more examples, have a look at this link.

Try to use these strategies when you look at each of the situations in our exercise.

Ok, here we go!

Part A

Let’s start with a few examples that have quite a lot of context. For numbers 1-5, use the context to make guesses about the meanings of the underlined idioms. Try to make some notes (on real paper if possible!) about your guesses.

Idiom: beat around the bush

Sentence: David is always beating around the bush. He needs to just say exactly what he wants to talk about.

2

Idiom: tip of the iceberg

Sentence: They found out that the politician lied about his academic record, but this is probably just the tip of the iceberg. It seems like he probably lied about a lot of other things too.

Idiom: nip something in the bud

Sentence: We really need to nip this in the bud. If we let Tommy behave like this when he is six years old, it will get much worse when he is a teenager.

Idiom: a breath of fresh air

Sentence: Wow, Soya really is a breath of fresh air. He is so polite and respectful compared to most people who you meet!

Idiom: out of the woods

Sentence: Well, that is good news, but we’re not out of the woods yet. Let’s wait and see if the project continues to go well. There are still more problems that we need to solve.

Now, for numbers 6-10, let’s try some examples that don’t have as much context to help us.

Idiom: neck of the woods

Sentence: Emad, what a surprise! What are you doing in my neck of the woods?

Idiom: a stick in the mud

Conversation:

Roger-I don’t want to go to take a yoga class.

Chelsea-Come on! Don’t be such a stick in the mud!

Idiom: take a rain check

Sentence: I wish I could go to dinner with you tonight, but I have to study. I’ll take a rain check!

Idiom: break the ice

Sentence: I get uncomfortable when I meet new people. I’m really no good at breaking the ice.

Idiom: freak of nature

Sentence: Shohei Ohtani is a freak of nature!

You can check your answers in:

1 avoid talking about what is really important

2 a small problem that you can see; in reality, the problem is bigger, or there are many problems

3 stop something before it becomes bigger or worse

4 someone or something that is positive and exciting compared to other people or things

5 free from danger or problems

6 area or neighborhood

7 someone who doesn’t want to try new, fun or different experiences

8 decline an offer but hope to accept a similar invitation later

9 make people who are meeting you for the first time feel relaxed

10 a person with unusual or amazing (often athletic) abilities

Part B

Now, let’s try to put the idioms from Part A into some different sentences:

1 I don’t come to this ____________________ very often. It’s a long drive from my home.

2 My car is leaking oil, but that’s just the _____________________. I also need new tires, a new windshield and there is some problem with the electrical system in my car.

3 You should see this new basketball player from France! He’s a ____________________!

4 Let’s not _____________________. We don’t have a lot of time to talk, so let’s get to the point.

5 Our house didn’t get hit by the tornado, but we’re not ___________________ yet. There will probably be many more tornados this summer!

6 I can’t go to the movies with you this weekend. I’ll __________________.

7 Pat is really good at __________________ when he goes to parties. He can make new people laugh so easily!

8 Come with us! Don’t be a _________________. I have heard that this new Thai restaurant is amazing.

9 I am so glad that I started meditating. It’s like a _____________________ when I start to get tired during the afternoon.

10 We need to _____________________. If we wait, the problem will only get worse.

Now double-check your answers. For each idiom, decide if the situation in the example sentence in Part A has a similar feeling to the situation in the sentence you chose in Part B.

Answers: