Having your lessons delivered

Last week we worked on the different kinds of passives.  Here's a nice way to review.

http://www.engvid.com/english-grammar-passive-causative/

EngVid.com has a collection of grammar presentations waiting for you.  All you have to know is the name of your learning target for the hour you are studying.  Search for it and BOOM- instant lesson.

Of course that's not all you need to do if you want to change your English.  Watching a videoed lecture is never going to help, unless you start using your English right away- and then regularly- whenever you can.  There are just four ways to use your English:

1. Listening
2. Speaking 
3. Reading
4. Writing

Let's choose one.

LISTENING: Watch this classic kids' video. Each time you here that "Service Passive" do something simple like touch the screen, or, if you are Japanese, touch your nose.  That's ACTIVELY listening.



Warning: Do NOT take Cookie Monster.  He is not a native speaker.  It might be useful to try determining what his basic grammar problem is, though.





READING: Next try to find it when reading.  Try reading this poem and tell me why it's all in the passive.  Do the same thing. Just point at the screen where you see the passive.





WRITING: Write a piece on how little you actually need to do for yourself to get a pizza.  Think of how much work your €20.00 did for you.

Start like this "My money is amazing.  Look at what it did for me.  It got my wheat planted.  Then it got it harvested and ground into flour.  It got my tomatoes planted, picked, cooked and pulped.  It got my cows fed, sheltered and milked. It got my milk turned into mozzarella cheese..."

Then get a pizza delivered tonight.  Domino's do 2 for 1 deals on Tuesdays.  Hit that.





SPEAKING: This is the easy one.  When you are talking to someone complain about everything you need to get done before next week.  Having someone teach you about the passives again shouldn't be on that list though...

Post a response here if you like. Or you could write a response on your blog and leave me a link here.

Lock and Load.

That's right it's time to load up.

A major reason for this blogging thing is to assemble the best sites you can find for helping you get the answers you need fast when you are writing.

For your armory, get a good English learner's page on grammar in your own language. Then find one just in English.  It's good to have a least two sources.  Remember that you need to use your time in class for questions that you can't find answers to and for practice, which is really why you are here.  You could have got grammar lessons in your own country, right?

Here's one in English.  It's like a little YouTube channel of grammar presentations at a whiteboard.  One of our Russian students showed it to me last year.  He's working as to help Russian students find school and university places now here and in the UK.

On the site you can search for the topic you are learning about.  You can also compare your teachers' lessons with these teachers' lessons.  Watch one or two a week and then use them.  People around the world are watching them but they don't have a pub full of Irish people down their street.  We want you to learn the grammar ideas as fast as possible so that your English becomes as correct and clear as it can become.  We want really good USE of English.

This website is based in Canada.  It's called EngVid.com.  It's great!  Soak it up! (Get all of it quickly as quickly as a sponge takes up water)  There's even an IELTS section for Ibrahim!   Lock and load! It's time to gear up. (You are not required to watch the ridiculous "Commando Gear Up" scene but if you do just watch the first 48 seconds. Mine was a truly wasted youth.)



(This same scene had a big impression on this kid Alex who proves that the Lock and Load scene didn't just make a big impression on me.)