Entradas

How to improve my listening skills? Cómo mejorar mis capacidades de escucha en lengua extranjera

Imagen
  It is essential to be able to understand what is said orally in any language in order to assimilate it, learn words, gramatical structures and be able to communicate. Listening attentively every production in any foreign language can make anyone learn it in order to communicate which is the ultimate objective of any foreign language speaker. Es esencial ser capaz de entender lo que se dice oralmente en cualquier lengua para aprender, asimilar, aprender palabras y estructuras gramaticales y ser capaz de comunicarse. Escuchar atentamente cualquier producción oral puede hacer aprender la lengua para comunicarse que es el principal objetivo. Thus when grammar books and language courses were not available or did not exist any learner would pay attention to any conversation, songs, speeches in the street or the mass media such as the radio, TV or the internet to learn the language and achieve its communicative goal. For example Spanish workers in Germany during the sixties of the past ce
Publicar un comentario
Leer más

Defining and Non-defining relative clauses

Imagen
In English there are subordinate sentences inside a major sentence and there are many sort of  subordinate sentences, we focus now those parts of the sentences which are introduced by a relative pronoun and these relative clauses use to describe a noun. A relative clause gives more information about the person, animal or thing that can be essential (defining) or just informative (non-defining) to the main sentence. They are very useful in sentences because we avoid writing two  sentences and contributes to the fluidity of the sentence. The most common relative pronouns are who (used instead of people), where (used for places), which  (used instead of things), whose (used instead of possessions), we can replace that instead of who or  which. Defining relative clauses define or identify the people, animal or thing we are referring,  sometimes we can avoid the relative pronoun because the subject is the same as in the main sentence. Ex. The man who is wearing a tie is my brother. The hor
Publicar un comentario
Leer más

How to write an informal letter

Imagen
  We are social beings and we need to communicate among ourselves, we can do it in many different ways but since the beginning of civilizations people have written to their friends or family members in letters.  Then in the nineteenth century after the invention of telegraph and telephone people could communicate quickly and also converse orally but in the twentieth century and onwards we also share our personal experiences, opinions, information not only using the written words in letters or postcards but also by e-mails that are sent to our relatives or friends.  These informal letters can be quite short or long and they can be creative, sensitive or emotional which depends on the purpose of it and the person addressed. The language can be colloquial and contain contractions, neologisms, etc. and though they can be quite open and imaginative, there is an essential pattern to comply for informal letters:                                                                                
Publicar un comentario
Leer más

New proposals for the new year or season

Imagen
  Everytime there is an important and joyful event looming such as spring, Carnival, New Year´s Eve, summer, etc. we launch a myriad of propositions and too many times we publicize them with the hope our family and friends will cooperate to relieve the burden to carry out them. The most common in everybody´s mind though targets their body is to lose weight. However, a healthy and well balanced diet, regular physical exercise, meditation or relaxing techniques and other daily habits should be ingrained in everybody´s lifestyle. There are some good reasonable remedies to take into account such as: -start simple and small. Do not try to meet unrealistic goals. You have to write down a realistic plan and always keep a diary of your meals, workouts and routines for you to avoid the excess or any oblivion or unaccomplished norm or procedure in your schedule. -do not skip meals nor starve at any time because you will guzzle at last and eat it up once the many meals you have skipped.
Publicar un comentario
Leer más

PARTS OF SPEECH: Pronouns.

Imagen
  There are eight parts of speech in English and almost in any language such as nouns, verbs, pronouns, prepositions, adjectives, interjections, conjunctions and adverbs.  Nouns are the words which refer to abstract or concrete things, concepts, animals, places or persons. They form the basic vocabulary in any language and they are essential in any language. At the beginning of humanity the nouns were written down by means of basic pictures which depicted the meaning of the noun in a drawing coloured or not as we can see in hyeroglyphes, then humans created more basic signs to mean the words they described the world around them, thus we have Sumerian, Celtic or Phoenician alphabets from which the latter Greek and Latin   alphabets derived.   Nouns are usually divided in English in proper because they refer to a specific person, animal or thing such as a river, mountain, country, town, etc. or common nouns to name common objects, animals or people such as coat, tree, lion, girl, man,
Publicar un comentario
Leer más

Present Perfect Continuous

Imagen
  The Present Perfect Continuous or Progressive is formed with the elements of the Perfect tenses (verb have) and Continuous tenses (verb be and Gerund in the main verb) and it describes a recent action which started in the past but it didn´t finish which is the difference with the Present Perfect Simple. The pattern uses then the elements necessary in the Present Perfect and Continuous   tenses: has (3 rd person singular he/ she / it) / have (rest) + been + V-ing (Gerund)   As in the Present Perfect Simple we also use prepositions “for” and “since” to point out to a quantity of time (minutes, days, weeks, months, years, centuries, etc.) or any date of time or specific event in the past till the present respectively.   The negative form just add particle “not” after the auxiliary verb “has/have” and the interrogative form inverts the order (has/have + subject + been+ V-ing) in which is obligatory to respond in a short answer (Yes/No, subject + has/have or negative form as
Publicar un comentario
Leer más

Past Continuous

Imagen
Past Continuous This verbal tense is also named Past Progressive and as in all the continuous or progressive tenses it describes an ongoing action, event or experience that was occurring during a certain period in the past though we do not know whether it finished or not. We must remember that the rest of languages have the same pattern in Continuous tenses as English mainly Latin derived languages such as Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese in which we use this pattern in Continuous tenses:   Verb “BE” (ser o estar) + V-ing (Gerund) In the past we use “was/were” and the main verb ending in -ing. When the verb ends in one only consonant and vowel, the consonant is doubled. Examples: The branch was hitting the wall with the wind. The driver was stopping the vehicle to avoid an accident.   I was travelling to the UK. - Yo estaba viajando al Reino Unido You were travelling to the UK - Tú estabas viajando al R.U. He / She / It was travelling to the UK- Él /Ella / E
Publicar un comentario
Leer más