Wednesday, January 13, 2021

Excite - how to use it correctly - exciting or excited? Exciting news


 Hello everybody. I am Angela Lansbury IPP and VPPR of Braddell Heights Advanced..

 I am your Language Evaluator. 

Excite

Word of the Day

 Excite verb, 

I excite, 

I will excite, 

she will excite, he, 

she or it always excites us., 

Excitement noun, 

exciting adjective, 

excited (past) and passive. I am excited. I was excited. 

Table topics is exciting. She always excites us.


Confusions?

excited - passive

exciting - active

excite - not to be confused with exit

exiting - leaving

exciting - arousing interest and emotion

Toastmasters Practise

Join a toastmasters International Club to give speeches of 5 to 7 minutes and sometimes longer. visit a club online as a guest for a chance to give an impromptu one minute speech introducing yourself and commenting on the theme of the day, then one to two minutes in an impromptu Table topic.

Useful Websites

toastmasters.org find a club

About the Author

Angela Lansbury is a semi-retired teacher of English and English as a Foreign Language and English as a Second Language and French. 


About the Author


Cappuccino - how do I remember the spelling?

 Cappuccino. I have just learned it.

To see two Cs, and two Ps.

(But not a double n, no no!)

Spelling so simple it will make you smile. From Angela Lansbury. You will also enjoy my other amusing and useful blogs on travel and dressing in exciting and elegant outfits.

travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com

dressofthedayangela.blogspot.com

You would also enjoy learning English from the Language Evaluator, a role featured at many toastmasters meetings.

About the Author

Angela Lansbury, author of Quick Quotations. English teacher and home tutor for many years in the UK and Singapore. Gives speeches and workshops online.

See Angela currently and in recordings

Harrovians toastmasters club, UK

Youtube (recordings by Kensington. Recordings on Learncool open to members of Toastmasters International who contact Judy of IPA (Indonesian Professional Association) toastmasters Club.

Braddell Heights Advanced Toastmasters club first Wednesday evening each month Singapore time, 7 pm until roughly 10 pm. Also third Saturday afternoon from 2 pm until roughly 5 pm.Angela is Immediate past president and curent Vice President Public Relations

Sign in to:

bha.learncool.sg/meet

Sunday, June 12, 2016

Soundalikes: brake and break - present and past verbs, future tense

Brake now or you'll break it.

Brake - noun
Examples: use the brakes, stop a car with the foot brake, park using the hand brake break - verb
present tense I break bread with them, you break a lot of things, He/sh/it breaks, we break for tea at 4 pm. Regular events / conditions: Fine china breaks easily. break - noun; examples: we take a break at 11.30, we have tea breaks
Past simple past broke (he broke it, she broke it, they broke it) Passive (verb to break) It is broken! Compound Past I have broken the rules several times you have broken it she/he/it has broken it Distant past (day before yesterday, event preceding another past event) I dropped it and broke it yesterday but it had already been broken in several places I had broken it last weekend but didn't tell them until yesterday. Quick reminder: I break (present or regular action), I shall break (future), I WILL break (future determined and insistent - implying don't you or anybody try to stop me. Will is often used by mistake because second person is you will and many people are not taught and do not teach themselves the fine distinctions you can make with traditional use of English tenses. Angela Lansbury, English teacher and tutor.

Friday, May 27, 2016

Soundalikes: Hole and whole; raise and rise, taught and taut, wet and whet

Soundalikes are a constant source and sauce, of confusion and amusement.

hole - gap in cloth, earth, paper or any other substance, often round, or irregular - when long and thin it would be called a slit in cloth or a crevice in the ground

raise - to grow plants; in the USA to bring up children - Americans would say, "I was raised in New York,"; the British would say, "I grew up in London; I was educated in Scotland; I was brought up by my grandmother; African saying: It takes a village to raise a child
raze - cut, as you do with a razor and a razor blade

taught - past tense of teach
taut - tight

Wet - moist, opposite of dry
Whet - used in the phrase whet your appetite, to arouse

whole - entire, used in the phrase the whole is more than the sum of the parts

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, language teacher and tutor.

Monday, May 23, 2016

Soundalikes - who knows about the rose?

knows - present tense of verb to know, third person: I know, you know, he knows, she knows, it knows, we know, you (all -plural) know, they know
nose - part you breathe through in the centre of your face

rose - flower
rose - past tense of rise
rows - lines of similar objects

rouse - to wake from deep sleep
rows - angry arguments

You can make up an amusing sentence or rhyme:

The rows or roses, planted in rows
Climbing where, nobody knows
Want to find them?
Follow your nose.

Angela Lansbury, English teacher

Saturday, May 14, 2016

Soundalikes or Homophones: few; phew; peak; peek; war, wore, ware, wary, where

I've just been learning Chinese where the word ma can be pronounced in five ways with different meanings. The same applies to many English words.

few - opposite of many (but see my post under the grammar blog on few and a few)
phew - exclamation of surprise, often relief
peek - sneaky look, either quick or with half closed eyes or through a slit
peak - top of a mountain, often pointed
war - country declares war, so every national and citizen is obliged to fight against those of another country, used metaphorically for a serious battle
wore - past tense of wear
wear - to put clothes or jewellery or hats on your body
where - place where, question where?
ware - be aware, beware - to be alert, watch out for, and notice, or be prepared for, especially danger (beware of the dog - notice often seen on gates or doors)
wary - adjective, describing a person or object - he was wary of ...  the child / dog was wary of strangers
warily - adverb - a verb is a doing word, an adverbs adds - warily: walk / proceed warily (eg we stepped warily from one stepping stone to the next along the stream which was quickly turning into a raging river
weir - barrier for water - the water often flows over, through and under
we're - short form or contraction for we are
whore - pronounced h o r e as in horse, old-fashioned word for prostitute or woman of loose morals who sleeps with anybody either for money or fun. Beware of saying my whores (pronounced hors) when you mean my horse. When you say horse you hiss at the end of the word, like a snake. Whores is like h o r z, ending like a bumble bee sound. I sat through a speech in Singapore when a man talked about his h o r e s. I had been daydreaming for a moment and came back to the speech. Something about the English liking whores? Was he talking about short skirts or morals? Surely not? Was it humorous speech? He continued. The hobby of the English - the whore's tail, feeding the whores, the expense of the whores, reading about whores, eating the whores, liking pets, no whores in Singapore, - whores racing; eventually I realised that it was a horse.
hors d'ouvre - the french drop the last letter of many words. The h at the start is silent. Hors is pronounced or.

Angela Lansbury, BA Hons, ACG, CL, author and English teacher and tutor at home and on Skype.

Saturday, May 7, 2016

Soundalikes or homophones of the day (EFL AND ESL - what's the difference?)

EFL English as a Foreign Language
ESL English as a Second Language
fort - fortified or strongly built defence building, often with walls and lookout towers, linked words fortress, fortified (adjective), fortify (verb)
fought - past tense of fight (not to be confused with thought, which is a noun and also the past tense of think, and fraught - mixed in with or stressed, for example, this scheme is fraught with problems
muscat - grape variety
musket - gun (old fashioned rifle you had to charge with a compressing plunger which used a ball to push the gunpowder down the barrel, dangerous - even to to people using them)
road - paved or tarmac wide path for vehicles, cars, lorries (US trucks)
rode - past tense of ride (eg Yesterday I rode in his car. In the old days people rode to the fair on horseback. On the remote islands they rode donkeys.)

Angela Lansbury teaches English, and English as a Second Language (ESL) and EFL (English for Foreigners)  as a home tutor and school workshop leader / assistant.

What is the difference between EFL and ESL? EFL you start from scratch, teaching tenses and simple vocabulary at elementary level. Often to people passing exams. ESL your pupils already speak elementary English but often have mistakes brought in from speaking another first language. You have to correct mispronunciations, deal with pigeon English and Singlish where the same words are used by the pupil and their family and friends and everybody around them in a different way. ESL users often need conversation rather than written work. They need help correcting job applications.

You usually teach EFL entirely in the language you are teaching, such as English. In the Berlitz method, and from the Earworms discs, the pupil learns to speak by hearing the words repeated.

ESL, however, is often required by people who speak fluently but have poor pronunciation. Adults in offices need technical vocabulary for their work. Those in service industries need polite forms for dealing with customers (for example as a hotel receptionist). I would be teaching them to say, 'May I help you?, rather than phrases which sound rude, aggressive, demanding, threatening, such as a correct direct translation from (Mandarin) Chinese, 'You want to buy or not?'