How To Pronounce Past

Like the people of other nations, Thai people face many problems when trying to learn English; some of these problems are cultural and some are more rooted in the many obvious differences between the two languages. Different age groups or students of different levels may not always face the same problems. A class of intermediate children is likely to have different problems to those of an adult class of beginners. One issue that can be quite frustrating as a teacher is rooted in the Thai culture of not wishing to lose face. This often leads to students being shy and unresponsive in class. They are scared of making mistakes in front of their peers as this would cause them to lose face. Another issue that is based on culture and can also be frustrating for a teacher is a tendency...  [Read more]

If you have never taught English to complete novices before, the prospect of spending an entire lesson speaking with students who don't comprehend a single word you say may seem frightening. Teaching absolute beginners differs from teaching other courses, as any ESL teacher will tell you. It can be difficult, but it may also be one of the most enjoyable and gratifying language levels to teach. Every new word your students learn is important at this level, and the greatest approach to teaching it is to be as creative and funny as possible. Generally, teaching the letters and numbers should be one of your first priorities. You will lay a solid foundation for everything else your students will learn by teaching them the letters and numbers at the start of the course. Ascertain that your...  [Read more]

ESL students whose first language is Italian certainly have many advantages over some students who speak languages less closely related to English. The Foreign Service Institute (FSI) of the US Department of State, which recently categorized languages into how closely they were related to English and how long it would take speakers of those languages to reach a certain level of proficiency in English, placed Italian in the category of languages most closely related to English. Indeed, Italian speakers have the advantage of familiarity with the Roman alphabet, and the two languages share many similar grammatical structures and even similar-sounding vocabulary items. At the same time, Italian students of English still encounter many difficulties relating to the...  [Read more]

During the late seventeenth century while James, Duke of York, was renaming New Amsterdam. The vowel ' as in 'man' was lenghtening in certain contexts. In words like 'laugh' and 'path' and 'pass' wich end in unvoiced fricatives, in words like 'dance'and 'plant', which end in a nasal and an s or t, and in words where the ' was followed by r, that short vowel began to grow long. The older pronunciation of 'dance was d'ns, wholly acceptable today to english speakers outside the cultural area dominated by London, then it became d':ns. It was not until the nineteenth century, that this long ' decided to migrate to the back of the mout and become the α: which is charachteristic of southern speech today. It is a source of mockery, or reluctant admiration, among provincials and...  [Read more]

In a world full of languages how does one place the English language' Most languages have a full history going back thousands of years. Can this really be said of English' No, but we can say that the history is full, one full of war and violence as well as compromise and inclusion. We might start in the year 449 AD in the island of Britain. At this time the Anglo-Saxons invaded Britain as the Romans left to defend their homeland. The local Celtic people quickly adapted the ways of the German tribe and we saw the beginning of English, it is said that the majority of its words can be traced to this. As the next thousand years progressed we saw the invasion of the Danes, French Normans as well as the influence of the Church. This leads us up to the time when this...  [Read more]