English Semester

🤔 Have you ever wondered what the difference is between these words⁉️


1️⃣ 🐢 (Turtle 🆚 Tortoise)
1. Turtle: Flatter Shells. Water lovers🌊
2.Tortoise: Dome Shell. Land lovers🏞

✅ On land the turtle is ungainly, but in the water it is very agile.
✅ While his family was visiting the desert, Lucas came across a tortoise eating a piece of cactus.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

2️⃣ 👤 (Alone 🆚 Lonely)
1. Alone: Whitout company.
2. Lonely: Sadness due to no one being around.

✅ I don't feel comfortable when I'm home alone.
✅ Sometimes I feel very lonely.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

3️⃣ 🥷 💰 (Rob 🆚 Steal)
1. Rob: Who or where it happened.
2. Steal: What was taken.

✅ Someone robbed the bank.
✅ They stole my computer.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

4️⃣ 🌊 (Sea 🆚 Ocean)
1. Sea: Smaller and it is partially enclosed by land.
2. Ocean: It has no boundaries.

✅ The Mediterranean Sea separates Africa from Europe.
✅ The Atlantic Ocean separates Africa and South America.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

5️⃣ 📖 (History 🆚 Story)
1. History: Real past events.
2. Story: Real or imagined events.

✅ I'm studying European History this semester.
✅ The book tells the story of two roommates.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🆔 @EnglishSem 💥

🔰Learn vocabulary from the audio!


▪️ Mutt

My dog was a mutt that we picked up off the street years ago.

A 'mutt' is a dog that has parents that are two different types of dogs. It is a combination instead of a purebred dog. Notice the following:

✅ This dog is actually a mutt.

✅ We have a bunch of little mutt puppies.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

▪️ Sweet

He's very sweet and fun to play with.

'Sweet' used like this is another way to say nice. Notice the following:

✅ Sometimes she is sweet, but sometimes she can be terrible.

✅ He is a sweet boy but not very interesting.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

▪️ Do tricks

Can he do any tricks?

A 'trick' is an action that you teach your dog to do. This can be shaking hands or rolling over. Notice the following:

✅ He works in a circus teaching animals to do tricks.

✅ I spent a lot of time teaching my dog to do tricks.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

▪️ Half the time

He does only one trick and he does it only maybe half the time.

If you do something 'half the time' you only do it fifty percent of the time, the other fifty percent of the time you don't do it. Notice the following:

✅ Half the time you come to work late.

✅ She spends half the time in the library.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

▪️ Falls over dead (or play dead)

We point a finger at him and go "bang, bang" and he plays dead.

When something 'falls over dead' it falls to one side because it is dead and can't stand up.  When an animal 'plays dead' it acts like it is dead and doesn't move. Notice the following:

✅ Some animals play dead to escape predators.

✅ If you eat that you will fall over dead.
〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰
#Vocabulary
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🆔 @EnglishSem 🎤

🇺🇸Todd: James, I saw on your desk you have a nice picture of a dog.

🇺🇸James: Yes.

Todd: OK. Tell us about your dog.

James: My dog's name is Piper. He was a mutt, a homeless dog that we picked up off the street about four and a half years ago.

Todd: Oh, wow! So what kind of dog is he now?

James: He's a yellow lab, golden retriever mix. He's very very sweet, very very fun to play with, really really nice.

Todd: Oh, that's great. Can he do any tricks?

James: No.

Todd: No.

James: We can do one trick where we point our finger at him and go Bang Bang Bang Bang and he falls over dead, but that is the only trick he can do and he only does that maybe half the time.

Todd: OK. Does he bark a lot?

James: Usually no. Usually he's pretty good.

Todd: Pretty quiet.

James: Mm,hm!

Todd: OK. Is it a male dog or a female dog?

James: Yeah. It's a male dog.

Todd: So, no puppies.

James: No, puppies.

Todd: OK. Would you like to have another dog, another puppy?

James: It would be fun in the future but not for awhile.
〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰
#Transcription ✍
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🆔 @EnglishSem 🎧

📖 English grammar can seem quite easy compared to some languages, but a small mistake can easily change the meaning of what you want to say.

📝 So here are some important rules that you should keep in mind when you speak and write English.


1️⃣ 🔸Adjectives and 🔹adverbs:
Make sure you use adjectives and adverbs correctly.
🔸Adjectives describe, identify and quantify people or things and usually go in front of a noun.
🔸They don’t change if the noun is plural.
🔹Adverbs modify verbs, adjectives and other adverbs and usually come after the verb.

For example:
✅ He’s a slow driver. (adjective)
✅ He drives slowly. (adverb)

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

2️⃣ Use the correct conjugation of the verb:
Remember to change the verb to agree with the subject. The main subjects you need to be careful with are he, she and it because they have a different form to the others.

For example:
✅ She has two cats. 
❌ She have two cats.

Remember also that when you describe something using ‘There is/are’, the verb must agree with the first item you mention.

For example:
✅ There is a sofa, some chairs and a table. [Singular]
✅ There are some chairs, a table and a sofa. [Plural]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

3️⃣ Connect your ideas with conjunctions:
If you want to connect two ideas or short phrases, you can do so by using a conjunction.

For example:
✅ I’m studying English. English is important. 👇🏻
✅ I’m studying English because English is important.

The most common conjunctions are:
and – [addition]
because – [to give the reason]
but – [to express contrast]
so – [to describe a consequence]
or – [to describe an alternative]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

4️⃣ Never use a double negative:
In English there are often two ways to express a negative concept.

For example:
If you want to say “the room is empty”, you can say:
✅ There is nothing in the room. OR There isn’t anything in the room.

The words ‘nothing’ and ‘anything’ have the same meaning, but ‘nothing’ is used with an affirmative verb, and ‘anything’ is used with a negative verb.
 
This rule applies to other words like:
〰️ nobody – anybody
〰️ none – any

This is also true of the word ‘never’ when you talk about experience.
You can say:
✅ He’s never been to the U.S. OR He hasn’t ever been to the U.S.

The meaning is the same but in the second sentence the use of ‘ever’ means you need to make the verb negative.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🆔 @EnglishSem 💥 🎓