tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23985923825636657572009-12-03T21:40:46.869+06:00English Advantagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15007166283751856780walton@englishadvantage.infoBlogger192125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2398592382563665757.post-10426491845300858782009-01-23T11:15:00.002+06:002009-01-23T11:25:49.204+06:00

Randy the Raccoon has been a part of our family for one year now and he has lots of amazing adventures, being a curious and energetic little raccoon. Of course his adventures make for great stories. So I present the Randy the Raccoon ESL learning page for children or beginners who want to learn English. At the moment it's a bit sparse, with only a few stories. Each story has a glossary,

English Advantagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15007166283751856780walton@englishadvantage.info3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2398592382563665757.post-10540055037344327492009-01-22T19:00:00.003+06:002009-01-22T19:11:37.129+06:00

The Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills was told by Parliament that its annual report makes no sense. Specifically, the report uses too much jargon and ambiguity to hide the fact that the Department has no idea what to do. Others One piece of bureaucratese was singled out as being completely incomprehensible, even to the Department itself:"An overarching national improvement

English Advantagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15007166283751856780walton@englishadvantage.info1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2398592382563665757.post-15760290150428103292009-01-22T14:35:00.000+06:002009-01-22T14:35:00.644+06:00

Obama still hasn't decided on a puppy, but hopefully he will be as good a press secretary as Clinton's cat, SocksOne day after his inauguration, Barack Obama has already brought change to the country, or at least to the White House website. It's a great resource for Americans and foreigners alike who want to learn more about the President, the Presidency and the Executive Office. One of the new

English Advantagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15007166283751856780walton@englishadvantage.info0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2398592382563665757.post-68358533823174963492009-01-21T11:57:00.004+06:002009-01-21T12:15:00.334+06:00

Some fun games from Games for the Brain. This site is a pretty good resource for webdesigners, blogs and of course English teachers because it has some pretty well-made little games, including word games. And they can be embedded in a website or blog. Thanks to Free Technology for Teachers for this link. Some of my favorite games for English language learners after the jump:And a few timed games,

English Advantagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15007166283751856780walton@englishadvantage.info2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2398592382563665757.post-70436950256030590012009-01-17T10:38:00.002+06:002009-01-17T10:48:11.682+06:00

I've put up a few sample TOEFL essays here, here and some tips for writing essays here.Now I'm going to try something slightly different. I'm putting up a sample TOEFL writing test question and I encourage readers to try to answer. Email your answer to walton [at] englishadvantage [.] com (replacing @ for at, obviously) and I'll email you back comments and notes. I will also post the best essay

English Advantagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15007166283751856780walton@englishadvantage.info2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2398592382563665757.post-72257887802341451582009-01-15T10:29:00.003+06:002009-01-15T10:41:17.154+06:00

Barack Obama attended Columbia University and then Harvard. He is well-known for his eloquence and his intelligence. But it turns out he has a nasty habit of abusing personal pronouns. According to someone who worked for his campaign, the President-Elect likes to say "for Michelle and I". As everyone knows, or should know, prepositions take the object form of pronouns. It should be "for Michelle

English Advantagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15007166283751856780walton@englishadvantage.info1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2398592382563665757.post-34927890172690339842009-01-13T16:59:00.002+06:002009-01-13T17:02:41.499+06:00

On director and writer Kevin Smith's Facebook page I noticed a comment and I couldn't tell if the poster was joking or not: "Love you films let me know if you need and editor..." I'm not sure he'd make a great editor.1) you should be your2) This is a run-on sentence. Try: Love your films. Let... 3) and should be an4) It is unclear why the sentence ends in an ellipsis. A simple period would do.I

English Advantagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15007166283751856780walton@englishadvantage.info0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2398592382563665757.post-22846561006985884162009-01-12T15:54:00.003+06:002009-01-12T16:04:40.874+06:00

Entrecard, as I've mentioned from time to time here, is a great way to get free advertising for your blog and generate traffic. If you have a blog and you're not using it, your missing out. The community is also great and one of the benefits is contests. This month one of the biggest contests in Entrecard history is being run. There are two ways to enter:1. Write about this contest and just

English Advantagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15007166283751856780walton@englishadvantage.info0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2398592382563665757.post-5882578179633782522009-01-12T08:35:00.002+06:002009-01-12T08:35:13.198+06:00

A couple more sample tests I made. These are listening tests featuring yours truly on vocals! These are designed to be similar to the iBT TOEFL listening section but they are also great practice for general listening comprehension and understanding in English.If you like these, check out my otherTOEFL resources The English Language: An academic lectureChanging Classes: A dialogue between a

English Advantagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15007166283751856780walton@englishadvantage.info1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2398592382563665757.post-27821225610787155512009-01-10T11:28:00.003+06:002009-01-10T11:35:22.332+06:00

An amusing little interview about university students. Acclaimed saxophonist and composer Branford Marsalis occasionally spends some time in the classroom. Here's what he had to say about a lot of his students:Read a transcript at: Rate Your Students.

English Advantagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15007166283751856780walton@englishadvantage.info0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2398592382563665757.post-77446271568565256482009-01-07T11:07:00.001+06:002009-01-07T11:11:38.178+06:00

Since TOEFL resources seem to be a popular topic around here, I thought I would post links to a few TOEFL reading tests I designed. They should be pretty similar to the iBT questions you would find on ETS' real TOEFL. Check them out. Even if you aren't preparing for the TOEFL, the tests should be good reading comprehension practice in English.At the end, you will get a summary of how many you got

English Advantagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15007166283751856780walton@englishadvantage.info3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2398592382563665757.post-30159408008793340842009-01-06T11:35:00.004+06:002009-01-06T11:52:25.285+06:00

With the holidays and this and that, I've had a lot of time off from this blog. So to reinvigorate the blog, and hopefully help people learn English, I've decided to publish some of my worksheets and lesson plans on this site. It's an obviously useful resource for teachers of ESL but I also will try to choose lesson plans that students can study by themselves. So here are two worksheets I put

English Advantagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15007166283751856780walton@englishadvantage.info0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2398592382563665757.post-22193722217486944012008-12-17T15:28:00.002+06:002008-12-17T15:40:45.930+06:00

Found a great blog for learning about American life and culture: Ted Landpahir's America. Ted Landphair is a journalist for Voice of America and his posts, while few and far between, provide nice coverage of what's going in America. For foreigners, I suspect it is a very interesting insight into American life from the point of view of an average American.His most recent post, Michigone?, talks

English Advantagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15007166283751856780walton@englishadvantage.info0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2398592382563665757.post-46862369114903315022008-12-12T11:39:00.003+06:002008-12-12T11:57:26.876+06:00

Sorry this blog has been dead for the past month. Mr. Computer died and no one knew what was wrong with it. It seems to be working now, but I still don't have a clear diagnosis of what the problem is/was. If any readers are tech-savvy and have suggestions about why a laptop will refuse to switch on, or switch on and then shutoff spontaneously, I'd be eternally grateful.On to news. As you may have

English Advantagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15007166283751856780walton@englishadvantage.info2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2398592382563665757.post-39214474424399283192008-11-15T12:26:00.000+06:002008-11-15T12:26:01.209+06:00

I just read a fascinating post on English in Singapore. Specifically, how they love to use modal verbs.For example, answering requests with "can":Could you please get me a copy of this document when you return?''Can!''Would you be able to make it for dinner tonight?''Can!'That's actually kind of wonderful in its literalism. It reminds me of the old joke teachers and older siblings often play.An

English Advantagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15007166283751856780walton@englishadvantage.info2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2398592382563665757.post-20282414034097885572008-11-13T16:48:00.005+06:002008-11-13T17:10:02.402+06:00

The problem with learning anything is that you need proper motivation. A natural talent for languages will help you learn English for example, but if you don't dedicate time to studying you will never master the language. And frankly studying languages can be extremely boring. So how about if you could pick up new vocabulary by learn interesting facts about the history of words? Not enough fun?

English Advantagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15007166283751856780walton@englishadvantage.info2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2398592382563665757.post-21643845901476346882008-11-03T10:00:00.002+06:002008-11-03T10:48:35.079+06:00

I've been planning a conversation lesson around the 2008 US presidential election and I thought I would share some resources I found.With any conversation class, you want to make sure you have lots of background information. When dealing with something as complicated as the US election for president, the class is going to have a lot of questions. So you either need to read up and bring materials

English Advantagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15007166283751856780walton@englishadvantage.info0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2398592382563665757.post-4318085359254203042008-09-30T09:54:00.003+06:002008-09-30T10:21:18.843+06:00

This week (Sept. 27th to Oct 4th) is National Banned Book week in the US. This week is dedicated to celebrating freedom of speech by reminding people of what happens when books are banned. Societies and communities that refuse to let people read suffer from stagnation. Unless we are exposed to ideas from all sources we can never learn to think critically, to develop innovations, or to be exposed

English Advantagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15007166283751856780walton@englishadvantage.info6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2398592382563665757.post-56965496606430149702008-09-28T13:49:00.005+06:002008-09-28T14:17:22.053+06:00

In a recent post, I talked about mondegreens and silly lyrics in pop music. Last night while watching Mama Mia, I came across another pop song that serves as a fabulous teaching tool because it illustrates a very common error for ESL students. ABBA's "Money, Money, Money" has the lines: Money, Money, MoneyMust be funnyIn a rich man's worldI think they mean that it must be fun in a rich man's

English Advantagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15007166283751856780walton@englishadvantage.info1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2398592382563665757.post-72663245930786648262008-09-20T15:06:00.002+06:002008-09-20T15:06:00.572+06:00

Some Business English for you guys. One of my classes the other day had a really hard time understanding the difference between:A budgetTo budgetTo budget forTo be on budgetSo, I'll briefly explain how we use these terms. It's important because using them incorrectly can definitely lead to confusionA budget is a financial document that lays out how you plan to use your money OR how you did use

English Advantagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15007166283751856780walton@englishadvantage.info1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2398592382563665757.post-69694816830335453272008-09-15T10:24:00.002+06:002008-09-15T10:24:01.017+06:00

So somebody went ahead and nominated by blog for best education blog in the Blogger's Choice Awards. I have a feeling I know who did it, and it was a good personal friend. So I have absolutely no illusions about winning. But since I've been nominated, I figure I'll try to get all the ego-love I can out of this. So if you like this blog and you think it's high quality, please click on the badge

English Advantagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15007166283751856780walton@englishadvantage.info1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2398592382563665757.post-45773666941109817222008-09-09T11:16:00.000+06:002008-09-09T11:16:00.560+06:00

So, predictably enough, many readers have written to me about my sample TOEFL essays, asking, "How are you such a genius? Your essays moved me to tears, brought a smile to my face, and changed my life forever with their simple but profound wisdom." OK, I'm exaggerating a little bit. Actually they were closer to: "You idiot! These sample essays are ok, but can't you tell us how the heck to write

English Advantagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15007166283751856780walton@englishadvantage.info2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2398592382563665757.post-17584504644557723202008-09-04T10:32:00.000+06:002008-09-04T10:32:00.167+06:00

In my post on terms for mistakes in English, I left out a whole category: Mondegreens or misheard lyrics (Mondegreens actually refer to mishearing and misunderstanding any phrase). The name comes from the American writer, Sylvia Wright who recalled how when her mother used to read her the 17th century ballad "The Bonnie Earl O' Murray.", she thought one line was: "And Lady Mondegreen." In fact it

English Advantagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15007166283751856780walton@englishadvantage.info3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2398592382563665757.post-68837506806400643992008-08-30T13:17:00.004+06:002008-08-30T13:17:00.289+06:00

So Lindsey Lohan wrote a post on her Myspace blog denouncing some comments by her father. I'm not going to get into details and the gossip. However, as the AP News reported, the post is "dash happy". It uses way too many dashes and not at all correctly.Here's an excerpt:If you have something to say to me, say it to my face- that's what i have believed my whole life- don't be a coward and say it

English Advantagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15007166283751856780walton@englishadvantage.info0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2398592382563665757.post-45735211352467467542008-08-30T10:22:00.002+06:002008-08-30T10:24:05.865+06:00

Another writing tip that will help you on the TOEFL writing section or when writing an academic essay. Using words and ideas to transition from one sentence to the next and one paragraph to the next will help your reader to understand you. Without transition words, your essay can make little sense.Transitions can be accomplished through the use of transition words. Transition words that link

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