Do you know that since 1954, 20 November is recognised as as Universal Children's Day.
The aim of children's day is firstly to promote mutual exchange and understanding among children and secondly to initiate action to benefit and promote the welfare of the world's children.
The better your vocabulary is the easier you can communicate ideas, thoughts, and emotions to those around you.
From the informal slang we use with friends, to the more formal English of business and academia, we need vocabulary to suit every occasion. A good vocabulary makes it easier for you to understand what you hear and read. A good vocabulary will also improve your fluency by reducing your thinking time.
The harder we work to learn new words, the simpler our lives become!
Read this news article and pay particular attention to the orange words.
Ten years ago the European Space Agency launched a robot probe called Philae. Its mission was to travel six billion kilometres and land on a four kilometre wide comet that travels 130,000 kilometres an hour.
Amazingly, the Philae probe successfully landed on the surface of the comet seven hours after descending from its mother ship Rosetta.
Take a look at these two questions:
How much milk do you drink?
How many cartons of milk do buy a week?
Why do we use much in the first qustion and many in the second?
Milk is an uncountable (non-countable) noun like water, snow and rice.
Cartons of milk are countable so we use many. Other countable nouns include people, houses and pens.
Hello, how are you today? Do you want to improve your English?
Let's practise giving the correct responses to the questions we are asked. To do that we must understand the question.
For example, if Spain is the answer, what is the question?:
1) Where are you from?
2) Which are you from?
3) What are you from?
The correct answer is:
Where are you from?
(I'm from) Spain
Read this short review of the movie Interstellar. Pay particular attention to the words in bold:
Inspired by Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, Interstellar is a new science fiction movie about a team of space travellers who journey through a wormhole in search of a new habitable planet.
Had better is used to give advice about specific things (use should for general advice). It is followed by the infinitive without to.
We'd better take something to eat or we will be hungry later.
It's getting late. You'd better leave now or you will miss your bus.
I'd better go to bed, I have to be up early tomorrow.
Cut down means to use less or do less of something.
You should cut down on the amount of cigarettes you smoke.
I've cut down on how much coffee I drink. I used to drink five cups a day, now I drink two.
We're cutting down on the amount of paper we use in the office.
To completely stop eating something, usually for health reasons.
My doctor recommended I cut out salt from my diet.
A new study has found that it is better for you to work 'normal' fixed hours, like a 9-to-5 job, than shift work, where your hours change from day to day or week to week.
The study published in the journal, 'Occupational and Environmental Medicine' found that long-term shift work can age your brain, cause memory loss, reduce processing speed and result in a decline in overall brain function.
Use 'will be -ing' to talk about something that will be happening at a particular time in the future. Will be + 'ing' is the future continuous tense.
This time tomorrow, we'll be flying to Australia.
Don't phone me after 11pm because I'll be sleeping.
We'll be painting our new apartment all weekend.
She'll be leaving straight after breakfast.
This time next year, I will be rich!
Now try this future continuous quiz: