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vocabulary

If I was or If I were

Average: 3.9 (77 votes)

Why is was used in the first sentence and were in the second?

If I were a millionaire, I would buy a yacht.
If I was late, it was because I got stuck in traffic.

Were for unreal situations

Use were when talking about imagined, hypothetical situations.

If I were you, I would book a flight now.
If you were an animal, you would be a cat!
I would ask her out on a date if I were ten years younger!

Let's talk about our jobs and practise english vocabulary

I think that it would be helpfull to practise english vocabulary by describing our jobs, what we do and how we earn money.

Thanksgiving in America

Average: 3.7 (26 votes)

November 27, 2014, is Thanksgiving Day in the United States.

_1_ 1863 Thanksgiving has been an annual holiday in America.

The holiday _2_ a harvest festival celebrated by the Pilgrims in 1621, and is held in the US on the fourth Thursday in November. A _3_ holiday is held in Canada, usually on the second Monday in October.

Can you find these ten mistakes?

Average: 1.6 (1516 votes)

Here are ten sentences. Each one has a mistake. What are the ten mistakes? As you read the sentences, think about grammar, spelling, parts of speech and word forms.

Write your answers in the comments area below.

1 - This trousers are too tight for me.

2 - Have you ever seeing a monkey in the wild?

3 - She's been living in London since six months.

4 - Its much colder today than yesterday.

5 - Driving in bad weather can be danger.

6 - We are begining to see more and more birds in our garden.

7 - Are their more of those biscuits?

World Children's Day

Average: 4.4 (23 votes)

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.

Vocabulary Quiz

Average: 4 (10 votes)

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!

In the news: Philae, Rosetta and the comet

Average: 4 (18 votes)

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.

Quantifiers for uncountable nouns

Average: 3.4 (48 votes)

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.

Vocabulary Game

Why we don't play a game? It's the following: I'll say a word and the next person to reply will define its meaning and write a sentence with that word and then write a new word.

My word is: casket

Movie Review: Interstellar

Average: 4.1 (20 votes)

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.