Know your word forms: Maximizing your vocabulary!

As an English learner, you must be facing the necessity to learn new vocabulary. How do you do it? Most likely, simply by memorizing, maybe you took a step further and found out how to use associations to facilitate the process; you also might be using one of the numerous vocabulary apps. However, not everybody is aware of a method that can help you increase the number of words you know without any extra efforts, and the way to do it is through the usage of suffixes and prefixes.
In very simple terms, a suffix is a letter or group of letters at the end of the word, while a prefix is a letter or a group of letters at the beginning of the word. Their purpose is to make a new word; for example, in the word changing, the final -ing is a suffixe which is added to the word change. 
In one of the previous articles I already talked about the typical suffixes of different parts of speech, and here I'd like to tell you how you can use this information to improve your vocabulary.

1. Changing part of speech by changing suffix.Basically, if you know certain correspondences between word suffixes, a great power is in your hands. Let's take a look at the table below. 

‘Sorry, honey, I’ve changed the locks.’ Getting rid of Bad Grammar

As boring as it sounds, there's no improving your writing or speaking without improving your grammar. Obviously, it's not the only thing you can do, but it certainly is just as important as increasing your vocabulary. Or almost as important :)

Recognizing and admitting your problem

So, how do you let Good Grammar into your life? First of all, you've got to make yourself aware of the typical mistakes that non-native speakers of English make. Here are some of them along with a few guidelines on how to overcome these problems:

1. Difficulties with getting the word order right.

There are two main issues here. Firstly, English sentences have a set word order and we are not allowed just to put words anywhere we want. Secondly, a typical declarative English sentence should have a subject (the thing or person you are talking about) and a verb (a word or group of words that describes an action). Now, let’s see what the word order of a typical English sentence should be.

'I need to lie down.' Choosing the right word: 'lie', 'lay' or a different 'lie'?

lie - lay - lie

How do you know which one to use? And if you do, how do you use them? Let's see...

These three little bad boys can cause lots of difficulties for English learners because they seem so similar. So, if you want to stop them from ruining your otherwise perfect life, you'll need to get to know these guys a bit better. Let's get down to business!

lie (1) - to say something that isn't true
Verb forms: lied (past simple), lied (past participle), lying (present participle)

e.g. Don't you lie to me!
I promised to tell you the truth, but I lied.
He's already lied to me, and I'm sure he'll do it again.
I have a strong feeling that you're lying to me.

Prepositions and idioms:
lie to somebody
lie about something
lie through your teeth (=say something that is completely untrue)

Free IELTS Speaking and Writing feedback from a professional IELTS tutor!

You know how everybody says that it is possible to self-study for IELTS Listening and Reading, but you can’t do it with the other two parts because they need feedback from a teacher? Well, it’s true, and I’m willing to help you with that ABSOLUTELY FREE! Let me tell you how it works :)

IELTS Speaking feedback

All you have to do is record your speech when doing a practice IELTS Speaking task (you can use these or any other sample tasks) and send me the recording to beinfashion84@gmail.com. Your audio files should not be longer than 2 minutes, the format should be .mp3 or .wma, and it would be great if you could briefly describe what you’re already doing to prepare for the Speaking module. In addition, you’re welcome to tell me a few words about yourself, but that’s optional.

Learning when to shut up. Practice Task 2 for IELTS Speaking

‘The mind is a wonderful thing. It starts working the minute you are born and never stops until you get up to speak in public.’ Roscoe Drummond

To be honest, I’ve got no idea who that Drummond guy is, but he definitely has a point. For some reason, whenever most people need to give a talk, they turn into helpless puppies, which are extremely cute and awkward, but not really eloquent. Luckily, we all know how to address this problem – just practice giving speeches!

‘It’s… There’s…That’s… What was the question again?’ Vocabulary for IELTS Speaking

We all know that in many awkward situations a smile can go a long way. Unfortunately, it’s not enough to score well on IELTS Speaking, so let’s see what else might help.

Regardless of how you see the world, when you sit in front of your examiner on the day of the Speaking test, you should have an opinion on a number of different subjects and be able to express it. In this article I’ll go on the assumption that you have no problems with the former and focus on the vocabulary that can help you communicate your ideas efficiently. Here we go!

‘It’s not what you said, it’s HOW you said it.’ IELTS Speaking Task 2

When everything is said and done, it's too late to say or do anything... so you'd better make it right to begin with!

For IELTS Speaking Task 2 you’re supposed to give a short speech (one to two minutes), also known as a long run. You’ll be given a card with the subject of your talk and the key points you’ll need to cover. You’ll also get a piece of paper and a pencil to make some notes while you’re getting ready.

The preparation time is one minute, but if you feel you’re ready before this time is up, you can tell the examiner about it and begin your talk earlier. However, I strongly advise you to use all the time you’re given since you can easily stop speaking too early. So, if you’ve jotted down all the ideas you want to mention and still have some preparation time left, think of other details you might discuss.

Well, let’s take a look at some of the common problems test takers face when dealing with this task.

Long vowel sounds /α:/, /ɔ:/, /ɜ:/

I suppose the name ‘long vowel sounds’ is pretty self-explanatory, so I’m not going to bore you with lengthy definitions. 

In this post I’m going to tell you about three long vowel sounds, /α:/, /ɔ:/, and /ɜ:/. Shall we begin?

/α:/ as in car

/α:/ is a long vowel sound generated at the back of the mouth. To make this sound, open your jaw and relax your lips while keeping your tongue flat and pulled a little bit back. In writing it can be represented by the following combinations of letters:

IELTS Listening. Flow charts

About

On IELTS, flow charts are usually used to present the stages of a certain process. The information is usually presented in the form of notes and the order of questions is consistent with the flow of the recording; that is, the answer to question 1 will come first, then there’ll be the answer to question 2, and so on.

Why it can be difficult

The main difficulty associated with this type of task is that you need to actively listen all throughout the recording, since if one answer is missed, it’s more difficult to do the following question – often test takers keep listening for the answer to question 1 when the recording deals with question 2 or 3.

What to do before listening:

Top 11 tips for IELTS Listening

I suppose you might have already done a practice Listening paper and, for one reason or another, made up your mind to explore the ways of improving your score. So, how do you go about making your results better?

Firstly, let me shatter one of the popular myths – there is actually no point in doing as many practice tests as you can get your hands on. Yes, you could score more correct answers after you’ve done a few Listening practice tests and understood the format, logic, and what you’re supposed to do. But after you’ve learned those, taking any additional practice tests is not going to help; you’ll most probably be getting about the same results. Why? Simple, if you do something several times, but in a similar way, there’s no reason you should see a different outcome; thus, to rise to a new level, you’ve got to do things differently, and there are techniques that should help.

IELTS Listening. Test format

Before beginning your preparation for IELTS Listening, let alone actually doing it, you really should find out what to expect. This article deals with the format of this paper, so let’s begin.

The Listening paper is the same for both the General and Academic modules; it consists of 4 sections (10 questions in each) with an increasing level of difficulty, and takes 30 minutes to complete. You will also be allowed 10 more minutes to transfer your answers to your Test Report Form. All the recordings are only played once, so be attentive!

Doing IELTS Reading WITHOUT reading! Skimming and scanning

If you’re familiar with the Reading Module organization and have read the article on tips for IELTS Reading, you already know that the timing in this module is pretty tight (that is, there’s not much time to do all the questions; enough, but not much). I’ve already mentioned that if you deduct the time for checking your answers and transferring them to your answer form, you’ve got just over a minute per one question – that’s right, there’s NO time for the actual reading if you’re going to answer all the questions! So, what can you do? Well, for one thing, you’ve got to move fast.

Pronunciation practice. Consonants p-b, t-d, k-g

In this article I’m going to talk about plosive consonants, which are made by creating a closure at a certain place of the vocal tract, increasing air pressure behind the closure and then releasing the air explosively. Don't worry, it just sounds scary; in reality it’s quite simple, and I'll provide videos to guide you.

IELTS Listening. Predicting answers

Strangely enough, when we listen to speech that is in our native language, we don’t hear everything, not really. Among the factors that contribute to this phenomenon is that the person we’re talking to might not pronounce some words distinctly or there may be a background noise. Besides, it’s typical of native speakers to reduce or omit some sounds, even a few of them in one word, so you can imagine what happens at the sentence level, let alone longer stretches of listening input.

So how do we manage to understand what we hear? Well, it’s all in our minds, or brains, to be more specific. Our brain is responsible for processing the information we hear, and to do this job well, it does not solely rely on what we actually hear. At times, the brain has to fill the gaps in the stream of audio input. This process is possible, among other things, because the brain stores the information related to our general knowledge, knowledge of specific subject matter, life experience, and so on.

Have you noticed that when listening to foreign speech, it’s easier to understand the things that you expect to be mentioned? Moreover, sometimes we just know what somebody else is going to say! It’s because of all that information kept in our brain, which serves as a solid foundation for further data to be built on.

Normally audio information is processed in our brain automatically, but on IElTS there are things you can do to facilitate this process, and this is where anticipation and prediction come into play.

Short vowels in Standard British English Accent. Part 2

In Part 1 I told you about some of the short vowel sounds, namely [ə] as in doctor, [e] as in bed, [æ] as in bat, and [ʌ] as in button. In this post I’ll tell you about the other short vowel sounds of the Standard British Accent.

Short vowels in Standard British English Accent. Part 1

English short vowels include [ə] as in doctor, [ɪ] as in sit, [ʌ] as in button, [ɒ] as in lock, [e] as in bed, [ʋ] as in wood, and [æ] as in bat.