Vocabulary – the words which make up our language.
This category of articles is all about these words and how we use them and sometimes how they affect the way in which we teach English.
Taboo Words (sometimes known as swearwords, curse words, or profanity) are those words and phrases which some people find shocking or offensive. They can often cause problems for TEFL teachers and learners of English. In general, the best advice is to avoid both using and teaching taboo words in the […]
A Synonym is a word which has almost exactly the same meaning as another word. For example: student – pupil old – ancient Note: Compare this with antonyms which are words of opposite meanings. In English, there are no perfect synonyms. Two words may be very similar and appear identical […]
This article details the spelling rules for turning singular nouns in plural nouns. Note, for a look at the general principles of singular and plural nouns, see Singular and Plural Nouns. Most nouns in English are regular. To make them plural we simply add -s to the end: singular – […]
To form a regular adverb we simply add –ly to the corresponding adjective. slow > slowly woman > womanly autonomous > autonomously However in some cases adding –ly is not a straightforward matter and a few changes are required. Spelling Rules -ic With adjectives ending in -ic you need to […]
Spelling is the order in which letters are put to make up words. Many languages have phonetic spelling, in other words, each letter represents a certain sound, however in English this is not the case. An English letter can have many different sounds. For example, the letter c can be […]