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.
Minimal Pairs are pairs of words (and sometimes phrases) which differ in their sound by just one element. They are an incredibly useful tool in the TEFL teachers’ bag and if you haven’t started yet, you should learn about them and use them! Mostly minimal pairs are used as pronunciation […]
Jargon is a specialized language used by people in a certain profession, job or activity. To an outsider it may seem unintelligible, but to a member of that group it is obvious and useful to explain sometimes esoteric points. Like many other groups, English teachers have their own jargon:participle, false […]
Does the rule, I before E except after C actually work? Here we are using a concordancer to check whether it’s true or not. The results may surprise you. This example demonstrates an approach to using a concordancer in investigating a particular aspect of language. NB The results were exported […]
Homophones are words that sound the same but with very different meanings. The words are usually spelt differently or, if they are spelt the same, come from different roots. For example, the words may be spelt the same, such as rose (as in the flower) and rose (as in the […]
Homographs are words which have the same spelling but different meanings. They may or may not have the same pronunciation. Here the word has the same spelling and pronunciation, but different meanings: bear – beə (a big animal living in Yellowstone park) bear – beə (to carry a burden or […]