Teacher Discussion Forums

Thanks Lorikeet! Does it mean that in the following utterance: I can't find my umbrella. I think I could have left it in the office. replacing "could have left" with "could leave" would render the sentence grammatically incorrect? What I would like to know, as a non-native speaker of English, is the...

"He must be rich" is our logical assumption, based probably on somebody's observation, and therefore "isn't he?" is to me the ideal question tag to this particular sentence.

Hi,

Please correct me if I am mistaken in the understanding of the difference between these two utterances:


He could go home.- it was possible for him to go home but it's unknown if he did.


He could have gone home.- it was possible but he we know he didn't.

Many thanks for your comments.

Thx fluffyhamster and everyone else for your interesting remarks which I have taken into consideration. I will write more after writing the first chapter which should happen quite soon. I have changed the topic and I am writing an analysis of humour according to Sperber and Wilson's Relevance Theory...

Hi everybody! :)I am writing a MBA paper on the language of advertisements on the basis of relevance theory. I am thinking of changing the topic slightly and try to analyse jokes instead of ads because I think I can find more jokes than advertisemnts for my research. I have already written 3 pages w...

HI!I am writing a diploma paper and right now I'm at the stage of collecting materials. I don't really know what I am going to write about as the topic is not the one I wanted to get. Well to cut the story short, the topic is "Creative teaching". The paper isn't supposed to be longish ( on average 1...

I have a lesson on Present Perfect vs. Past simple and I am trying to think of a game/roleplay which would help Ss understand these tenses. Any suggestions?
Many thanks,
Maciek

Hiya!!
I would like to know, if you guys use flashcards while presenting new vocabulary items to students. I know that a lot of books suggest using them, but, because it's so time-consuming, many teachers prefer to write words on blackboards. Let me know your own ways.
Cheers,
Maciek

Hi, Lolwhites is right saying that we should try to avoid using metalanguage. With students it's better not to use things like 'repetitive grammar pattern', as one of my friends once did during a lesson.Language must be meaningful to students, otherwise they get discouraged and simply won't understa...

Hi! I agree with the last post. You can't see TV, you watch it. So definitely there's a difference between 'see' and 'watch'. The verbs mentioned in the title seemed to me quite obvious at first glance but, having read the posts, I started thinking about the distinction. Sometimes easy things turn o...

Can anyone explain to me the difference between ''how do you mean?" and ''what do you mean?''. I also would like to know, if there's a longer sentence comprising mainly prepositions than this one: ''Come on up from out of under there''.- To me it sounds odd and I doubt, if there's anyone who has eve...

Hi everybody! In my opinion the Internet is a great help in the process of learning a new language.It not only provides you with tests, quizzes or even books on-line, but also gives you an opportunity to speak English or any other language you want with folks all around the world. This way you can p...