Teacher Discussion Forums

Yes, I really appreciate teaching materials that use different accents. Students hear me (west coast American with traces of a different accent from early childhood, highly modified from years of speaking to English learners) and British is the norm taught here (though many of the native teachers ha...

Well, for sick leave, as I said, they probably figure in exact days, as they are paying. And in your example it is clarified. I think there is some ambiguity possible, and as I said, each organization would have it defined, written down somewhere so you could ask your boss or look it up. I was think...

When I went to London I was shocked by the variety of accents, none of which matched my image of how English people speak. Are you sure there aren't any British accents that omit the j before u, as in American? Are there any American accents that juse it?

In Russian there are different characters for u and ju (and a/ja, e/je) They often pronounce juniversity as university because that's how it is in Russian. Interesting use of "take off." Means "fake" or "imitate" or "put on" right? I might say "this movie is just another take off on shakespeare."

Interesting, I hadn't realized tuna was pronounced by some as tjuna. I had to get used to thinking more about all this in Russia, but I hadn't thought of it as an accent difference in English. [long explanation of hard and soft consonants, vowels, and hard and soft signs in Russian deleted] cute/coot

There are some subtle differences, but as far as the basic information goes, 1-4 seem to say the same thing. 549 is not acceptable. 550 is. More than 550 is possible. "More than 550" does not include 550. But there is a sort of strangeness to this. 550 shouldn't really be printed if it isn't accepta...

Yes, it's hard to come up with a natural example from a given one lacking context. We tend to change some particular point but really, in a natural setting there's always a context that determines the wording. It seemed easier to me to switch to a different example with more personal relevance. Even...

You aren't necessarily asking how many times and how long the person has been to London. Probably not, in fact. The more likely question for that would be "How much time have you spent in London since last January?" Maybe something happened last January and the questioner wants to know if you've see...

Yes, as an American I'd use a different phrase, one in the perfect. "It's been great seeing you" perhaps. I can't agree with the idea that it refers to the actual moment of first seeing the person. "I'm glad I caught you" or "I'm glad I saw you before you left" would seem natural. Or maybe if you ca...

What about 'works' and 'runs' as in cars.

Surely there's something here other than just the inanimateness of the subject?

The car is running again. The car works well.

Yes, something about the book example caught my eye, as containing a grain of plausability. I might say"This book is a good read" I might also say "it's a quick read." I feel pretty confident that the sentence as listed is incorrect, but there may be some other, very similar expression used in some ...

I recently read "Winter in the Blood" by James Welch. I just loaned it out to a friend so I can't review the language right now, but if you look it up on Amazon you can view an excerpt. There are some words specific to the American west Ranch lifestyle but I think they can be looked up or easily exp...