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Kenneth's ESL Blog

By Kenneth Beare, About.com Guide to ESL since 1997

Instead of / from / than?

Friday July 10, 2009
Prepositional phrases can drive any student crazy! Test and improve your knowledge of common prepositional phrases with these online quizzes.

Collocations with "Equipment"

Tuesday July 7, 2009
An important step to improving your vocabulary is to not only learn the appropriate terms, but to learn the words that commonly go together with those terms. This collocation practice sheet is dedicated to collocations with equipment. Each word pair includes an example sentence.

Here are some other collocation practice materials:

Emphatic Expressions
Common Adjective Combinations
Banking Collocations

Study Skills - Make English Learning a Habit

Friday July 3, 2009
Learning any language takes practice - lots of practice! Often, it's difficult to know what you should practice.
  • Should you watch a video?
  • Perhaps, it would be a good idea to do a few quizzes.
  • Of course, you should try to speak English with your friends.
All of these are great ideas, but it's also important to build a routine. A routine will help you make studying English a habit. That's the best way to improve your English! Beginning Level Study Skills Intermediate Level Study Skills

Tense Review Charts

Thursday July 2, 2009
This overview chart shows the positive, negative and interrogative (question) forms of all the principal tenses in English with a brief description of the principal usage. The timeline tenses chart provides a handy visual reference sheet to English tenses and their relationship to the past, present and future. Included you will find active, passive, simple and continuous forms positioned according to their occurrence in time. Once your feel comfortable with your tenses, try these tense review quizzes: Past Forms Future Forms Past or Perfect?

Are you excited (about / from) the concert?

Tuesday June 30, 2009
Yes, I am excited about the upcoming concert! This question and answer pair includes an example of an adjective + preposition combination. There are many of these fixed combinations in English. Use these sheets to study some of the most common: Adjective + prepositions 1 Adjective + prepositions 2 Next, check your understanding of the use of these common combinations: Quiz 1 Quiz 2 Finally, if you'd like to read about the basics of the upcoming US election you'll find this Presidential Election Reading Comprehension useful. (with follow-up quiz and key vocabulary)

English can bring synergies to your roll-out!

Friday June 26, 2009
What?! Yes, I know this is difficult to understand. 'Synergies' and 'roll-out' are examples of typical business jargon that is sometimes overused, but certainly important to understand. This advanced level business jargon dialogue provides an easier English version as well as definitions for some common business jargon.

This dialogues list provides dialogues for every level and purpose. Each dialogue comes with key vocabulary and follow-up comprehension quiz.

New TOEFL Grammar Quiz

Tuesday June 23, 2009
The TOEFL resources are in big demand and I'm planning to create a large section dedicated to this popular exam. To begin with, I've added a new TOEFL Grammar quiz.

Here are the other quizzes:

TOEFL Grammar Quiz 1
TOEFL Vocabulary Quiz

Finally, this guide to free TEOFL study resources on the internet should also provide some help.

Prepositional Phrases

Monday June 22, 2009
Many students are under the impression that the test will be difficult.

Under the impression is an example of a prepositional phrase. Improve your knowledge of some of the most important and common combinations of prepositions used in English. These phrases are in standard usage and can not be altered. They are used to connect, explain and show the relationship between ideas and things.

Prepositional Phrase Reference Sheet
Prepositional Phrase Quiz - 1
Prepositional Phrase Quiz - 2
Prepositional Phrase Quiz - 3

New Beginning Level Dictations

Wednesday June 17, 2009
I've updated the popular beginning level dictations page with seven new dictations. Short dictations are helpful for both listening and writing practice. Each of these beginning level dictations focuses on a specific learning point such as 'at the restaurant' or 'comparisons'. The dictations include five sentences. Each sentence is read twice with time to write down the answer.

Sentence Auctions

Wednesday June 17, 2009
Holding 'Sentence Auctions' is a fun way to help students review key points in grammar and sentence construction while having some good fun. Basically, students in small groups are given some 'money' with which to bid on various sentences.
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