Hello there!
In this regular newsletter, I sit down with a cup of tea and tell you about my recent worksheets, video lessons and social media posts. I also share study tips, cultural insights, and try to motivate you to keep working on your English fluency! Subscribe to get this newsletter in your email.
Site News
Since the last newsletter, I’ve made four new lesson worksheets and four YouTube videos:
Worksheets:
- True Story – The woman who remembers every day
- News – Ugly lawn wins international contest
- News – Woman’s unusual pronunciation of ‘broccoli’ goes viral on TikTok
- Easy English – Donna’s full closet
Videos:
- Fluent English Reading – Piano found on mountain top
- English News Words – World’s largest cruise ship
- English News Lesson – “Dead” man comes back to life!
- Livestream Lesson – Can you say broccoli?
Nick’s News
As you can see, I was very busy last week! In addition to those worksheets and videos, I also recorded 21 short videos which I will start uploading to Instagram, Facebook, YouTube Shorts and TikTok this week.
I’ve nearly completed the January yoga challenge I set out to do. I only practise for 12 minutes a day, but have done it every day this month! Awesome! ๐
British Culture
The bad weather in the UK continues with storm after storm after storm. My mum lives near the beach on the south coast of England. Those beaches aren’t sand, but shingle – small pebbles (stones). Because of the storms, a lot of the shingle has been washed out to sea and needs to be replaced.
Last week, my mum and brother went for a walk on the beach. They stopped and sat down to enjoy the view of the ocean. However, as soon as they sat down, a huge dump truck drove onto the beach and stopped right in front of my mum! She said it nearly hit her! Then four more dump trucks came and completely blocked the view.
You can imagine my elderly mum sat on the beach, not one meter from a dump truck – and that’s all she could see! Lol.
Of course, the trucks were bringing shingle to the beach, and it was just bad timing.
British English
Here are some common English phrases used to talk about the beach:
- Fancy a day at the seaside? (= Do you want to go to the beach?)
- Sun’s out, towels out! (= Quick! Let’s get to the beach before the sun disappears!)
- Let’s go for a paddle. (= suggesting a walk in the shallow seawater.)
- Grab a ’99. (= Buy a ’99’ ice cream cone at the beach.)
- It’s packed like Brighton on a bank holiday. (= This place is really crowded!)
Study Tip
I saw this exam question on X (Twitter). It’s asking which pronunciation of “for” is different. If you’ve been following my blog, you’ll know I always say “stress the important words” and “make the unimportant words smaller”. Well, in three of these sentences, the word “for” is important.
Number 1 uses contrastive stress: “for” and “against” – both words are stressed because they are opposites.
Number 3 also uses contrastive stress: “from” and “for” are opposites.
Number 4 is interesting. It means, “Do you think I am a fool?”
In this case, “What… take me” isn’t enough to give the question meaning. We need to stress “for”.
“What do you take me for?” (stress) “Do you take me for a fool?” (no stress)
And so, the answer is Number 2 ! “Can I ask fษ a menu, please?” – “for” is not important so it’s reduced to schwa (ษ).
Motivation
Last week I said that if you want to speak English, you should practice speaking English. English is a big language with so many words and phrases, but you don’t need to learn them all. In fact, you only need to learn what you use in real-life.
Do you order food in English? Learn phrases for that.
Do you have to write emails in English? Learn the phrases you need for that.
Do you want to talk about yoga with an English speaker (me!)? Learn common English yoga instructions by doing yoga sessions in English! Then come and talk to me. ๐
Thank you for joining me for tea! If you’re enjoying my blog, please share the link with your friends. I really appreciate it!
All the best,
Nick
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