Movie clips to practice English

I'll be focusing on listening practice and comprehension for a while. Of course, dropping by a study group and checking for lessons isn't the same as actual conversation practice. But the better your listening comprehension, the better prepared you will be for conversation or listening to lectures. So make some popcorn and get ready for a night at the movies...

ESL Listening Comprehension Exercises:
Learning through media (movies, music, etc.) is one of the best ways to learn a new language. The clips below will improve your listening comprehension skills, helping you to learn and practice English as spoken by normal people every day! These particular clips are from recent movies

Here's what you do: 

1. Click on the video you want to watch below.
2. Watch the video, and pay attention to it! (You can pause and rewind the video.)
3. Answer the listening comprehension questions below the video.
4. Check your answers.

Here are the Movie clips to practice English. Let us know what you think of these listening exercises. Check out the rest of the site too.


Randall's ESL Cyber Listening Lab is another good listening resource. Start with the easy ones and work up. Take as long as necessary listening and repeating

Understanding Poetry

 Listening to poetry is one of the best ways to absorb the natural rhythm of a language as well as its structures. Reading, listening to understanding poetry immerses yourself in an art form that explores cultures everywhere in the world. 


This course is more appropriate for advanced English, but intermediate learners will aslo benefit from it. The Modernist poet TS Eliot wrote that we can often connect with and read poetry in another language before we can do the same with prose. Personally, I found that to be true. I'll look for his essay to post here.

Why read a poem? Why write one? People say poetry as an art form is imperiled in our time, yet everywhere in the world cultures and individuals memorize, recite, and value various forms of poetry. This course will attempt to define this genre of writing, to discuss its particular attributes, to distinguish between good and bad poetry, to explain why so much poetry is difficult, and to isolate the sorts of truths poetry seems best at conveying. Our focus will be on modern poetry, in English and in translation.

Understanding Poetry by Margaret Soltan

Combining Sentences into Paragraphs

Putting your ideas together into paragraphs is more than just writing sentences one after the next. You'll need linking language like FANBOYS (conjunctions - for, and, nor, but, or, yet, since), and linking language to order and connect your ideas. Writing descriptive paragraphs and short writing assignments will help you practice.

Combining Sentences into Paragraphs

Letter Writing

Even though we often use email and fax to correspond today, business letters sent by post ("snailmail") are still very important. A well-structured letter is a pleasure to receive and creates a good impression.

It is just as easy to write a well organised letter as a badly organised one, because the layout of a modern business letter in English is very simple. Your address is at the top (in the middle or on the right). The rest of the letter can be in "block" format, with each line starting on the left. There should also be plenty of white space.

There are some minor differences in layout between British and American English and according to personal style. Here, however, are the key elements of a letter

Read the rest at ESL Articles: Letter Writing | EnglishClub.com

Is our spelling really getting worse?

Johanna Stirling blogs about spelling...


I read so many people bemoaning the fact that our spelling is getting worse. And most seem to blame technology. I'm not sure that our knowledge of spelling is getting worse and I don't think technology is solely to blame if it is.

The fact is that we write far more than we ever used to (and I think that's a good thing!). And also much of what we write is for public consumption. So of course mistakes are seen more. We are also ridiculously 'busy' with constant distractions, so the main problem seems to be that we don't take time to check what we've written. Even people who are complaining about other people's spelling let themselves down. I read this today:

 "Myself, i HATE to see spelling errors in texts that are supposed to have been proff-read."

It's spell checkers that get singled out for most of the blame. I was sent an article on the subject today that I really want to respond to. So I'm going to!

You can read the article Technology Spell Check Leaves Many Adults Unable To Spell here or just read me ranting about it below.

The article starts off by claiming:

Technology has left many Britons unable to spell words like "definitely" and "separate", a survey has found. It suggests that the UK has produced an "auto-correct generation" that relies on computer spell checks. The poll, which questioned more than 2,000 adults, found that around a third could not spell "definitely" while a similar proportion failed to pick the right spelling of "separate". And around two thirds (65%) picked a wrong spelling for "necessary" from a list that did not include the right spelling.

First objection: Lots of people couldn't spell 'definitely' and 'separate' long before computers were around. I remember only learning to spell 'definitely' when I realised it contained the word 'finite'.

Second: spell checkers and auto-correct are different things. The spell checker warns you that you might have spelled something wrong and encourages you to think about what you meant to write but auto-correct just changes it for you if you've written a string of letters that people often write meaning something else.

Third: I don't like their 'poll'. Asking people to choose the correct spelling when it is surrounded by wrong but plausible spellings is asking for trouble. You might automatically write 'necessary' correctly in a sentence, but when someone offers you the choice of the word with two 'c's or one 's', it makes you stop and think that maybe you were wrong. It plants the seed of doubt. So that's bad enough but here the list didn't even include the right spelling, so it sounds like people were tricked. By the way if you can't remember how to spell the word 'necessary', remember "It's necessary to have one coat (one 'c') and two socks (two 's's)".

The article goes on:

And many people are relying on spell checks - 18% said they use this all the time. Fewer than one in 10 (9%) said they never use a spell check.

Umm ... what's wrong with using a spell check? I use one all the time too. It's a good strategy to catch your typos and words you're not sure about. In fact, what worried me about this was that 82% don't use one all the time. Try it, folks, you'll like it.

Sure there are people who can't spell well - lots of them - and it's a problem. But is it really getting worse or just more obvious? Whichever, I offer two suggestions:

1) Let's not teach children that English is spelled as it sounds (phonics) as more than 50% of it isn't. Yes, they need to learn sound-to-letter correspondences, but they also need to learn about the origins of words and look at a range of strategies for coping with the complexity that is English spelling. (See Teaching Spelling to English Language Learners for ways to do this.)

2) We should all (myself included) train ourselves to pause and check what we've written before pressing the Send button. And again we need more focus on this at school - editing.

So what about you?

• Do you agree?
• Do you have any proof that spelling has really got worse?
• How do you feel about spell checkers?
• And auto-correct?
• And phonics?

Is our spelling really getting worse? from The Spelling Blog, Want to work on your spelling? Subscribe to or follow this blog for regular suggestions. Do you have a favorite spelling resource? Please share it with us.

Please introduce yourself

Are you new to Blogging English and the online self-paced study group? We really want to learn more about you and get to know one another. Tell us about yourself, and write a short introduction by answering the questions below.

Please post your introduction as a comment to this post. New study group members can comment but not post until they show interest in participation by commenting.

Answer the questions with complete sentences to write a personal introduction paragraph. Format by omitting numerals and starting the next sentence on the same line as the one before. Do not start sentences on a new line.

My self introduction

Hi All


I've been learning English at Vanessa's class since 2004. However I was absent for almost 18 months. So I don't know any  one of this class. Let me introduce myself.


I'm now 72 years old. I live now on my pension. I live in Saitama, Japan. I have several hobbies. I'm very busy for them. At first, I'm crazy about playing contract bridge. I belong three bridge clubs. I spend 5 days at my club in a month. I'm a member of three teams. Each team play team match once a month. So I go to Tokyo 2-3 times in a month.
Besides, I play 8-10 boards almost every night on BBO which I can play bridge by free. I'm eager to improve my skills of bridge but it's not easy.   


I'm learning how to play ocarina. My friend and me visit nursery home once a month and play our ocarina. We asked them to song  children songs with our music. Aged people like to sing songs.
I have to practice to play my ocarina. Because I had never good score in school. Though I've been playing my ocarina for 5 years,
I'm still a beginner of it.


My third hobby is English. I read English news on Internet everyday. I have a subscription of Washington Post. I read an article which I am interested in at least the first paragraph of it . I visited BBC news. Thanks to Vanessa, I'm now able to understand main articles almost without looking up my dictionary.


I received e-mail from Vanessa last month. I decided to learn English at this class again. 
I'm old but I have a will to lean English. 
See you.


Regards, 
Sadamu