After our lesson on cat idioms and another on dog idioms, it’s time to take a look at some other animals.
Instead of idioms we are going to look at some vocabulary related to animals. All you have to do is read through the following short text and guess what the missing words are:
I took my young daughter to the zoo for the first time recently.
In English we have a few different ways of saying goodbye.
Goodbye and bye bye are two phrases that English learners use but they are actually not common for native speakers to use. Goodbye is a little cold and bye bye is a kids' phrase!
Let's take a look some better ways!
Here are some informal slang phrases you can use with friends.
Catch you later
Later
So long
Gotta go
See you later/soon/next time
How are you?
I'm fine, thank you.
'I'm fine, thank you', is an answer we use so often to this question that we don't really have to think about what we are going to say. The reply comes almost automatically whenever we hear it beinng asked to us.
But how about if we ask the same question in a different way?
All these questions mean 'how are you?', but your task is decide which is the best response. There are many ways you can answer but only one is correct from the three possible replies.
Friday, March 20 is the first day of spring in the Northern Hemisphere.
Spring is a season. There are four seasons in a year, spring, summer, autumn and winter. Each season is marked by different weather and hours of daylight.
It's easy to know when spring is on the way. The Sun rises earlier in the morning and sets later in the day. The days also start to get warmer.
A negative description of a rich and powerful person.
Those fat cats in government don't care about the poor.
Has the cat got your tongue? is an expression we say to people when we want them to speak but they aren't.
Tell me why you are late again. What's the matter, has the cat got your tongue?
Adverbs modify other words apart from nouns and pronouns. For example:
He was driving.
He was driving dangerously. - here the adverb modifies driving and gives us more information about the action.
These are the five types of adverbs:
Adverbs of Manner:
She sings beautifully.
We ran quickly.
A prefix is placed at the beginning of a word to change its meaning.
Examples of prefixes include:
misunderstand, misplace, misprint
unaffected, unwanted, unconformable
discourage, disallow, disappear
Re is a prefix with the meaning again, back or it indicates repetition.
A phrasal verb is a verb that has two or more words.
They are basically made of a verb and a particle.
For example:
Turn up means increase volume: Turn up the radio, I love this song!
Call off means cancel: They called off the football game because of the bad weather.
Take back means return: I need to take back these books to the library.
Sunday marked International Women's Day _1_ the world.
The day when millions of people recognise the _2_ of females and call for gender equality.
Backed by the United Nations, the goal of Women's Day a is to _3_ world more freedoms and opportunity for women.
Women still earn earn _4_ than men in the workplace and are not promoted as often than men.
In some countries women are denied _5_ education, forced into marriage and are at risk of sexual abuse.
Learning new words is probably the best part about languages. We find a new word, learn what it means, memorise it and then try to use it naturally in a conversation.
Do you have a note book where you keep a list of new words and their definitions? Many English learners do.
Doesn’t it feel like every time we learn a new word, we forget an old one! It seems like our brain only stores a certain number of foreign words so when we add a new one, our brain deletes and old one! Why is this?
