Category Archives: Intermediate

ESL Blues – Test Your English Grammar and Then Improve It

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The ESL Blues website has a set of “progress tests“.  When you take a progress test, it will ask you questions about different grammar points, or vocabulary.  For each question you get incorrect, it will show you the grammar point you got wrong – and a practice exercise to help you understand.

For example, one of the progress test questions is:

This is your book, not ____. That is my book over there.
a) my
b) of my
c) mine
d) to me

If your answer is not correct, you will see this:
My, mine, her, hers, etc.   (It links to a practice exercise about “mine”, which was the correct answer)

The website also has a set of tests for beginners, and short lessons to help explain common English mistakes, such as Do vs. Make and Say vs. Tell.

Newsela

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Newsela is a website and app that helps you improve your reading, with interesting articles in many subjects – science, politics, famous people, sports, etc.

There are five different versions of article, with different levels of reading difficulty.  Newsela is not just for people learning English, so you should start at the easiest levels of a story and go higher if you are able. You can also take a short quiz about the story.  There are hundreds of good articles – all free – but you must create an account and Sign in.  Here’s one about emojis.

For Spanish speakers, there are many articles written in Spanish, also with 5 different levels of reading difficulty, so you can read the same story in Spanish and English.

 

Levidromes

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A palindrome is a word, or set of words, that spells the same thing if you read if forward or backward. For example: noon, mom, kayak, level, and “step on no pets”.

However, there is no official name for a word that makes a different word when spelled backwards.  For example: stop (pots); keep (peek); desserts (stressed); now, loop, reward

A 6 year old boy in Canada named Levi has suggested that we call those levidromes.  Can you think of any other levidromes?

Time Traveler

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  The English language is more than 1,000 years old, but new words are being added to the language all the time.  The website for Merriam Webster Dictionary has a new feature called Time Traveler, where you can enter a year and find out words first used in that year.

You can enter the year you were born, or the year you immigrated to the U.S. to find new words for that year.  For example, words first used in 1978 include: control key, eye candy, face time, frequent flyer, sticky note, and surrogate mother.

You can also look up the meaning of most words, and it will tell you the year the word was first used.  For example: helicopter parent.

For fun, take the Time Traveler Quiz – to see if you can guess which of two words was used first.

Verb Conjugation

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  Here’s a website – called bab.la – that will help show you all the forms of most common English verbs.  For example, you can look up the conjugation of the verb EAT.  (I eat, he eats…; I ate, he ate…; I have eaten; etc. )
You can also translate each verb into any of 27 different languages.

If you have been studying English for a while, go to bab.la, look up the conjugation for a verb, and see how many of the verb forms you know.

Find Words in Your Name

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  How many English words can you find using only the letters in your name?  For example, in the name JOHN F KENNEDY, you can finds words such as JOY, NO, KEY, NEED, and DONE.  If there is only one K in the name, for example, you can use only one K in your word.

Try this on a piece of paper using your own name – and then go to the Wordplays website, type your name in, and see how many words they find.  Many will be uncommon words you don’t know. But you can choose any of the words and see their meaning.

Wordplays also has many other ways to practice with words, such as Boggle.

Learn One Phrasal Verb Every Day

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Phrasal Verb: A phrase – a main verb plus 1 or 2 other words – that is used as a verb.
For example: pick up; take off; get away with

Phrasal verbs are very common in English.  They can be confusing because their meaning is often quite different from the meaning of the main verb.
For example, When you look at something, you see it.  When you look up something, you try to find information about it.

On the English Club website, you can study a new phrasal verb every day.  They include some example sentences, plus a little quiz to see if you understand.  You can also look at a list of 200 common phrasal verbs.