Month: January 2010

Here are some basic, yet important phrases you need to learn in order to start learning English.

What is your name? or What’s your name?

In English we contract some words and insert a apostrophe so, “what is” becomes “what’s”.

My name is Yvonne.

Just take out my name “Yvonne” and insert your own name.

How are you doing?

Let’s face it, people say this phrase as a greeting. People don’t really want to know how you are. They are just looking for a simple answer. So, don’t go into the fact that your knees are hurting or how you threw out your lower back. They don’t care.

I’m fine. I’m great. I’m okay. I’m good. (These are all good simple reponses.

Those are just a few of the beginning phrases to get your feet wet and start learning English!

Here are some cooking vocabulary that you may find useful:

Here’s more basic vocabulary to learn in English – weather phrases. For this post I’ll stick to the basics, but tomorrow I’ll add some weather slang!

Vocabulary:

The weather is beautiful – This means the sun is shing and the the tempature is great!

It’s windy – The wind is blowing pretty strongly.

It’s sunny – The sun is out shining with very few clouds.

It’s cloudy – Lots of clouds out.

It’s hot!

It’s cold!

It’s warm.

It’s cool.

Activity:

Here’s a fun and easy activity you can do in order to reinforce the vocabulary you just learned. Double click on the picture and print out the weather symbols. Then cut out the boxes and now you have instant weather flashcards for you to practice with!

Do you want to learn the times of the day in English?

Whether is midnight, noontime, afternoon, morning, mid-morning, it is helpful to know what words apply to what times. These times are not in stone and some people may think differently, it’s just something to help you visualilze.

early Morning – 4am to 7am
morning – 7am – 10am
mid-morning – 10am – 12pm
noontime – 12pm – 1pm
noon – 12pm
afternoon – 1pm – 3pm
mid-afternoon – 3pm – 6pm
evening – 6pm-9pm
night – 9pm until 4am or so.
midnight – 12am

You don’t have to know all of the ‘mid’ times, but they can be helpful to remember as some people might use them.

Read this dialog that took place on the telephone and answer the questions afterwards…

Fred – Hi Betty! How are you doing? Do you wanna go to the park today for a picnic?
Betty – Sure Fred. That’s really nice of you to invite me. What time do you wanna go?
Fred – How about noon?
Betty – That’s a bit early for me. Can we go in the mid-afternoon? Say 3pm?
Fred – I don’t think I can. I have a doctor’s appointment at that time.
Betty – What about in the evening when the sun has set? We can meet for a late dinner at 6pm.
Fred – That sounds great, but I can’t stay out until midnight because I need to go to bed early.
Betty – No problem, we’ll keep it on the short side.
Fred – See you then, bye!
Betty – bye.

Questions:

1. What time of day did Betty and Fred decide to meet?
2. Why couldn’t Fred meet at 3pm?
3. Why are they meeting at the park?
4. When did Fred want to meet in the beginning.
5. What time a day is 12pm?

Answers:

1. 6pm
2. He had a doctor’s appointment.
3. To have a picnic.
4. 12pm
5. noon or noontime

Do you know the English words for various parts of the face/head? Test yourself with this picture to see how you do. (Please note, I never said I could draw…)1. hair
2. eye
3. mouth
4. ear
5. nose

Learning the names of different relatives is useful in English. You can practice this by making your own family tree and then telling yourself or a friend (if you have one 😉 ) the relationships between the people in your family.

Here are some useful words to learn:
father
mother
sister
brother
cousin
aunt
uncle
grandmother
grandfather
grandchild
niece
nephew
God-mother
God-father
God-daughter
God-son

Below is a diagram of a pretend family tree. See if you can answer the questions about the family tree.1. Who is Peter’s Wife?
2. Matthew is Brian’s _______.
3. Doug is Samatha’s _______.
4. Who is Brian’s Grandfather?
5. Who is Matthew’s sister?

Answers…

1. Pauline
2. Uncle
3. Husband
4. Peter
5. Samantha

There are so many different ways to greet people in English. There is the simple “Hello.” The friendly, “Hi!” or the extremely casual “Hey!” Then you can go to the opposite spectrum and say, “How do you do?” A lot of Americans would look at you funny if said that. Most would probably say in response, “I’m fine, thanks.” However, the correct response is “How do you do?” I guess that shows that Americans don’t use that greeting very much.

Other phrases you can use are, “What’s up?”, “Waz up?” or “How’s it going?” These are used with people you know pretty well. With people you don’t know as well, you can ask, “How are you doing?”

And for saying “Good-bye”, you can say that or, “bye”, “see ya”, “see you later” or to really young kids you can say, “bye-bye.” If you have close friends you can say, “later” or “laters.”

As you can see, there are tons of options in Enlish for greetings and for saying goodbye. Just be careful not to tell your grandma, “Waz up?”