Category: English Vocabulary

The Easter Bunny!

Ahhhh…It’s March and Easter is around the corner. It’s on April 4th this year. Every year it changes due to religious calendars, but it always falls on a Sunday. During this month there will be several Easter egg hunts and other Easter activities for kids to Enjoy. I thought I’d write about some of our traditions and introduce some Easter English vocabulary as well.

An Easter egg hunt is for kids of all ages. People put candy, coins or small presents in plastic eggs and then they hide them all over a park or garden and let kids find them. Last year I went to 4 huge Easter Egg hunts and my kids came home with loads and loads of plastic eggs and candy. Some people use dyed hard-boiled eggs for their Easter egg hunts, but this is less often because if you leave out the eggs too long in the sun, they could spoil and make you sick.

Dying eggs is a huge tradition. You can buy a kit with dye, stickers and other things to decorate your eggs with. The dye is in the form of a tablet and then you drop the tablet into water. After boiling your eggs, you can then dip them in the colored water. There are also plastic wraps you can put on your eggs that will shrink and fit completely around the egg when you dip the egg in water.

Let’s not forget about the Easter Bunny…. On the night before Easter Sunday when all of the children are sleeping, the Easter Bunny goes into the houses and leaves chocolate bunnies, marshmellow chicks, and other types of candy. Also, he may leave toys for the kids. He puts them in a Easter basket usually.

One of the songs that kids sing for “Easter is Here comes Peter Cotontail.” Below is a link to the lyrics and song. Enjoy!

http://www.brownielocks.com/bunnytrail.html

What’s your profession?

It’s always good to know the different professions, so you can talk to people easily and carry on a conversion.

An architect is a person who designs houses and buildings. A landscape architect is a person to designs gardens and parks.

In the restaurant, a waiter (male)/waitress(female) is the person who takes your order and brings you your food. The chef or cook is the one who cooks the food.

In an airplane, the pilot flies the plane. The navigator is the person who plots the course. The people who serve you food and take care of you in other ways are called flight attendants. They were called stewards(male) and stewardesses(female), but now they are not called that anymore.

A lawyer is the person who defends people in court. The judge is the person who presides over the courtroom and makes decisions.

In the tech industry, you have the programmer or developer who codes the programs. You have the software tester or quality assurance analyst who tests the software. Lastly, you have the documentation writers. They are the ones who write the user guides for the programs.

Then there are the fun jobs like the circus performers. They work various jobs in circuses. They include: tight rope walkers, the ones who walk on a rope way high up in the air. There are also clowns which like to make kids laugh. The lion tamers are the people who are in charge of the lions. Acrobats are the ones who turn flips and perform stunts.

A Million ways to say “That’s great!”

I think English has a million of ways to say, “That’s great!” Okay, maybe not a million, but definitely a ton! Here are a few:

That’s good
Awesome
Fantastic
Wonderful
Super
Super-duper (It’s a little silly, but it still works.)
Fabulous
Groovy
Woohoo
Sensational
Terrific
Superb
Tremendous
Beautiful
Excellent
YAY
Yahoo
Yeehaw (That’s the Texan way!)
Perfect
Clever
Yes, that’s it
WOW
Dynamite

Learning ways to say good-bye in English!

Here is the link to podcast #3. This podcast is about different ways to say good-bye in English.

http://yvonnecrawford.podbean.com/mf/web/s4tx7e/podcast3.mp3

Below is the script of the podcast. Please leave a comment if you have any questions!

***
Hi my name is Yvonne and this is The English Guru podcast #3. Today I’ll be talking about different ways to say “goodbye” in English. After I repeat the word, I will give you a little time to repeat the word after me. Try to mimic the intonation as well as the sounds.

The most obvious way to say “good-bye” is to simply say, “good-bye.” Repeat this, “Good-bye”

Another way is to just shorten it by saying, “bye.” Repeat, “bye”

You can also say, “bye-bye,” but that is mainly used when speaking to young kids and they will also say it back. Repeat, “bye-bye.”

Other ways to say “Good-bye” are:

“See you later” Repeat, “See you later,”

A very slang way of saying “See you later,” is to say, “Later” or even more slang, “Later, dude.” Those would be used by young people or with close friends. Repeat, ‘Later.” Repeat, “Later dude.”

Another slang expression is to say, “Ta Ta for now.” It just means, “Bye for now,” which is another way to saying “Good-Bye.” Repeat, “Bye for now.” Repeat, “Ta Ta for now.”

A few more examples are:

“See you tomorrow.” Repeat, “See you tomorrow.”

“See you” or ‘See ya” Repeat, “See you.” Repeat, “See ya.”

Here are a few very polite ways of saying “Good-bye.”
“Have a good day.” Repeat, “Have a good day.” “Have a good afternoon.” Repeat, “Have a good afternoon.” “Have a good evening.” Repeat, “Have a good evening.” “Have a good night.” Repeat, “Have a good night.” “Have a good weekend.” Repeat, “Have a good weekend.” And “Have a good week.” Repeat, “Have a good week.”

Lastly, as I pointed out in podcast number 2, you can also say “good night” as good-bye, when you leave someone after about 8pm at night. Repeat, “Good night.” “Good night” “Good night”

This is the end of podcast #3.

Learning greetings in English

Below is the link to Podcast #2. It will help you learn various greetings in English and when to use them.

Here is the script of the podcast in case you need to follow along:

Hi, my name is Yvonne. This is The English Guru podcast #2. Today I will be speaking about various greetings in English. There are a lot of them and you use them in various situations.

For example, you can say, “How do you do?” when you meet someone, but in the USA, we don’t use this as much anymore.

What we usually say is “Hi, How are you?” The response would be, “Fine” or “I’m fine, thanks and you?”

So, let’s practice.

“Hi! How are you?”

“I’m fine too, thanks!”

Another greeting would be to just simply say “Hi” or “Hey” or “Hello.” You can say those as you pass someone on the street. It is a polite way to say that in the United States if you see someone in your own neighborhood in the grocery store, for example.

“What’s up?” is a greeting that is used more now. You would use this with people you know fairly well. You wouldn’t use it with your boss or someone you have just met.

You can also say, “How’s it going?” You can say this with friends or people you have just met.

People also use, “Good morning, good afternoon, good evening and good night,” depending on the time of day.

“Good morning” can be used from the wee hours of the morning until about 10am.

‘Good afternoon” and “good evening” are not used often in English, but you can still say them and some people do.

Good night is used right before you go to sleep. You would not greet someone with “Good night.” It’s more of a way of saying, “good-bye.”

Next time I will talk about different ways of saying good-bye in English. Have a great day!

Practicing the Alphabet

This first podcast is for beginner English students. It will help you practice the English alphabet.

http://yvonnecrawford.podbean.com/mf/web/cnqx64/podcast1.mp3

Enjoy! I hope to be making more podcasts soon. Feel free to leave me a comment if there is a particular topic you’d like me to discuss.

Below is a copy of the podcast script, in case you want to read it while listening to the podcast. However, it is probably best to listen to the podcast at least 1 time before reading the script.

Have a great weekend!

**********************************************************

Podcast #1

Hi, my name is Yvonne. This is The English Guru podcast #1 and today we are going to start at the beginning with the alphabet. Repeat the letters after me…A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H-I-J-K-L-M-N-O-P-Q-R-S-T-U-V-W-X-Y-Z

Learning how to say the letters properly is important for when someone asks you to spell your name or the street you live on. Let’s practice that.

My name is Yvonne. You spell it Y-V-O-N-N-E. Now you try with your name.

I live on smith Street. You spell it S-M-I-T-H. You can give it a try too.

Sometimes on the phone it’s hard to hear the letters of the alphabet and some letters like d and b sound the same. Because of this some people spell things like this:

I live on Branch Street. B as in boy, R as in Rat, A as in Apple, N as in Nancy, C as in Cat and H as in Hop

You can practic that and then come back for podcast #2 where I will talk about greetings.

Speaking about Sports in English

As an English teacher, in the past a lot of my students made mistakes when talking about different sports. Sometimes you use the verb ‘play’ before the sport name and sometimes you don’t. I’m going to list a few of the expressions when speaking about different sports in English.

These sports need the verb ‘play’ before the sport:

I like playing tennis.
I like playing football.
I like playing baseball.
I like playing basketball.
I like playing squash.
I like playing lacrosse.
I like playing hockey.
I like playing rugby.
I like playing soccer.

However these are used with out using the verb ‘play’:

I like running.
I like hiking.
I like swimming.
I like sailing.
I like surfing.
I like skiing.
I like curling. (A very bizarre sport, I might add.)
I like ice skating.
I like roller blading.

Leave a comment and let me know which sport you like! Personally, I love to hike.

Making conversation in English

So, you’ve said ‘hi’ and you’ve told you new potential friend your name and asked them theirs. Now what?

Usually people start by asking questions like:

“What do you do (for a living)?”
“What are you studying (in college)?”
“Where do you live?”

You can keep things very light. I know in some countries it’s okay to ask someone how much money they make, but in the states, it’s not polite. In fact, rarely do people tell others how much they make even if they are pretty good friends.

Here’s a role play you can do now:

Me – “Hi, How are you?”
You –
Me – “I’m good, thanks! What’s your name?”
You –
Me – “My name is Yvonne. What do you do for a living?”
You –
Me – “Wow, sounds fascinating! I’m a teacher. I really love my job. Where do you live?”
You –
Me – “Me? I live in South Carolina. What kinds of things do you like to do in your freetime?”
You –
Me – “I love to go hiking and swimming and pretty much anything that you do outdoors. I’ve got to run now. It was nice meeting you.”
You –
Me – “Good-bye!”

Some basic phrases to learn in English

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!

Learning cooking words in English

Here are some cooking vocabulary that you may find useful:

To bake – This is when you cook something in the oven. It is usually referring to making something sweet like a cake or pie. “Today I baked an apple pie and it tasted great!”

To cook – This is when you prepare food using heat, but not usually in reference to something sweet. “Peter cooked me a fabulous meal last night.”

Meal – This is an entire seating of eating food.
Breakfast – The meal you eat in the morning.

Lunch – The meal you eat at noontime.

Dinner – The meal you eat in the evening.

Recipe – The directions given to make a spefic type of food.

Ingredients – The various foods you need to make a recipe.

Here is an example of a simple (and I mean simple) recipe.

Ingredients:

Peanut Butter
Bread
Jelly

Directions:
First take 1 slice of bread and spread peanut butter on it. Then take 1 more slice of bread and spread Jelly on it. Then put the 2 pieces of bread together and you have made a Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich.

Take a few minutes and write out your own recipe. Post it as a comment here if you’d like some feedback on it.