Archive for August, 2012
Crazy Collective Nouns Posted by Gabriele on Aug 21, 2012
A collective noun is the name of a collection of people, animals, or things that can be spoken about as a whole or group. One of the many oddities (and annoyances) in the English language is the number of different collective nouns that exist. Some of these collective nouns are likely to be familiar to…
New words in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary Posted by Gabriele on Aug 20, 2012
Every year the publishers of the Merriam-Webster add new words to their printed dictionary. The new words being added this year come out tomorrow! This year they are adding 100 new words to the dictionary that they have been tracking and gathering evidence on related to usage over several years. A word has to be…
Expressing degrees of certainty with modal verbs and adverbs Posted by Gabriele on Aug 19, 2012
Today I would like to talk a little about expressing different degrees of certainty using modal verbs and adverbs. To keep this discussion as simple as possible I will only be using the modal verb ‘will’, but I will be introducing a number of adverbs that can be used to express degree of certainty with…
American Culture – The 4th of July Posted by sasha on Aug 18, 2012
Hello everyone! My name is Sasha, and I’m pleased to introduce myself as a new video producer here on the Transparent English blog. I’m an American guy from the great city of Detroit, and I currently work in Beijing, China as an English teacher and blogger. If you’re interested in all things China, you can…
Verb Tenses: Present Perfect Simple vs. Present Perfect Progressive Posted by Gabriele on Aug 17, 2012
Today we are taking a look at two closely related verb tenses in English, these tenses are: present perfect simple and present perfect progressive (also called: present perfect continuous). Both of these tenses are used to express that an action began in the past and is still going on or has just finished. In many…
Foreign Words in English (Part VI) Posted by Gabriele on Aug 16, 2012
Over the last six months I have written a series of posts on different foreign words that have found their way into the English language. This is the last post I’m going to write in this series. If you haven’t read my other posts in this series you can easily link to them here: Part…
Summertime Outdoor Movies Posted by Gabriele on Aug 15, 2012
Watching outdoor movies in the summer is a great way to spend a night! The first place that might come to mind when you think about seeing an outdoor movie is a drive-in theater. A drive-in theater is an outdoor movie theater that people drive their cars to and then sit in their cars to…