If only I had...

How many times have you wondered what would have happened if you had made other decisions? Third conditional help us to structure sentences that expressing ideas like this. In our past activity we used this conditional to create a story. With only the last sentence we had to imagine a creative story. It was a funny experience because we could use our imagination. There were a lot of incredible and unexpected stories. 

It was not difficult think in a good story, because I like writting things like this. But, it was complicated to structure all the ideas that we had in a short story. However, we enjoyed writting and reading the group´s stories.

Would you like to write a story about what you could be?

By: Nancy Sánchez

SAT exam: how good are you?

In a competitive world, people are accustomed to measuring our skills. It is necessary to know our abillities to get a job, to access at the school or only for self-interest. For this reason, many tests have been created to know how good we are in some knowledge areas. A common example is SAT exam. This tests measures the skills that anyone need for academic success in college. Maths, critical reading, evidence-based reading, writing and language are some of the skills that you will need at college. 

In Mexico we have exams that measure our abilities. I had solved some exams, like the test to been accepted at UNAM. But, solve exams in other language is not too easy. To me was not to complicated math section, but I realized that I must improve my skills in critical reading and evidence-based reading. However, to practice this kind of tests is very useful to improve our understanding of English. 

In this link you can practice SAT exam, and know how good you are in these knowledge areas.

Would you like to know how good you are?

By: Nancy Sánchez

Loanwords: a piece of the world

It is known that languages around the world have influenced each other. However, we seldom know the origin of many of the words we use day by day, or that several of these, we continue using them in their original language. This words are called loanwords, the speakers of a language have adopted words from a different language.

In English we find a lot of beautiful loanwords from all the world:

• French:
• Ballet
• Champagne
• Spanish:
• Mustang
• Armadillo
• Mosquito
• Taco
• Italian:
• Umbrella
• Violin
• German:
• Pretzel
• Quartz
• Russian:
• Vodka
• Arabic:
• Bazaar
• Japanese:
• Kamikaze
• Karaoke
• Geisha
• Yiddish:
• Mazel Tov
• Oy Vey
• Nosh
• Shalom

As you can see, there is a great variety of words that we take from other cultures. This nourishes our knowledge about the whole world and allow us to see the way in wich all humanity is connected. In this link you can find more loanwords that are used in English.

Do you know more interesting loanwords?

By: Nancy Sánchez

V.O.S. explained

Every day we hear many songs that help us to relax or to become happy or sad, according to our state of mind. However, sometimes we don´t pay attention to the lyrics. This time, I am going to report what V.O.S, by La Oreja de Van Gogh says.

The song explained that a girl was suffering because a breakup. She revealed that her life don´t have sense without her ex boyfriend. She described what she did alone at home. She begged him to ignore her attitude  if one day they find each other. She mentioned to him that she would deny she was crying and that she had forgotten everything.

But, at the end of the song, she admitted that she still loved him. This song is an example of feelings we have after a breakup.

Have you felt identified?

By: Nancy Sánchez

Let´s report differently!

I have been talking about how we can report what someone else says. But, when we do this, we could fall into several vices. For example: use all the time the verb "said". It is the most common verb in the reported speech, nevertheless, there are many verbs we can use to report. There are rules for the use of each of these. You can see them in this link. 

As you can appreciate, it is a very long list. So, if you use some of this verbs, you will show a better managment og your vocabulary in English and you will report in a clearer way what other people say. So be encouraged to use verbs like: admit, comment, confirm, persuade, promise, recommend, describe, etc. 

Do you like this other way to reporting?

By: Nancy Sánchez

What did he say?

I had talk about reported speech. It is necessary to be able to say what someone else told you. Questions can also be reported. There are two types o questions: yes/no questions and open or wh questions. It is very easy to report questions. Here are some examples:

As we can see, reporting questions is not complicated. However, we must remeber not to break the grammatical rules. In this link, you could find some rules.

Are you ready to report questions?

By: Nancy Sánchez

Let´s do an essay!

As university students, it is common for us to do essays to show our opinion about a specific topic. Compare and contrast essay is very useful when we want to compare conditions about two elementos from the same topic. For my Friday exam, I did an essay about working conditions in Mexico an the U.S.A. I used the basic structure: 

• Introduction: in which we write about what is going to treat the essay and our thesis.
• Body: in this part we should write the arguments that support our thesis and reflections about these. It is important to show the comparison between both elements. 
• Conclusion: Finally, we have to do a recap about we talked and write our final opinion. 

It is not complicated to do a compare and contrast essay if we do a good investigation and order our ideas correctly. In this link you will find extra information about how to do a compare and contrast essay.

Are you ready to do an essay?

By: Nancy Sánchez