USING LIKE

" Kissing - and I mean like, yummy, smacking kissing - is the most delicious, most beautiful and passionate thing that two people can do, bar none. " - Drew Barrymore

The word like has become increasingly popular over the years. Now it is one of the most used words in all of English, particularly conversational English. It is extremely useful if you know how to use it properly.

Use 1 - Like meaning "I´m thinking about what to say" (similar to tipo in Portuguese).

Do you think you and Janet are going to get married ? don´t know...Like...I want to, but then again I´m kind of scared, you know ? Usual position: Almost anywhere.

Use 2 - Like ("be like") for reported speech or thought.

You broke up with her? Wow. How did she take it? She was like "What! After all I´ve done for you?" Usual position: After subject pronoun.

From "Como dizer tudo em Inglês Avançado" by Ron Martinez.

Do you use "like" a lot? Can you think of other uses of "like"? Apart form the ones above, there are 6 more! Check them out on 9 June.

Collocations: odd one out

Answers

I'm sure all of you must have your answers written down on little pieces of paper. So these are the verbs that do not collocate or the words that don't go together.

make ADVICE

do AN ANSWER

put off A BUSINESS

do A COMPLAINT

Did you get them right?

WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

Do you think you can work out these meanings?

*I´VE GOT THE GIFT OF THE GAB

*I WAS TICKLED PINK

*MY LIPS ARE SEALED

*I GOT HOT UNDER THE COLLAR

*IT SLIPPED MY MIND

Some peeple said that. Now you write:

number 1 next to the person who forgot something

number 2 next to the person who is good at talking

number 3 next to the person who was very amused at something

number 4 next to the person who has promised to keep a secret

number 5 next to the person who became angry and excited

Adapted from Penguin books

Answers on 2 June

TESTING YOUR COLLOCATIONS

As David Wilkins observed many years ago, "Without grammar little can be conveyed; without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed." The single most important task facing language learners is acquiring a sufficiently large vocabulary. We now recognise that much of our 'vocabulary' consists of prefabricated chunks of different kinds. The single most important kind of chunk is collocation. Self-evidently, then, teaching collocation should be a top priority in every language course.
ODD ONE OUT
One verb in each line does not collocate with the noun. Cross out the one which does not fit.
1 - accept, act on, disregard, follow, ignore, make, solicit, take
ADVICE
2 - come up with, do, expect, get, require, supply
AN ANSWER
3 - build up, close down, set up, put off, take over, wind up
A BUSINESS
4 - deal with, do, examine, ignore, reject, respond to
A COMPLAINT
Adapted from "Teaching Collocation" by Michael Lewis

Check the answers on 27 May

SPELLING THE WORDS RIGHT

As mentioned below all the words listed had been misspelled. I wonder if anybody bothered to check the right spelling of those words. They are sure very tricky words to spell. Let´s look at the right way to spell them: (the right one in red)

supercede -supersede - conceed - concede - procede - proceed - idiosyncracy - idiosyncrasy concensus - consensus - accomodate - accommodate - impressario - impresario - rhythym - rhythm - opthalmologist - ophthalmologist - diptheria - diphtheria - anamoly - anomaly - afficianado - aficionado - caesarian - caesarean - grafitti - graffiti

How was that? Did you get everything right?

SPELLING

Just as a quick test, see if you can tell which of the following words are mispelled.
supercede - conceed - procede - idiosyncracy - concensus - accomodate - impressario - rhythym - opthalmologist - diptheria - anamoly - afficianado - caesarian - grafitti
In fact, they all are. So was misspelled at the end of the preceeding paragraph. So was preceding just there. I am sorry. I´ll stop. But I trust you get the point that English can be a maddeningly difficult language to spell correctly.
From Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson
Do you sometimes have trouble spelling in English? Do you use any strategies to help you spell better? Share your thoughts and tips with us.

Do you ever forget things?

"We must go back, I forgot my cell phone in your car". In English or in Portuguese we almost always use the verbs "forget and "esquecer" the same way. We forget things or people or we forget to do something. However, in English, it´s not possible to say a sentence like this one: "Temos de voltar. Esqueci meu telefone celular no seu carro". Simply because in English we don´t forget things somewhere. We just say "I forgot my cell phone". If we want to mention the place, we have to use the verb "leave". "I left my cell phone in your car" So the first sentence is wrong. It should have been:"We must go back, I left my cell phone in your car".

Adapted from Como não aprender Inglês by Michael A. Jacobs

Do you always pay attention to that?

The importance of vocabulary 2

Continuing on the topic of the importance of vocabulary, we can see some more examples of tricky words.

COMMEMORATE - Only very important people and dates are "commemorated" in English. For example, a statue can commemorate a person, or a celebration can be held to celebrate the independence of a country. Otherwise, in English, it's simply "celebrate".
EX: The statue was built to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the writer's birthday.

RENOVATE - The word renovar in Portuguese simply means "to make new again", but renovate in English is mostly used to talk about making an old house or building look new again.
EX: They had trouble renovating the ancient temple.

ENCHANTED - When someone is encantado in Portuguese, it usually means that they are very pleased, but in English when someone or something is enchanted it or they are under a spell or haunted by spirits.
Ex: They say the forest is enchanted.

Exclamations!

AS IF!

"Quem me dera!" "Você deve estar brincando"

"I´m sure your boss will give you a pay rise." "As if."

YOU BETCHA!
"Pode apostar!", "Garantido!"
"Are going to the party tonight?" "You betcha!"
FAT CHANCE!
"Sem chance!"; "Nem pensar!"
"Do you think she´ll let you go?" "Fat chance!"
OH LORD!/GOOD LORD!
"Meu Deus!"
''Good Lord! What happened?"
GIVE IT A REST!
"Dá um tempo!"
"Oh, give it a rest! I´m sick of listening to this!''
TOUGH LUCK!
"Azar o seu!"
"I know you don´t agree with me. Tough luck! I really don´t care."

Selected and adapted from SLANG by Jack Scholes
Which of these do you ever make use of ? Looking forward to hearing from you. ;)

CHUNKS OF LANGUAGE

Students with good chunk-knowledge of English will effortlessly anticipate the missing words in the following phrases, for instance:

> "As a matter of ____, the woman who was burnt at the____ wasn´t a witch at____.
> "When he saw his daughter was unharmed, he breathed a sigh of ___."
> "Got to get___now. I´ve got a train to ____."

Half a century ago J. Firth famously stated that "You shall know a word by the company it keeps". Eventual recognition of the truth of this statement has led to the publication of better and better collocation dictionaries and the creation of hugely useful on-line, corpus-based collocation samples which can be used to learn about "strong collocates". (Strong collocates of a given word are words that very often co-occur with this word in a kind of chunk knwon as a "frequent collocation" - e.g., commit is a stronger collocate of crime). To give another example the following words were thrown up by the free collocation sampler on the Collins Cobuild website when we typed in a certain preposition as query word: years, all, control, take, victory, again, weekend, handed, head, shoulder, win, world, place, and, here, days, dispute, controversy, row, time, presided, concern, came, counter, turned, bent and run. Can you guess what preposition we were interested in? If so, your chunk knowledge for this preposition is at least fairly good.
*Over - e.g., over (the...) years, all over, control over, over again, over (the...)weekend... .

Selected and adapted from Teaching Chunks of English by Seth Lindstromberg and Frank Boers.