ESL Blogs

Yes, you say 'as was expected', 'as follows' or 'as is well known'  - not 'as it was expected' or 'as it follows' or 'as it is well known'.

You shouldn't add the pronoun 'it' after the 'as', because 'as' acts as the subject - you don't need another subject 'it'. For example, you can say 'Expector will add another comment on the blog today, as happened yesterday."

The word 'as' can also act as an objective or complement, for example, "MyEC members keep writing blogs, as they did last year."

In addit

Yes, it may have something to do with pronunciation if you find it hard to memorize a word or understand what they're saying or said on the radio or TV. 

Some words are so hard to pronounce, though. It helps if you have learned how to pronounce a word by the International Phonetic Alphabet or Smart Phonics, but it doesn't work when you're trying to pronounce a word which is derived from Latin or Greek or other non-English languages. How about some of the names of people, places, microbes, plants,

Hello guys,

as my previous BLOG was about the addvertisement slogans, I got an idea to start a new Writing Challenge on this topic ;)

So guys, I am coming with few items and your task will be to write the best, catchy, hillarious slogan that would sell them! Warm up your brain with brainstorming and don't forget to enjoy your creativity, show us all the potential that is hidden there because I know you can make it!

For those, who are super creative - you can download the pictures, edit them with ow

Yes, we've been trying to encourage you to write more and we do have reason to do so.

Only when you write can you realize that it's not always easy to write something readable or interesting. Only by writing can you really improve your writing skills. So, it makes sense for us to come up with some writing challenges or blog challenges which we think will inspire you to write more.

It takes a lot of time and effort to write skillfully or fluently, and it can be so frustrating or discouraging when y

Good morning, all MyEC friends,

Today is January 19th, 2017. But, why do I still not see writing challenges or bunch of your wonderful thoughts on posts? :(( I only see a few of yours. :((( You see the number of blogs in this month is only 71 blogs (in statistics) until today.

Will you let it be? Where are the challengers? Or maybe any of you will be a new challenger, why not? Where are enthusiastic learners?? Holiday is over anyway. :D :D What about making blog or any other posts once a month? Is

The year of 2016 was started without Tara Benwell's presence in this wonderful site, MyEC. I was wondering how this site would run without her writing challenges or her encouragement for new members. Although her activities were not that much, she came once to thrice a week, but this beautiful admin always left good atmosphere here. The bloggers seemed quite thrilled to write various topics of blogs.

If you see the list of monthly archives on blog section, the number of blog from January to Decem

Yes, this morning I failed to prescribe a patient any medicine. I didn't think the patient needed to take any medication for his back pain - I just suggested rest and hoped he'd feel better tomorrow. He agreed and left the clinic.

The pain was bearable and intermittent - it's likely the pain will ease itself. Besides, any medication has some side effects and abuse of medication is such a concern now. So, I decided not to prescribe him medication. 

On the other hand, maybe I should have prescribed

       The distance between Christmas and the New Year is about six days. In our country, our weekend is on Friday and Saturday. If Christmas is on Thursday, then we will work for three days.  Again, on the first of January, it is also a holiday for us. It is the New Year's Day and it corresponds to our independence day. Shall we talk about twenty sixteen? It was, or rather has been a year of many conflicts and wars all over the world, as many members mentioned lately. It was a year of ups and d

New Year is around the corner and some people have already started thinking, if this year was beneficial or not, if they are satisfied with what they achieved, planned etc. In fact, we usually end up with the same conclusions such as… many things suck, we can't change anything, we are just somewhere stuck and then …. we become depressed, right? :-D

Anyway, there are few things we can work on, few little things that can make us happier and calm. Here is my little list of the tips, I find important

Are you ready for the New Year? I hope so. Yes, the New Year is just around the corner, and I bet some of you can't wait to celebrate it!

You have to say goodbye to 2016, whether you enjoyed it or not - the year 2016 may be so eventful, unforgetable, impressive or so boring or dull for you.  Also, you've spent another year here on MyEC and I hope you enjoyed every minute of your stay.

Don't let any year go without saying anything about it. I assume you must have something to share about MyEC in 20

Let’s go green! Welcome back for another writing challenge. This month I’d like you to write something about a blissful place. No, I’m not talking about your travel or recent vacation, but it’s much appealing than you think – a garden! Do you have one? Mine is a bit disorganized that’s why I’d like to challenge you to share about your garden or plants that you’ve been taking care of recently. We could find some inspiration and new ideas that’d be useful to fellow plant lovers. Moreover, it’s a g

Yes, I mean 'You're completely right' by 'You're quite right'. 

The word 'quite' has two meanings: with 'gradable' words, it means 'fairly', 'rather' or 'very'; with 'non-gradable' words, it means 'completely' or 'absolutely'.

In other words, you can use 'quite' to emphasize that something is completely the case. You can say 'I'm quite sure', 'It's quite impossible', or 'That's quite amazing'. 

So, if I say 'I quite agree with you', I mean 'I agree with you completely', but you may not be that happ

HONE YOUR POETIC SKILL! :)

[NEW EDITED] Everybody has a feeling. If you pour it into poetry, it may become some wonderful thoughts for others. Whether you’re experienced or not, whether you’re skilled in poetry or not, please ignore and let’s try to make a poem. So, here is the challenge :)

1. Choose ONLY ONE of the ‘words’ from the Guess My Word’s game written below. You can repeat the word or improve with the some parts of speech of the word in your poem.
2. Make at least 4 lines of poem includes the w

Yes, you can use the past progressive/continuous or past simple tense to make a request or suggestion sound more polite, for example, you can say "I was wondering/I wondered if you could comment on my blog", instead of saying "You should try to comment on my blog". 

In addition to 'I was wondering/I wondered', you could use 'I was hoping', 'I was thinking' or 'I thought' instead of 'I hope' or 'I think' to express politeness. That is to say, the past simple or progressive tense can have present o

Certainly, you’ve been a guest once, twice or multiple times in your life to an event, as mankind wants to celebrate almost every memorable moments under the sun, wedding, graduation, feast, birthdays, baptismal, death day… etc. etc. Have you noticed something? Look around you; can you imagine all corners of that venue? How does it look like? Is it well pleasing? Appropriately designed? The ambiance of the area fits the concept of the celebration? For sure it does! Well, the particular event was

There are many ways to say goodbye: bye, see you, catch you later, so long, have a nice day, take care, cheers, and so on. 

It can be so tricky, however, for a doctor, especially for a Chinese doctor,  to say goodbye to a patient. As you know, 'goodbye' in Chinese just sounds like 'see you or see you around'. The thing is nobody really wants to be sick again - in other words, they don't want to see their doctor again, but the doctor and patient may feel like saying something when they are leaving

Welcome to my first ever writing challenge! I’ve been a fan of this activity since the day I became a member of our club as well as joined to countless of its versions. Many members have shown their initiative by coming up different topics to join with and improve our writing skills in a fun and engaging ways. It would be unfair as your video moderator if I’m not going to share a slice of my cake with you.

If my memory serves me right, we had this type of challenge before, but that was ages ago.

Yes, 'managed to do something' means 'succeeded in doing somthing, especially something difficult'. If you say "I managed to write a blog yesterday", you mean you succeeded in writing a blog or were able to write a blog yesterday. 

You can't say "I could write a blog yesterday", though, because  'could' is not used to talk about particular ability in the past (on one occasion).

You can say, however,  "I could eat a whole cake when I was little" - 'could' can be used for general ability in the past

Yes, you can say "English is easy to learn." or "It's easy for us to learn English.", but you don't say "We are easy to learn or learn English."

You can use this structure if the subject of the sentence is also the object of the infinitive. So, you can say "He is easy to please." or "The book is difficult to read."

The adjective 'impossible' can be so tricky too, for example, you don't say "She is impossible to do that" - because 'she' is also the subject of the infinitive 'to do'. 

I hope I've mad

I've recently been working in a consulting room - in the VIP outpatient clinic of a hospital in China. Most of the patients in the VIP clinic are from other countries and can't speak Chinese. Thankfully, most of them speak English and bring a smartphone - that really helps.

Usually, patients have already searched their symptoms on the Internet with their smartphone before they go to see a doctor. That is, they'll go to hospital with in mind all of the relative medical English terms or terminologi