ESL Blogs

Reading Mary and Onee-chan's blogs about MyEC members makes me wondering what had happened to a few older members of MyEC. Once upon a time, their presence coloured MyEC with their blogs, forums and even chat room. Now, hardly any members remember them. They are no longer the flavour of the month. How flitting their presence in this virtual world it seems.

I wonder, does anyone really know anyone in this parallel universe which we call virtual world? When, and not if, we leave MyEC, does anyone m

Good morning, all MyEC friends... 

How are you doing? Wish you all pretty well. ^_^

OK, I will shorten my prelude greetings. :D After reading MARY'S awesome blog, here I just want to add some more questionnaires. I put these questionnaires as I can describe several special characteristics of some EC members. There're lots of active members which I cannot describe all. The rule is ...... please read MARY's blog. :D :D Please guess MyEC members with these clues. No winner, since this is just to know

Aloha lovely EC people! ^_^

How cool is to find lately lot of EC people suggesting interesting games for us? I come to EC and feel like playing board games with family (the only difference is that here is not my granny trying to cheat in every game hahaha)

Okay, I’m gonna jump on the bandwagon suggesting a very special 'quiz'. It’s a quiz about you!! Yes, you!! An active EC member who is reading this! :)

Do you like to know about your neighbors? How much do you know about other EC members? We’ll se

There were so many friends, who came and went in my life without being noticed, but Ahmed left long lasting impression on me. He used to sit beside me at the same desk during the class. He always encouraged me whenever I hesitated to do anything new. When I performed bad, all the classmates laughed at me except him. Besides this, he always told me very confidential matters without fear of being betrayed.

I used to make fun of him whenever he talked to me about his fiancee. Hearing the name of h

Yes, you're quite right, the two words (besides and except) are often confused - 'besides' means 'in addition to' or 'as well as', while 'except' means 'not including'. 

Be careful, don't confuse 'besides' with 'beside' - the latter means 'next to' or 'at the side of'.

Right, I should have mentioned 'apart from', which can be used with either meaning (including or excluding). I'd add 'other than', which means 'not including' or 'without' (= 'except'). 

Sometimes you use 'except for' instead of 'exc

Once upon a time, there was an unjust Arab king. He had a hunchback. He did not want anyone to call him a hunchbacked man, if anyone dared,  he would be headed. His people did not dare to call him so. One man said that he would call him a hunchback man. The people told him to be wise and not to do so. The king would kill him. He told them to watch and listen to him. The next day, he went up to the king. He greeted the king and said, "you are our king. We will always honor you and respect you. If

Let's keep striking while the iron is hot! Due to the connection problem of MyEC these days, I will try to write more.... I hope you, too, friends. Don't let MyEC go down because of our absence. :))) :D

Once ever had my great friend said that there were three things that made a friendship would last long. They were Gratitude, Apology, and Compliment. I remember this a lot until now and as I observed in my opinion it is true. Not only a friendship, but also all kinds of relationship, such as famil

It can be so frustrating if you can't use MyEC - for some members, no day is complete without visiting MyEC. 

Sometimes MyEC does encounter technical problems or you're having some other connection problems, which will make it so hard for you to read or write blogs or comments on MyEC. 

What if that's the case? Apart from reporting the problem to MyEC tech team, What would you do? 

I'd visit other websites instead while hoping MyEC is accessible again. I'd even try to watch a TV drama in English. O

"When life gives you lemons, make lemonade" is a popular American saying. This proverbial phrase is used to encourage people to be optimistic when they are faced with adversities in life. 

In other words, when things turn sour like lemons, without getting discouraged, we should work hard to conquer the difficulties.

I agree that it is easier said than done. Some life challenges can knock us down completely, and leave us in a hopeless state. However, I strongly feel that patience, persistence and p

I like anything which has smell of motivation whether are books, quotes (like this one topic I arise here), stories and so on. I realize the lives are not easy what a motivator have said :D…Why we didn’t it make easier. How we could do this? As my understanding is just be a simple person and put positive thinking in your mind. It is a short message but has deep philosophy.

Let me to take an example in work place. Did you often get words from colleagues as “Hey, let me do this, your ability are no

For those of you that has a Facebook account, I'm sure once in a while you will be caught by surprise when certain 'Memory' being shared by your friends, or even being reminded by Facebook. Yesterday was one of those days for me. While browsing through my Facebook, I was taken aback by a 2011 photo shared by Facebook. 

Oh God! It was such a major throw back for me. It made me want to flip through the old photo albums (yes, to the young people, we the older generations have the hard copies of our

Discourse markers? Unfamiliar to you, right? In fact, you use discourse markers more often than you may think. 

A discourse marker is a word or phrase that is used to connect or organize what you say or write, for example, 'so', 'OK', 'right' and 'by the way/incidentally' are often used as discourse markers. Some people might call them 'linking words' or 'linking adverbials', though. 

You may be familiar with the following discourse markers: as far as...is concerned, on the other hand, however, si

I had been away from MyEC for quite a long time and now that I'm back I'm very much disappointed by the number of the mistakes I make when I write something. My English wasn't good before I joined MyEC many years back but then I improved my English language skills to a degree that I was able to score 8 out of 9(btw, I consider that score more of a miracle and a blessing of God then a true reflection of my writing skill!) in writing section of IELTS Academic Test when I took the test about 2 and

I'm writing on my mobile phone/cell phone - I'm on vacation and away from my computer.
This is the first time I've written a blog on my cellphone. I hope this blog looks natural on your computer.
It can be so challenging to write a blog on your mobile - unless you're familiar with texting in English on a cellphone.
You're writing on a smaller screen you're unfamiliar with - without the supporting software installed on your computer. And, the Internet connection may not be as good.
It seems the m

Yes, we encourage you to help (to) correct each other. I hope you'll agree it's worth it!

When you try to correct each other/one another, you should make sure you really know the ropes. Leave what you aren't sure about uncorrected, for example, if you're not sure about 'part of something', then don't assume the sentence 'Making mistakes is part of learning' is incorrect. 

I suggest you look it up in a dictionary if you're not sure about a collocation, a word or an idiom. Your English improves whil

Yes, it's an idiom which means 'have a secret idea or plan that you intend to use later' or 'have a surprise plan or solution (to a problem)'.

You may have something good or bad in your sleeve, for example, you may try to cheat by having a card hidden in your sleeve:)  I hope you have something great for a puzzling problem or a situation, though. 

You could write a short paragraph by using the idiom - it can be fun if you really get the picture. Here's a sample paragraph for you:

I'm waiting for Ex

Yes, you got it - it means 'it's too difficult for me to understand'. Hey, don't get me wrong - it's not that 'what you wrote is all Greek to me':)

In fact, I'm trying to learn more about medical terminology (medicine English) - a mouthful! Some of the terms are just too long or too difficult to pronounce - they are driving me up the wall! 

Some of the words are just Greek while some are derived from Latin. It can be so hard to memorize them - unless you've got an amazing or insanely good memory!

D

Did you read Josef's  'MyEC Recommended Features' for this month? I hope so - if you've just checked your email. 

Don't miss the 'Englishclub Grammar' recommended by Josef.  I'd recommend 'Grammar Help Desk', where you can ask any question related to English grammar, and Alan, a native English teacher, will help answer it. 

You may find the 'desk' useful, especially when you're unsure about a sentence you wrote or written by others. Or, when somebody just corrected you, and you doubt whether the c

ann remarked on my comment to her blog 'alphabets' like this:

QUOTE

Hi Mishaikh, your alphabet includes so many words I don't know. Do you want a writing challenge? kindly write a paragraph containing all the word in your list (if you please). I think this writing challenge is so hard.

UNQUOTE

I have bidden to that. and here is my bid:

I was sitting on the mat in my gallery fixed on joists, of my house made of bamboo near the dam, facing the chalk white horizon where an airplane was moving to somewhe

THE SKY IS THE LIMIT

Words embroidered on the blank paper sprinkling from the fountain of brain, conscious and subconscious turn in to the reflections of thoughts, for thoughts, ‘the sky is the limit’ they are infinite.  So you can say a writer can write whatever he wants and or talk about anything he likes.  So as the aspect of life ‘love’ talking, speaking, writing about love is limitless provided one has sensitive mind and touchy heart.  Nobody can deny they do not like this side of life and h