ESL Blogs

You may know the story of the old man who had two sons long ago.

The sons decided that they wanted their inheritance right away so the father divided his property between them. One son stayed at home and worked to increase his property and help his father.

The other son went far away and wasted his money on many things and did not find ways to increase it. After years passed he had no money and only the clothes on his back. So, he came home to his family.

The father welcomed his son who had been lo

Dear MyEC Members, 

Today I have a special request! We need a few volunteers to help out in the MyEC Video Gallery. As I mentioned a few months ago, the video gallery needs to be cleaned up! I truly believe that this space has great potential. Videos such as this one and this one can be very useful for practising English. 

Nadiyah has done an excellent job with the MyEC Photo Gallery. Most photos on MyEC have appropriate titles. They often have descriptions and tags, too. Nadiyah comes up with int

Early this year, I was able to experience one of the most celebrated festivals in my country. It's the Kalibo Ati-Atihan Festival.

The Kalibo Ati-Atihan Festival is held every third week of January in the town of Kalibo, Aklan, Philippines. This is celebrated to honor the Holy Child Jesus Christ. Local people call him, "Sr. Sto. Nino". It is common for devotees and tourists to carry icons and replicas of the holy child. Just like what I'm holding on some of my photos. 

Devotees honor the Sto. Nino

Here is a fun contest that all MyEC bloggers can enter! Review the "How to Learn English" Bloggers Competition here. Follow the rules and you could win an English course in San Francisco or an iPad 3. (Note: This contest is not associated with EnglishClub in any way.)

Infographic via the KIC Blog.

My Entry(I'd like to win an iPad 3!)

I've reviewed Kaplan's "How to Learn English" infographic (above) carefully. I recently became interested in infographics thanks to Pinterest. Pinterest is a new soc

This weekend I am going to be talking to teachers about the "Learning English Video Project". This is a set of 7 short films about learning English. Each film takes place in a different country. I am going to show teachers an example from the film "Thoughts from Brazil".

I think MyEC members will like "Thoughts from Brazil".  It features some teens who use sites such as Facebook or MySpace to practice English. 

Will you take part in an online video lesson with me? 

Feel free to do all 5 activities

I will be doing a presentation on The Learning English Video Project next week, and I need YOUR help. I need some feedback about the films and materials. My presentation will be in an online conference called The Virtual Round Table. If you teach English, or are interested in TLEVP, please come to the presentation! Check out the program to see some of the other presentations too. It's all FREE!

Here are some questions for you:

• Have you seen any of the films from the Learning English Video Project?

The last time I went to a teaching conference I wrote a blog post called IATEFL Wordle Reflection. I created a Wordle with a bunch of words that came to mind from my trip. Then I invited MyEC members to guess why I had included each word. It was a fun post for three reasons:

1) It became a memory page for me to visit regularly. 

2) It provided useful practice for English learners. 

3) It inspired other teachers to try a new activity in class. 

I've just returned from another teaching conference, and

It’s an incident of my childhood at my age of 10.

My mother lashes out me because my sister lied saying I dropped her ugly stupid doll in water. I was furious and decide to immediately leave the house. This wrathful idea always lies somewhere in my mind. I am provoked into a suicide attempt; to leave this world which is full of lies all around. Nobody cares and loves me in this world and I was just beaten like a donkey. I lay aside all my belongings which have lain in my pockets and leave a suici

As many of you know, we have a NEW Dictionary App on MyEC. We've experimented a bit over the past few weeks to find a good place for it. The best place seems to be where it is right now, on the bottom left.

When we first added this Dictionary it got in the way of the main chat room. Thank you for your feedback. When we removed the Dictionary, many of you were very unhappy! We're glad you liked it. We looked for a better solution.

The new placement does not get in the way of the main chat room, or

Many groups on MyEC use Audioboo to embed sound files on MyEC. Audioboo recently made some changes. To embed on MyEC, you must do the following: 

1. Record your audio. Click on Embed. 

2. Choose "More Options". 

3. From the More Options section, choose "Flash". Copy the code. 

4. Click on the Media box and paste the embed code.

Here is the Audioboo video tutorial. Please note the change to embedding Audioboos. 

Have fun! 

We all have certain words that send us to the dictionary over and over. Sometimes it's a spelling problem. For example, I have trouble spelling the word "definitely". Other times it's an irregular verb that causes the problem. No matter how many times you read the rules, you still have trouble remembering. Are there certain words that you avoid because you don't want to use them wrong? For me, it's "lay" and "lie". Let's get these words straight once and for all! 

Your Task

1) Review EnglishClub.

If you're on twitter, give this fun tool a try. I was sad to see my interestingness so low! Fortunately, @EnglishClub gets an "interestingness" rating of 100%. In other words, you should follow @EnglishClub.

I burst into tears when I saw the Academy Film Festival gave the best foreign language award to an Iranian movie called “A separation.”

I do not know why I cried so much. Maybe because I felt we are really forgotten. No one sees us even in the weather forecast of the International news. The meteorologist usually skips over Iran. Not so many people know us. To my surprise, when I took my Canadian citizenship oath, the citizenship officer asked me where Iran is. “Is it Iraq?”

Moreover, when I show

I recently came across a wonderful blog post by English language teacher Chiew Pang. Chiew is a famous blogger in the international English language teaching community. He interviews teachers and shares lots of great resources. His recent post "Know your photos; know your camera" on the ELTPics blog was full of great tips and ideas for teachers. I asked him to rewrite it for English learners so that I could share it with all of you. I was so happy that he agreed! If there's one thing I've learne

Correcting Commas: Example Sentences

1) In a list:

Home, Learn English, Teach English and MyEnglishClub are main menu of EnglishClub.com, and MyEC, My Page, Blogs, Photos, Videos, Chat, Forum, Members, Groups and Invite are submenu under the MyEnglishClub main Menu.

2) Between 3 or more adjectives or adverbs:

Most of MyEC's members are very helpful, hilarious and nice to each other.

3) With two adjectives:

Robbie always writes attractive and colorful blogs.

4) With numbers:

On MyEC there are 116 star me

Winning caption by Anele: "Life is not always a bed of roses .......sometimes it's a bed of stones and rails...."

Here is a taste of some of the things we do on MyEC for those who have not yet joined this club. I grabbed a few examples from the past week! Imagine what we've done over the past few years...

WRITING CHALLENGES

Each month I post a writing challenge on my blog. In 2012, we're concentrating on common errors that I noticed writers making in 2011. This month we're practising using commas properly. Check out Robbie's model example! (The instructions for this month's challenge are here.) Writers are g