Every student of English has my sympathy in his struggles with the English articles. They are one of the most difficult parts of learning English. First of all, I urge you to do this. Listen to native speakers. When you listen, listen carefully, sinc...
If you listen to previous daily tips, you will recall that content words, such as nouns, main verbs, adjectives and adverbs are normally stressed, and function words, such as personal pronouns, possessive adjectives and prepositions are normally not...
Although written English has spaces between every word, spoken English doesnt have pauses between each word, rather words are linked together. However, people do not normally speak without pausing at all. We do pause in speech. While in written Engli...
In a previous tip, I mentioned how in long sentences, it is necessary to pause between thought groups. However, relatively short sentences may also require pauses to help the listeners organize the stream of sounds correctly. Lets look at some exampl...
Lets take an example. In the sentence My sister who lives in San Francisco is a doctor, the adjective clause is who lives in San Francisco. It describes my sister. Theres no pause before the adjective clause. So, it means that I have more than one si...
Remember that intonation is the rising and falling of the pitch of your voice. So shes here. is a statement, but shes here? is a question. But it isnt true that all questions have a rising intonation. Today, lets just look at the intonation of three...
Tag questions are used in two very different ways, and the difference depends on whether you use a rising or falling pitch at the end of the tag question. One way tag questions are used is to get your listener to agree with you about something you th...
Although auxiliary verbs are not usually stressed, when we want to strongly emphasize a verb, we stress the auxiliary verb. And if theres no auxiliary verb, we add one. These sentences are called emphatic sentences. For example, compare the sentences...
In English, Yes is always followed by affirmative statements. No is always followed by negative statements. This means you cant say, Yes, I havent eaten dinner yet. Or No, I did my home work. Chinese allows this, but English does not. Therere differe...
pronunciation of the letter t. Of course the letter t is usually pounced t. But you may have noticed that in fluent speech, native speakers sometimes pronounced the t as d. That happens when the t comes between two voiced sounds. Do you know what sou...
Some verbs are followed by infinitives, such as I plan to go. to go is an infinitive. Some verbs are followed by gerunds, such as I enjoy teaching English. teaching is a gerund. You cannot say, I plan going or I enjoy to teach English. Most verbs are...
Welcome to Daily Tips on Learning English. Todays tip is on the difference in meaning between remember doing something and remember to do something. Lets take an example. Whats the difference between I remember locking the door and I remember to lock...
Welcome to Daily Tips on Learning English. Todays tip is on the difference in meaning between forget doing something and forget to do something. Lets take an example. Whats the difference between I will never forget to lock the door and I will never...
Lets take an example. Whats the difference between I regret to tell you that your father died and I regret telling you that your father died? Well, I regret to tell, I regret to say are used to inform someone of bad news in a polite way. Before you t...
stop doing something means not to do that any more, but stop to do something means stop one thing in order to do something else. Lets look at a clear example. We stopped dancing. We stopped to get some drinks. These sentences can even be put together...
