Homework ^^

Time to have some practice! On the last entry I did write about the irregular forms of past tenses. Here are my suggestions for the exercises that you might want to do on this topic.

If you are looking for questions that you can answer and get corrected on the spot, you can try these link

• grammar.cl
• eflnet.com

If you want exercises that you can print and show to your teacher, try downloading these exercises.

• Irregular verbs practice 1
• Irregular verbs practice 2
• Irregular verbs practice 3
• Irregular verbs practice 4
• Irregular verbs practice 5
• Irregular verbs practice 6

You can also download these word search games

• word search 1
• word search 2
• word search 3

Credit to http://bogglesworldesl.com for making these excellent exercises.

Having 'fryed' fish for lunch

I just had my lunch. It is the end of the semester, so I cannot afford to buy cooked food anymore. Earlier this morning I bought some vegetables and other things to cook. I end up with this.

yum yum! ^^

My friend was so impressed, he took a picture and upload it on his Facebook page. But when I saw the comments, I was a bit appalled to see one of the comment - " Wow, so luxurious! We only eat rice with fryed fish." I did not know whether it was a typo or not, but the past tense for 'fry' is not 'fryed'. It is 'fried', as in Kentucky Fried Chicken.

So I decided I should touch a bit on the irregular forms of past tense. However, I don't feel like explaining this to you, so I'll just show you a video.

You can also follow this link to watch this video with the transcription. about.com

So from the video, we can see that regular past tense verbs always end with ed, while the irregular past tense verbs need to be studied individually.

Here are some of the words and their past tense.

Verb	Past Simple

arise

arose

bend

bent

bind

bound

choose

chose

forbid

forbade

hold

held

shine

shone

shake

shook

tear

tore

swing

swung

You can search the web for more examples. Just remember not to add ed to all your verbs to show past tense.^^

CALL test!!

Tomorrow will be the last test in my degree days. Wish me luck!

Should continue studying now though..

Yay again!

Okay. When she's here, you know what time it is. It's time for some exercise!

Oh, don't be like that.

You do know that exercises are important, especially to learn grammar. But I'm trying my best to provide you with the most interesting exercises so that you can have fun learning it. Here are some of the excercise that you can do. 

interjection 1

interjection 2

interjection 3

My favourite is the third one, as there are more than one interjection in the sentence, and you have to identify them.

So try them now!

Holy cow!

Sigh.. I still have a lot of things to do. So many assignments to finish, and the due date would be tomorrow. Whoa! I still need to type at least 15 pages to finish my assignment. Holy cow!

Okay. I don't usually use the word "holy" and "cow" together, but here, i'll make an exception, as I am trying to explain to you what interjections are. Interjection is actually a word added to a sentence to convey emotion. It is not grammatically related to any other part of the sentence. To help you understand, let me show you a video.

Yeah, I know that the sound of the Sabre Tooth Tiger is fake, but the video did give you a rough idea on what interjections are, right? Great! I know you will be able to understand easily.
I you'd noticed, I always use interjections in my writings. It makes it a lot more interesting.

Here are some examples of commonly used interjections.

interjection	meaning	example
ah	expressing pleasure	"Ah, that feels good."
	expressing realization	"Ah, now I understand."
	expressing resignation	"Ah well, it can't be heped."
	expressing surprise	"Ah! I've won!"
alas	expressing grief or pity	"Alas, she's dead now."
dear	expressing pity	"Oh dear! Does it hurt?"
	expressing surprise	"Dear me! That's a surprise!"
eh	asking for repetition	"It's hot today." "Eh?" "I said it's hot today."
	expressing enquiry	"What do you think of that, eh?"
	expressing surprise	"Eh! Really?"
	inviting agreement	"Let's go, eh?"
er	expressing hesitation	"Lima is the capital of...er...Peru."
hello, hullo	expressing greeting	"Hello John. How are you today?"
	expressing surprise	"Hello! My car's gone!"
hey	calling attention	"Hey! look at that!"
	expressing surprise, joy etc	"Hey! What a good idea!"
hi	expressing greeting	"Hi! What's new?"
hmm	expressing hesitation, doubt or disagreement	"Hmm. I'm not so sure."
oh, o	expressing surprise	"Oh! You're here!"
	expressing pain	"Oh! I've got a toothache."
	expressing pleading	"Oh, please say 'yes'!"
ouch	expressing pain	"Ouch! That hurts!"
uh	expressing hesitation	"Uh...I don't know the answer to that."
uh-huh	expressing agreement	"Shall we go?" "Uh-huh."
um, umm	expressing hesitation	"85 divided by 5 is...um...17."
well	expressing surprise	"Well I never!"
	introducing a remark	"Well, what did he say?"

Taken from  http://www.englishclub.com/vocabulary/interjections.htm

Ah! I almost forgot about my assignments! Well, I guess I'll be going now! Bye!

Sheep? Sheeps? Sheepes? part II

Since all of you are aware that there are irregular plural forms for certain nouns, I want to ask you a question. If a am married to woman, she would be called as my wife. Her mother would be my mother-in-law. But if I am married to four women, what would my wives' mothers be called as? Mother-in-laws?

Nope. It should be mothers-in-law. Although the whole word 'mother-in-law' itself is a noun, the changes in its plural should only be applied to the first word. This would include 'attorneys-general' and 'teachers-to-be'.

Since a lot have been learned, it is time for the exercise!

No?

For the exercise, you can try this link. Irregular forms You will be able to know your score on the spot. Just ignore the misspelled word 'socre' (it should be score). ^^

Sheep? Sheeps? Sheepes?

I guess all of you know what nouns are. But I'm going to explain it anyway. A noun is a word used to name a person, animal, place, thing, and abstract idea.
Example:-

A cat.

A flight of birds.

A herd of sheeps? Or is it a herd of sheep?

A gaggle of gooses?  Shouldn't it be a gaggle of geese?

Okay. While the plural form of many nouns are justified by the addition of the letter s at the end of the word, there are a lot of exceptions to this. Sheep and  geese are great examples. A single sheep is called a sheep, and the plural form of 'sheep' is still 'sheep'. For goose, the plural form is geese. There is no such thing as gooses.

These words have irregular plural forms. Other examples include:

• foot - feet
• louse - lice
• man - men
• mailman - mailmen
• child - children

To view a more elaborate list, you can follow this link English-zone.com. Here you can see nouns divided into different groups according to how their plural forms are. So students, after this I do not want to see any more mices or toothes in your essays. ^^

I know all of you hate exercises but I'm giving them anyway^^

I know the title of this post is discouraging, but I promise that this would be a short one. Furthermore all of you would think that we have learned enough about idioms. But in order to learn something, you need to practice and try it by yourselves right? So here I present to you, the most incredible, awesome, marvelous and astonishing exercise of all time (not really, but they are awesome anyway).
It is in a pdf format, so you can choose to download it and print it, and ask your teacher to check them for you. I am sure that most teacher will appreciate the effort of the their students^^. Or you can also email them to me. I will try my best to reply. My email can be found on the 'about me' page.

If you think that the pdf file is too troublesome, you can try this website. You can choose from 4 sets of questions, and you will know if you answered correctly on the spot. Enjoy!

Of idioms and direct translations

Hi guys! It's been a few days since the last time I posted something in here. Anyway, Happy New Year!

These few days, I talked to my friends, and they shared about some the funny direct translation that they have encountered, be it in the television, or in the cinemas. One of my friends said that she saw a Malay drama with English translation. I did not really remember what it was all about, but it sounded a bit like this (with the subtitles)

Woman A: Hai Datin Faridah. Cantiknya you sekarang!
                 Hi Datin Faridah. You look stunning nowadays!
Woman B: Oh, tak ada apa apa la.
                  Oh, it's nothing.
Woman A: Ya ke? You tak pergi jumpa anak ikan you?
                 Really? You didn't go see your goldfish?

Goldfish?

In case that some of you did not get it, the woman was asking whether woman A did go and see her gigolo. 'Anak ikan' is just a figure of speech, almost similar to an idiom.

Okay I should stop with the rantings and continue with the lesson. On the last post I have explained about one idiom - for good - which means forever.
Here are some other popular idioms and their meanings


Add Fuel To The Fire:
Whenever something is done to make a bad situation even worse than it is.

Against The Clock:
Rushed and short on time.


Bite Your Tongue:
To avoid talking.

Blood Is Thicker Than Water:
The family bond is closer than anything else.

Blue Moon:
A rare event or occurance.

Break A Leg:
A superstitious way to say 'good luck' without saying 'good luck', but rather the opposite.


If you want to know more, feel free to search the web, or you can try this link idiomsite.com. Maybe you can include those idioms in your essay and get better marks. ^^