On the Verbs page of ESL links, I noticed that some of the links for Phrasal Verbs (e.g. put out, look after, take over) weren't working. So I've fixed some, removed some and added some new ones.
Check them out here (2nd section): ESL Links > Verbs. By the way, if you ever find that any links on my site don't work anymore, please contact me and tell me, I'd appreciate it a lot :)
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A question from Emily about a sentence in an exercise on job interviews. (I have edited the question & answer.) Dear Joe, I have a question about this sentence: As the minutes tick past, you feel a mounting sense of doom as you anticipate the questions that will cause a deafening silence during the interview! I don't know the exact meaning of the whole sentence. Also for the first clause, which is the verb? "tick" or "past"? Yours sincerely, Emily My answer:
Latest update: Bing have changed their links yet again. This is the 4th or 5th time they done it, and I no longer use Bing and will never use it again. I'm trying other online dictinaries like Baidu and Youdao, as well as Jukuu for example sentences. Update: Since originally writing this article, the Bing dictionary has changed its way of making links for words... again. Which means all the links I originally put into the article don't work any more. And it no longer provides results for the € symbol... at all. Not a single one. So I don't feel Bing is as good as I used to think. Microsoft's Engkoo/Bing is a great free online resource for ESL students, especially Chinese ones. Dictionary, thesaurus, translator, example sentences, pronunciation audio, even videos. I often put Bing links for words in my posts so that students can get more info on them But like anything in life, Engkoo/Bing is not perfect. For example I wanted to give a Bing link to my students for €, the symbol for the euro, the common currency of most countries in the EU. A search on Bing didn't provide a definition or explanation, but it did offer many example sentences, e.g.: "It is a question of fairness," he said, arguing the public sector had contributed more than €4,000bn in guarantees to help banks. One difficulty for my students is how to say that symbol €, so I clicked on the little speaker icon at the end of the sentence to hear it pronounced. Try it for yourself! The pronunciation was fine... until it got to the symbol and numbers. Then it became a disaster.
I've been working on a series of articles to help students in understanding English spoken by people with different accents. The next installment will be on using general media (like radio, TV, movies) to get practice listening to English spoken by people from around the world. I want to find and link to a site that contains links for many online radio stations from around the world, but ones that where people speak in English. But sites that list many international online radio stations have problems (at least for my purpose). Many sites can sort by country, but not by language (so you can find stations from a specific country but they might not be in English). Other sites can sort by language, but not by country (so you can find stations in English but you might not be able to find the specific country you need). Many of the links are old and don't work any more. Some link to sites that require special software. I'll continue to investigate. The best so far seems to be WRN, which I'll try out and compare to others. Iif you have any useful links for online radio in English, or any experience with WRN or other sites, please let me know in the comments.
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G.A.L.E.S.L. / joe3
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