A couple of months ago, here on this blog, I wrote about my experiences of homesickness and culture shock when I was out in Azerbaijan teaching IELTS. Although a lot of water has passed under the bridge since I was in Baku, and I now look back fondly on my time there, I vividly remember the feelings of loneliness and frustration I encountered. It made me wonder why I was feeling the way I was, and whether these feelings were natural.In my case, I experienced all of these stages bar the last one. I was only away from home for a few weeks, though had it been longer I’m sure I would’ve got to stage four. We see a lot of students here at the school that go through some, if not all of these phases. The main thing to remember, and I have experienced this first hand, is that they are only temporary, and there are always things you can do to speed up the process.
Have you ever experienced culture shock or homesickness? If so, how did you get through the darker days? Please let me know, and I’ll write again soon with some ideas of my own to help speed up the process.
If you'd like to read my original post on homesickness, you can do here.
water under the bridge - (idiom.) an expression meaning that a lot of time has gone by
to look back fondly - (phr.v + adv.) to remember something in a positive way
vividly - (adv.) clearly
exaltation - (n.) a feeling of excitement and happiness
a sense of wonder - (fixed expression) a feeling that everything experience is exciting and new
more specifically - (adv.) more importantly
take sth for granted - (fixed expression) to get used to having something which you would perhaps miss if it was taken away
to adapt - (v.) to change in order to suit certain conditions
lingo - (n.) language (slang)
bar - (v.) apart from
phase - (n.) stage/period
to experience sth first hand - (idiom) to have personal experience of something
darker days - (adj. + n.) difficult times
London is at its best in the summer. This city has so much to offer, and when you add good weather into the equation, I think it is one of the best cities in Europe.
I had a holiday a few weeks ago and I went to Alicante in Spain. I chose to visit this city because I know someone who has a flat there and I have recently been attending Spanish classes. I’ve visited different parts of Spain at various stages of my life a have picked up a few words and phrases, however I had never attended a class until recently. I found the class allowed me to put more structure and cohesion to my sentences and I was able to say and understand more.
Here are the answers to the word forming article. Hope you got them right. To read the first part click here.
A few weeks ago I wrote a post about passive verb forms which included an exercise in which you had to read an article about Michael Jackson, find the passive forms, identity the tense for each one and then decide why the passive is used in each case. Doing this exercise should give you a clear understanding of how and why passive structures are used in English.
To read the first part of this post, click here.
Below you will see a table in which I explain the passive sentences which were used in the article about Michael Jackson. This table will explain which tense each sentence is in, and why the passive is used in each case:
If you have any questions, just add a comment at the bottom of the page.
| # | Example | Tense | Why is the passive used? |
| 1 | Paramedics were called to the singer’s Beverly Hills home | Past simple | It is not important/we don’t know who called the paramedics |
| 2 | He was pronounced dead | Past simple | It’s obvious that doctors at the hospital pronounced him dead |
| 3 | Jackson had been due to perform a series of comeback concerts | Past perfect | Actually, it is impossible to put this sentence in an active form. To be due to do something is just a fixed passive expression |
| 4 | He is believed to have suffered a cardiac arrest | Present simple | Obviously, doctors/experts/journalists believe this |
| 5 | Jackson’s body was flown | Past simple | We don’t know/it’s unimportant/obvious who flew the plane – and the story is all about Jackson’s body. |
| 6 | a post-mortem was carried out | Past simple | Obviously, doctors carried out the post mortem |
| 7 | The results have not yet been published. | Present perfect | We don’t know/it’s not important/it’s obvious who publish the reports. Doctors or lawyers or something… |
8 | Concerns over Michael’s health were raised last month | Past simple | We don’t know – just that people were concerned. Putting the concern at the beginning (as a noun) is better than saying ‘people were concerned’ – the important thing is the concern, not the people. |
| 9 | four of Jackson’s planned comeback concerts were postponed | Past simple | Obviously, they were postponed by Jackson’s managers & promotors |
| 10 | the dates had been moved | Past perfect | Again, we know who moved them – it was his managers |
I hope this post has helped you to understand passives a bit more. Remember, if you have any questions about passive verb forms, just add a comment below!
Luke.
I’ve recently had the pleasure of preparing a highly-motivated class of 9 for the BEC Vantage exam which they took on Saturday 29th May (fingers crossed they’ll all pass!) This is a Cambridge business exam for upper-intermediate students and is the same level as the FCE (Cambridge First Certificate) however, in my opinion it’s slightly harder as you must have a good range of business vocabulary. One of the things that helped my class with this is exam was learning how to form words in English and so I thought that this may help you with your English too. My advice is to learn the main prefixes and suffixes that we use in English and then practise word building by adding them to the ‘base’ form of the word. Why learn one word when you can learn 4 instead?!
Today I started teaching a new class on the IBC course at Holland Park. IBC stands for International Business Communication. It's our class for professionals who want to improve their business English for international communication.
I have taught this class a number of times before and it is always an interesting experience for me. The people who enrol on this course are usually professionals who work in top positions in different areas of business, so they are always interesting and dynamic people with experience or expertise in their particular field. They're busy people which means they have to make the most of their time here in London.
The course runs for 6 hours a day, but the participants are always willing to concentrate and focus throughout each lesson. It's inspiring for me to see students who know how to manage their time, and to be efficient. It just goes to show - when you work full time, you don't have much time for anything else, and that includes studying English, so you have to take advantage of any learning opportunities.
If you're young, and haven't started working full time yet, you should learn a lesson from my current IBC class. Make the most of your time, focus and try to learn and practise as much as you can, in every minute of your lesson. Do it now when you have time, because later on you will be rushed off your feet answering emails and attending meetings and you won't have any spare moments to brush up on your English.
The students in my class are motivated, and that motivates me too. As well as that, they are usually a bit older and more experienced. This means that they have plenty of things to say about business. I have met directors of large successful companies, former prime ministers, television journalists and even movie producers on this course, and they all have their own stories to tell and their own insight into how to achieve business success in their own particular context. As well as helping them learn, I have also learned a lot from them, and it makes me realise that one of the most satisfying things about this job is the contact I have with interesting people from many countries. In the end, it proves to me that it is people, not money, that make the world go round.
stands for - We use this expression to explain what an acronym (letters that represent a longer phrase) means. For example, FBI stands for Federal Bureau of Investigation.
enrol (v) - This means to sign up for a course
field - this is your 'area of expertise'. For example, my field is English language teaching.
make the most of their time - This means to use your time as effectively as possible, without wasting any.
It just goes to show - This is an expression which we use when we point out that something proves something else to be true. E.g. I see you're going to the dentist again. It just goes to show that you shouldn't eat so much sugar.
To take advantage of something - This means to use something as much as possible in order to get the benefit of it. It is similar to 'make the most of'. For example - you should take advantage of the free internet access at school and use it to save money.
rushed off your feet - to be very busy
brush up on - to improve something, typically language
money makes the world go round - this is an old saying, which means that money is what motivates everyone in the world to do things, and it is money which is responsible for making everything happen.
Image courtesy of www.freefoto.com
So we’ve now had a coalition government for two weeks, which means that the government is made up of more than one party. Those of you who followed the election will know that the results were very close (Conservative 306 seats, Labour 258 seats, Liberal Democrats 57 seats with the others getting 28 seats) which means with no overall majority for the Labour or Conservative party, the Liberal Democrats were put into the interesting position of being able to decide which party they would most benefit working with. After a week of toing and froing Nick Clegg chose to work with David Cameron, a decision which many fear will be doomed to failure as their policies have been as different as chalk and cheese in the past!
Students at LSE often ask us to help them understand passive verb forms. Many learners get frustrated by passives in English. Some students don't even believe they are used by English people! Of course, they are very common, and very useful. This blog post should help you to understand how and why passive verb forms are used. There is a task at the end of the blog post, which will be answered in my next blog post. If you have questions about passive forms, please leave a comment below!
Why is the passive difficult to understand and use?
In my opinion, there are a few difficult things for students to deal with when studying the passive:
1) The complicated form – it is hard to manipulate sentences using the passive in different tenses and after modal verbs. This is because of all the different auxiliary verbs and past participles used to make passive structures.
2) Understanding how and why the passive is used. Many students say they know how to construct passive sentences, but don’t know when they should use them.
3) The pronunciation of passive forms – it can be difficult to hear all the little words used when native speakers use passive forms. Also, it’s difficult to pronounce them correctly if you’re not a native speaker.
What's the difference between active and passive forms?
To understand passive forms, we need to compare them to active forms.
Active sentences are in this structure:
SUBJECT/AGENT – VERB – OBJECT
E.g. Michael Jackson – wrote – this song
The subject is the agent (the thing that ‘does’ the verb)
The agent is included because it is important, or is the topic of the sentence (e.g. if the question is “who wrote this song?” it is important to say “Michael Jackson wrote it”)
But sometimes it is better to order the sentence in a different way. Like this passive sentence:
SUBJECT – VERB - (PREPOSITION + OBJECT/AGENT)
E.g. The song – was written – (by Michael Jackson)
What is the form of passive structures?
The basic form is: be + past participle
The auxiliary verb be can come in many forms, eg. being, been, was, were, am, are, is
Past participles are the 3rd form of a verb. E.g. eat - ate - eaten. Past participles are sometimes difficult to remember.
The agent (the one who 'does' the action of the verb) is often not included.
If the agent is included, you have to use a preposition (by).
Why is the passive used?
They are used a lot, and they are useful. But, why? and how?
Here’s a list of reasons why the passive is used:
Real Examples: BBC News Report
Read the following news story about Michael Jackson’s death (adapted from a BBC News story, linked here)http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8119993.stm.
Find examples of the passive in the text. There should be 10. Think about these things:
1. Which tenses and verb forms are used? (e.g. present simple passive, past simple passive, passive infinitive)
2. Why has the passive been used in each case?
I will give you the answers to this task in my next blog post.
Pop star Michael Jackson has died in Los Angeles, aged 50.
Paramedics were called to the singer’s Beverly Hills home at about midday on Thursday after he stopped breathing.
He was pronounced dead two hours later at the UCLA medical centre.
Jackson, who had a history of health problems, had been due to perform a series of comeback concerts in the UK, beginning on 13 July. He is believed to have suffered a cardiac arrest.
Speaking on behalf of the Jackson family, Michael’s brother Jermaine said doctors had tried to resuscitate the star for more than an hour without success.
Jackson’s body was flown from UCLA to the LA County Coroner’s office, where a post-mortem was carried out. The results have not yet been published.
Concerns over Michael’s health were raised last month when four of Jackson’s planned comeback concerts were postponed, but organisers insisted the dates had been moved due to the difficulty of organising the show.
Some words and expressions in the story are defined below.
Paramedics – Doctors who drive ambulances
Beverly Hills – An area in California where lots of famous people live
Suffer a cardiac arrest – to have a heart attack
To be due to do something – to be arranged to happen. It is going to happen because it is planned
To resuscitate someone – to bring someone to life – using electricity, or breathing or pumping the chest
A post-mortem – a medical examination of a body after it has died
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