THE OFFICIAL WEBSITE OF THE BOOK
FEATURES
This is the section where we have a number of interesting articles about the English language (and other things connected to the subject) that you might find interesting (and educational). Sometimes there are ideas and even good ideas that, for some reason, have not been included in the book. There are others that are new and may even be considered for use in future projects. But while they are all here, please have a look.
Yes it's meant to be brief, but in reality it is a full five-part article on the subject. The story is not that straightforward so it would still take almost a small book to cover the topic. But at five parts, we haven't done too badly.
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The TEE view of the English language
Who is right and who is wrong? How did the English language get established? Why are so many people so protective of it? I try to answer these points in a multi-part series of texts.
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About TYPICAL ERRORS IN ENGLISH
An ongoing project about the history of the book that the website is based on, and, well, is still ongoing. But it has had more bits added since it first appeared.
Welcome to the British way of life as presented to an American audience by BBC America, and hosted by Siobhan Thompson and Kate Arnett. I found some of these YouTube episodes useful for some English lessons. So here I've put in my comments and present the Top 10 most viewed episodes, also listing my personal top eight. And for good measure, I've also featured the bottom four.
Perhaps one of the reasons for many typical mistakes made by students are because they do not practice or use the language enough in their free time.
This questionnaire, which does ask some personal questions (and so it is best that you do the questionnaire on your own) attempts to find out if you are really putting the work into learning the language or if you are just hoping that the words and structures will just go into your head only during English lessons.
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Originally written as a proposed Unit 10 for the book, it was removed as it really had very little to do with Typical Errors in English.
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Articles explained - A, AN and THE
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This was originally a blog that has now been revised and updated and included in the website. It has been set out like a mini-course on the basics and more about the use of something in English grammar that confuses many students of English and leads to many examples of typical student errors – a, an, and the. Or what we call articles.
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BBC English: The rise and fall and plummy accents
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What exactly is the perfect British accent?
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These are sentences that usually contains the word if or a word with a similar meaning (such as unless, as soon as, when, in case, whether, etc., although these similar meanings can only be used in certain contexts and cannot always be exchanged with if). These are used to talk about a situation which may or could have existed, and is to have or had possible consequences. Here, in our newly updated article and some exercises included, we try to explain how this rather tricky area of grammar works.
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Coronavirus - a guide to all the words and terms in English
Within the media, both in the English-speaking world and abroad, there's been a lot of vocabulary that has either been long out of use, only used occasionally, and even new to the language.
So this may be a good opportunity to get to know some of them (with more to be added, I'm sure).
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It is often noted that one of the major differences between conversation and writing is something known as dysfluency – this is when the use of hesitators (um, er), pauses and repetitions, along with discourse markers – words or phrases like anyway, right, okay, as I say, to begin with and so on. It's mainly in speaking, but I use them in writing to for effect. Why? Is it okay to do this?
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-ed; how to pronounce regular past tense endings
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How do you correctly pronounce all those past tense verbs that end in –ed? If you have always wanted to know, then here is my handy guide on how to say them properly.
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Is it wrong to ever split infinitives?
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Is this something that we need to consciously not worry about? Apparently some say we do, and many of them are in high positions. What is the truth?
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It's not something we think about regularly, but students often have problems when it comes to expressing numbers in the English language. The problem is using them not only in counting, but also saying them in different contexts.
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Well, a lot of students don't think they are. Here in TEE we will make an attempt to well and truly explain what this most confusing area of English grammar is about.
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Interview: a non-native speaker who's a big British comics fan
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The first two parts of a new three-part feature, I look at the history of British comic papers with their rise and fall, with particular focus on the sixties, seventies and eighties, along with, perhaps, the most detailed review of THE POWER PACK OF KEN REID books on the web. There's also an interview exclusive to this website with British comics expert and the publisher of the Ken Reid books: Irmantas Povilaika.
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Short stories: Story 1, story 2
A possible new feature for TEE in that the challenge is to write a short story in no more than 1500 words.
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A history of spelling and writing in English
From writing in runes to text messaging, here is a brief story of the history of writing the language.
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Tenses and structures to describe the future
Tenses and structures to describe the past
Tenses and structures to describe the present
Just as the Eskimos have several words for snow, so the English language makes use of several tenses and constructions to describe the past, the present and the future. And there are quite a lot of them.
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The top ten Typical Errors in English (as made by Polish students)
I'm not saying that this is the definitive top ten; this is purely a subjective opinion, and for sure some teachers would disagree with their rankings, but I'm also sure that we will all agree on these errors to be in, at least, out top twenty lists. All these can also be found in the TEE book.
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Top 15 tips for learning English
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I have used this many times in teaching, particularly when conducting intensive English language courses, so perhaps it is now time to make it universal.
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WISH - a word which has a multitude - oh I like that word - of uses, and is perhaps one of the more confusing verbs/nouns when it comes to its uses as grammar structures. So I hope this is, in a way, the definitive guide to the word, in all its uses and structures, how they work and what they mean.
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Words of Wisdom from the Miserable Student
When the miserable student began regular life in the top left hand corner of the page, he was just prone to making some 'funny' comments. But soon he started to actually say some funny comments. The best over the past two years have been collected here and have their own pages. If, however, you want to know what were all the other comments that didn't make it, then check out the updates page. They're all there, just presented in a more boring fashion.
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Some posters designed for the shops to help promote the book.
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Review: Accidence will Happen: The non-pedantic guide to English usage
Its author has been mentioned a lot on this website, along with its book - so I thought I had better read it and pass an opinion.
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A report on the day as TEE made an appearance, along with some nice pictures.
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