Today we’re going to do something a little bit different. Instead of doing grammar, we're going to have an interview with one of my students, Yesica Miranda. Yesica has been taking classes from me for about year. I thought it might be interesting to speak to students to get their perspective on learning English.

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 In this podcast I'm going to talk about:

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One of the test questions on the Cambridge tests is writing a friendly letter. Here is the way to write it!

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Also see my presentation on causatives

Let me give you a road map of what we are going to talk about today.

* First we will define what a causative is

* How it differs from other languages

* The terminology we’ll use to describe each element of a causative sentence, namely the subject, main verb, the agent, the causative verb, and the object.

* There are three causatives, and today I will talk about: 

* The different sentence constructions of causatives.

* How the main verbs and the causative verbs changes for each structure.

Today’s podcast is about the uses of make and do.

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This drives everyone crazy. In Spanish, for example, you have only one word for both make and do, “hacer,” so it’s difficult to figure out which English word “make” or “do" is correct to use. A lot of my students have learned a rule that I think is completely useless. They learn that you use “make” for things you do with your hands. No, ladies and gentleman, that doesn’t work. The expression “make good time” for example means to arrive at a place quickly. 

It usually takes me an hour to get to work but today it only took 30 minutes. I made great time.

Did you walk to work on your hands? No. It’s an absurd rule. Forget that rule. File that rule under stupid.

You have to learn which one to use by learning the context and that’s what I plan to do today. I’m going to go through some of the most common expressions that use make and do, so sit back, MAKE yourself comfortable and let’s DO it right.

I have just finished correcting about eight medical articles. I do medical translations from time to time and also check the English before publication in American and European journals in English. The two most common mistakes when I do corrections are the misuse of the definite article and the overuse of commas. Last time we talked about articles and how to use them, so today I’m going to talk about when you should use a comma.

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Episode 11. When to use definite and indefinite articles. In depth!

By articles, I mean a (ay) or ah and the (thee) or thuh, the choice is up to you how you want to pronounce them. The longer vowels in thee and ay are sometimes used for emphasis such as in the phrase, "The one and only…"

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