Master English With Tim

Do you want to learn to use a, an, some, and the?
If you speak a non-Western European language, chances are that it is hard for you to choose between a, an, some, the and no article. A lot of English learners think these are trash words that mean nothing and are impossible to learn. That’s not true!
In Episode 29, Tim tells a funny story about a girl and some cops to explain how to choose the best article in most situations. English uses two indefinite articles: A or AN, and the so-called zero article, which just means no article at all. English also uses SOME in the same place as indefinite articles. Finally, there is one definite article: THE.
Listen to the story and click on the link to download a free PDF with the complete story so you can understand and use articles better!
Just remember that the path to speaking with better grammar starts with understanding in detail!
Bonus PDF:
A GIRL AND SOME COPS

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Idioms are multi-word expressions whose meaning is different from the individual words in the idiom. One example of a popular idiom is like clockwork, which means in a routine, completely predictable way.  Listen to today’s episode for ten more idioms with examples.

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In Episode 9, Tim talked about how his experience learning Russian as an English native speaker- what aspects of Russian were easy for him and which were hard. In this episode, Tim tells which features of English are easy and which are difficult for Russian speakers. Everything is covered: vowels, consonants, consonant clusters, word stress, intonation, the chewing gum accent; spelling, word formation, vocabulary (including phrasal verbs) and grammar.

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Flashcards can be paper (or digital) word cards with an English word you’re trying to learn on one side, with either a translation into your language or a definition in English on the other. Flashcards seem to offer a quick and easy way to learn a large amount of vocabulary- some language learners claim that they can add 100 words in a day to their long-term memory by using flashcards! But is using flashcards for learning vocabulary effective? Listen to Episode 26 to hear five stories about students’ successes and failures learning vocabulary with flashcards.

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“How do you make questions?” Before we answer this question, we need to understand that there are different types of questions: yes/ no questions, wh- questions, and subject questions.
In today’s episode, Tim talks about subject questions. Subject questions are questions in which we don’t know who does the action the sentence talks about. For example:
Who stole the cookies from the cookie jar?
In some subject questions, we don’t know how many people did an action:
How many people came to the party?
Subject questions are it’s true a bit less common than yes/ no and wh- questions, but they are an essential part of the language. It also happens that they are easy to learn, because they are constructed not like questions, but like statements.
To learn more about subject questions and to hear a large number of examples (74, to be exact), listen to today’s episode!

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Gerund or infinitive?
In last week’s episode, Tim talked about whether to use the gerund or the base form. This week, Tim shifts his focus to how to choose the gerund or the infinitive. There is a hack for choosing the gerund or the infinitive that works most of the time: infinitives are used in situations where an action is not yet completed.
You can see this in three situations:
1. In the expression “about to”:
-I’m about to fall asleep.
2. To talk about the goal or purpose of an action:
-She’s saving money to buy a car.
3. With verbs which give the verb that follows them a future or potential meaning:
-want to, need to, have to, plan to.
Of course, you need to practice if you want to correctly choose the gerund or the infinitive- so listen to this episode to hear plenty of examples!

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Tim’s students often ask him about the rules for choosing the gerund or the infinitive. This is a great question and an important topic in English grammar- knowing the right form will help you understand clearly and speak correctly. In reality though, there is a third verb form we need to choose from- the base form. In this episode, Tim focuses on the base form and the gerund, leaving the infinitive for next week’s episode.

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Way back in July 2009, Tim decided it was a good idea to ride his mountain bike alone and without maps from Sergeev Posad to Yaroslavl. Just as his students warned him would happen, Tim soon found himself trapped between bandits and rogues, and was even invited into the attic (the part of a building that is just below the roof and that is used to store old and forgotten things) of a temporarily empty building.
In addition to these adventures, Tim got badly sunburnt, which cut his trip short but also prevented him from sleeping in a terrible thunderstorm the following day.

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Which do you prefer- reading fluently in your own language, or reading English while using a dictionary to look up unknown words? Obviously the first. But what if you could read English books with something like the ease that you do in your own language? Well, you can- and you can do it today.
Extensive reading is the reading of a large amount of easy books over a long period of time- for example, reading books where you understand 98% of the words, for 30 minutes per day every day for one year. Because you will see so many of the same words many times, you will greatly reinforce your knowledge of these words.
The key is to choose interesting books that are at a comfortable level for you. To do that, you can take a level test and then read books at or below that level. Oxford University publishes a collection of books corresponding to the levels in the test: the Oxford Bookworms Library, which consists of hundreds of fiction and non-fiction books. (Scroll down to find levels Starter to 6 on the bottom left).
Or just go to Amazon and find OBW leveled books for Kindle.
Listen to hear all the benefits of extensive reading!

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In Episode 20, Tim talks about the common verb BECOME and six synonyms you can use in its place to have more control over your language and sound more sophisticated. One of these verbs is GET, which Tim already spoke about in Episode 6. The other synonyms of BECOME are: TURN, GO, GROW, WAX and FALL. Listen in to learn exactly how to use each of these verbs, and of course hear plenty of examples!

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