Master English With Tim

You’ve heard Tim the teacher and Tim the traveler. But what about Tim the student? In Episode 9, Tim shares his experience learning Russian from almost zero while living in Moscow 2006-2009.

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LIKE is another one of those words that seems to mean everything, or nothing, or maybe even both at the same time. In Episode 8, Tim separates the different meanings of this very commonly used word and gives examples of each of them to help you understand LIKE every time you hear it.

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English listening is hard because real English pronunciation is VERY different from the English pronunciation you hear in the classroom.
Sometimes native English speakers talk like their mouths are full of chewing gum- common words and phrases come out in ways that are extremely hard to understand: “don’t you” becomes “doncha”, “didn’t you” is pronounced “dincha”, and “I am going to” is pronounced “ongana”, or even “omma”! For better or worse, these chewing gum pronunciations are extremely common, and affect all kinds of words and phrases, not just common ones. Listen to English teacher, polyglot, author and world traveler Tim Sexton explain a few of the rules about how ordinary phrases end up sounding like a foreign language, so you can begin to understand native English speech better.

Photo credit: Martial BACQUET Nachttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chewing_gum#/media/File:Bubble_gum_at_the_Haribo_factory.jpg

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The verb GET is one of the hardest words in English. Or is it? In Episode 6, Tim shows that even if GET has a lot of meanings, all of those meanings are in just four categories: movement, change of condition, receiving or taking, and convincing others to do something for us. In this episode, you will listen to 131 examples sentences with GET so you learn and understand this verb better than ever before.

Cover photo credit:
By http://www.ac-reunion.fr/pedagogie1/sciencesecole/index.html, Copyrighted free use, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32385

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How do you construct questions? If you’ve learned English, you’ve probably asked yourself this question many times, even after learning rules about questions in the classroom. However, learning the rules for making questions is just one of two different ways to learn how to construct correct questions. The other way is just to learn a big number of correct questions without thinking about why they are correct. Is the old, rules-based approach bad? Not at all! Each way- the rules way and the lots of examples way- help each other out. Listen to episode 5 and hear 201 correct yes/ no questions. If you want maximum effect, stop the recording after each question and repeat it. It’s a lot of work, but believe me, it will help you!

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In episode #1 some weeks ago (Episode #1: Understanding Speech and Text For Better Grammar. – English with Tim), I showed how gaps in our understanding of input- speech we hear and text we read- can cause us to make mistakes in grammar when it’s time to speak or write. But how do we find the gaps? One way is with dictations, exercises where you try to reproduce in speech or writing the exact words a teacher says to you.

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In January and February of this year (2023), I worked and traveled in Tajikistan, visiting three cities: Dushanbe, Bokhtar (southwest) and Kulob (southeast). Listen to my experiences and impressions from this little-visited Central Asian country of 9 million people.

Note: this episode was originally published with 51 photographs on my personal website.

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The New General Service List, or NGSL, is a popular list of the 2800 most used words of English. Every student who wants to know English at an advanced level needs to know the words in this list well. Listen to find out how you can learn these important words!

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Why do you keep making the same mistakes in English grammar when you make OUTPUT, i.e., when you speak and write? Well, focusing on these mistakes is not always the best approach. Why? Because grammar mistakes often have their roots in problems understanding INPUT, i.e., you have problems with English reading or spelling- or especially problems with English listening. These problems can be very basic, for example you cannot hear the difference MAN and MEN or NOT and NUT. Or maybe you have problems with small words like AT, BY, and GET- this happens all the time!
In this first episode, learn how problems understanding input make it harder to master English grammar.
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Why do people make grammar mistakes? Many of the reasons for mistakes start long before students open their mouths to speak or put pen to paper. Listen to Tim, an experienced English teacher from the US, to find out why.

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