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Improve your Accent: Tongue Twisters

English tongue twisters

She sells seashells on the seashore of Seychelles. 
The shells she sells are seashells, I'm sure.
For if she sells seashells on the seashore, 
Then I'm sure she sells seashore shells.

Can you can a can as a canner can can a can?

Whether the weather be fine, 
or whether the weather be not.
Whether the weather be cold, 
or whether the weather be hot. 
We'll weather the weather 
whether we like it or not. 

How many boards could the Mongols hoard 
if the Mongol hoards got bored?

Restaurant conversation. Listening comprehension worksheet.

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Jokes about linguists

"I've just had the most awful time," said a boy to his friends. "First I got angina pectoris, then arteriosclerosis. Just as I was recovering, I got psoriasis. They gave me hypodermics, and to top it all, tonsillitis was followed by appendectomy."

"Wow! How did you pull through?" sympathized his friends.

"I don't know," the boy replied. "Toughest spelling test I ever had."

A linguistics professor was lecturing his class the other day. "In English," he said, "a double negative forms a positive. However, in some languages, such as Russian, a double negative remains a negative. But there isn't a single language, not one, in which a double positive can express a negative."
A voice from the back of the room retorted, "Yeah, right."

The best English 1 . The best way to learn English through movies

Test (Subjunctive Mood)

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Grammar test (Passive Voice)

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Survey

What makes people happy at work?

a. A recent survey by Chiumento, a British human resources consultancy, established the ten factors that make people happy at work. Try to guess which are the two most and the two least important factors.

• Being part of a successful team
• Doing something rewarding
• Doing varied work
• Earning a competitive salary
• Doing enjoyable work
• Feeling that you are making a difference
• Having a good boss or manager
• Having a good work-life balance
• Having friendly, supportive colleagues
• Having your achievements recognized

b. The survey also established some other factors  related to being happy at work. Decide whether the following were probably true or false according to the research, and say why.

1. Statistically there are more happy people at work than unhappy people.

2. Employees of bigger companies or organizations are happier than those who work for smaller companies.

3.Men are generally happier than women in their work.
4. Full-time workers are happier than part-time workers.
5. People with higher positions in a company are happier than the people below them.
6. The longer you stay in one job, the happier you become.
7. Workers over 55 are the happiest.

Listen to the radio programme in the previous post.

What makes people happy at work?

Questions for Seminar 5 in Stylistics

1. Anaphora and epiphora

2. Chiasmus

3. Climax and anticlimax

4. Stylistic inversion

5. Ellipsis

6. Asyndeton and polysyndeton

7. Antithesis

8. Suspense

9. Aposiopesis

10.Represented speech

Lecture 6

Questions for Seminar 4 in Stylistics

1. Pun

2. Zeugma

3. Violation of phraseological units

4. Semantically false chains

5. Nonsense of non-sequence

6. Irony

7. Antonomasia

8. Hyperbole

9. Oxymoron.

Lecture 5

Questions for seminar 3 in Stylistics

1. Expressive means (general)

2. Stylistic devices (general)

3. Metaphor

4. Simile

5. Metonymy

6. Epithet

Lecture 4

Questions for Seminar 2 in Stylistics

1. Belles-lettres style.

2.Publicistic style.

3. Newspaper style.

4.Scientific prose style.

5.The style of official documents.

Questions for Seminar 1 in Stylistics

1.     The definition of Style and Stylistics

2.     The issues that Stylistics deals with (8)

3.     Stylistics and other linguistic disciplines