The English Experience

13/05/2021

Don’t worry too much! We will cover this and more in one of your lessons!

This is a classic English poem containing about 800 of the worst irregularities in English spelling and pronunciation. Will Snellen wrote a PDF version using the phonetic alphabet. You can hear some of it pronounced mostly correctly in videos here:

17/04/2021

Sometimes there are connection problems on Preply. Frustrating I know. Normally I set up a room on Zoom and then send the link on Preply and that works. Fine. I have recently qualified as a National Tutor in the UK and they use Bramble. It started as a social enterprise connecting Cambridge undergraduate students with state sixth formers for tuition and mentorship online but it has now grown and is very good! My room on this site is at

This version of Chrome was released in the week following December 6th and is presenting problems for WebRTC based voice solutions

17/04/2021

Some of my students may like ELLLO -
English Listening Lesson Library Online
ELLLO has been going for quite some time and has lots of free listening activities like this one on bad haircuts!

Quick Lesson Guide

Views: 1500+ listening lessons of natural English conversations.
One Minute English: Videos of International speakers.
Mixer: Six International speakers answer the same question.
Grammar: Grammar points in conversation for different levels.
News Center: Animated news stories to learn academic English.
Idioms: Learn fun idioms about food, animails, health and more!
STEP: Short narrated articles with Academic English.

Six people their experience with a bad haircut. Students can learn natural English by listening to six people from around the world share their feelings about the same topic. This lesson comes with a video, quiz, script and vocabulary lessons.

01/04/2021

Listen, Rod... I say this with great respect for you.
But those players you mentioned, are marquee players.

- This deal...

- Marquee?

This is a renegotiation.
Show them your joy for the game.
Bury the attitude a little bit, and show them...

- You're telling me to dance.

- No.
Get back to the guy who first started playing this game.
Way back when you were a kid, was it just about the money?
Was it?
Was it...?

Do your job.
Don't you tell me to dance.
I am an athlete.
I am not an entertainer!
I do not dance and I do not start
pre-season without a contract!

- Fine, fine, fine!

- Jerry, talk to me.

Breathe, Jerry.

I am out here for you. You don't know what that's like.
It's an up-at-dawn,pride-swallowing siege -
- that I will never
fully tell you about, okay?

God, help me.

Help me.

Help me... help you.
Help me help you.

I'm sorry. You are hanging on by a very thin thread.
I dig that about you.
No contract! Help me?
I'll help everybody.
- That's my man.

- Hey, I'm happy to entertain you.

- Help me!

- See you in Los Angeles.

Jerry Maguire movie clips: http://j.mp/1CWweObBUY THE MOVIE: http://bit.ly/2cYjHZiWATCH ON CRACKLE: http://bit.ly/2bTZVYHhttp://amzn.to/sjszaXDon't miss the ...

01/04/2021

Give me the child for his first seven years, and I will give you the man.” This nature-nurture Jesuit maxim has been the lodestone of the legendary documentary series 7 Up since it began in 1964.

From The North is the ITV News podcast made in the north of England, about issues that affect the north.In this episode, Elaine Willcox speaks to Claire Lewi...

01/04/2021

The dangers of robotic mowers escaping into local fields. How farmers feel about it. Listen to the Radio 4 Farming Today report. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000tlc7

31/03/2021

This is how a sporting event is covered by a BBC Schools Reporter. There's a story to go with this. Just ask.

The Al Akhawayn School Ifrane (ASI) again hosted its yearly badminton tournament for English speaking schools in Morocco at the Al Akhawayn University sports...

31/03/2021

Cricket is a game that is very difficult to explain!
Can you explain how your favourite game works?

It's harder than you think and a good exercise to prepare for a conversation!

Here's how complicated Cricket can be to explain. We can discuss each point but there is a good explanation on Quora too if you have time to read it!

You have two sides, one out in the field and one in.
Each man that’s in the side that’s in the field goes out and when he’s out comes in and the next man goes in until he’s out.
When a man goes out to go in, the men who are out try to get him out, and when he is out he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in.
When they are all out, the side that’s out comes in and the side that’s been in goes out and tries to get those coming in out.
Sometimes there are men still in and not out.
There are men called umpires who stay out all the time, and they decide when the men who are in are out.
Depending on the weather and the light, the umpires can also send everybody in, no matter whether they’re in or out.
When both sides have been in and all the men are out (including those who are not out), then the game is finished.

Answer (1 of 2): Cricket is a bat-and-ball game, played between two teams. There are 11 players per team. Cricket is split up into two innings: In the first innings, one team bats and the other fields (bowls); in the second innings, they swap over. The objective of the batting team is to score as...

22/03/2021

Even the English have "problems" with their pronunciation but how do you improve your own English pronunciation?
There are no shortcuts to perfect pronunciation, however there are some ways you can practice more effectively and one fun way is by singing English songs!
Singing helps you relax as well as helping your rhythm and intonation. If you already know the words of the song you can focus on your pronunciation! Feel free to sing me a song in your next session!

"The Rain in Spain" – Performed by Rex Harrison, Wilfrid Hyde-White and Audrey Hepburn (partially dubbed by Marni Nixon), from the musical film "My fair Lady...

16/03/2021

Here comes the sun!
You can learn a lot of English from songs and you probably know a few in English already!
Just as children learn their first words from rhyming words and rhythms that repeat, you can too! Start singing along to the Beatles or your favourite English singers.
George Harrison wrote "Here comes the sun" one day in the 60's after a really long, cold, lonely winter. It really was and he was staying with Eric Clapton in the countryside on a day when he was meant to be going into London to negotiate business deals.
He was a little fed-up with how his life had come to be just about fame and money.
He wrote the song on a spring day and it's an appreciation of new life coming at this time of year and so appropriate for us in the UK now coming out of a long winter.
We too are starting to see nature return to the plants and trees in the countryside.

15/03/2021

McCartney said he had the idea of "Let It Be" after he had a dream about his mother during the tense period surrounding "the White Album" in 1968.
Mary Patricia McCartney died of cancer in 1956, when Paul was fourteen. In rehearsing the song with the Beatles in January 1969, in place of the "Mother Mary" lyric, McCartney occasionally sang "Brother Malcolm", a reference to the Beatles' roadie Mal Evans.
McCartney later said: "It was great to visit with her again. I felt very blessed to have that dream. So that got me writing 'Let It Be'."
In a later interview he said about the dream that his mother had told him, "It will be all right, just let it be."
When asked if the phrase "Mother Mary" in the song referred to the Mother of Jesus, McCartney has typically replied that listeners can interpret the song however they like.