We like to think that we know about the benefits that future cities will bring us, but do we really?
Before you look at the text, discuss the following questions with a friend:
In the previous post we completed the summary of a text about how we come to understand concrete and abstract concepts. In this post we do some Yes, No, Not Given practice as the writer goes on to describe three theories relating to this kind of mental processing.
With a friend – picture in your mind a banana, and then picture ‘freedom’. Compare your mental pictures with your partner’s. Then complete this summary!
In IELTS we’re sometimes required to answer questions about buildings – a topic that most of us never usually think about! Match the names of Japanese architects to their innovative designs and pick up some building knowledge and vocabulary at the same time!
The flight will be departed from gate 3 in ten minutes. Please proceed to the boarding lounge.
This is gramatically correct, although an English speaker would almost certainly use active voice:
I had to go to the dentist recently – just for a check-up. All was well, thankfully! In this post we find out about teeth and match headings to paragraphs!
We saw in the last post that it is necessary to consider countability when choosing between (a) few and (a) little.
In this post we look at how to express positive and negative attitude with (a) few. Continue reading
Only some students hand in their homework on time.
Elsewhere on GuruEAP we’ve looked at alternatives to ‘some’, which tends to be overused by Indonesians translating from ‘beberapa’, or, in the example above – ‘hanya beberapa’.
In this post we look at other alternatives to ‘some’ that are especially problematic for Indonesians because they are awkward to translate: few, a few, little, and a little.
As with all quantifiers, we need to begin by deciding whether the noun we’re quantifying is countable or uncountable. Continue reading
I recently started walking to work occasionally, but it’s still only once in a blue moon.
Students read in the IELTS public band descriptors that band 7 candidates can use ‘idiomatic language’, and so they head for the nearest idioms dictionary and start writing things like ‘once in a blue moon‘, or ‘a bird in the hand is worth 2 in the bush‘, but in the wrong contexts!
In this post we take a look at what the IELTS test means by ‘idiomatic language’. Continue reading
In the last post we looked at different attitudes to work. Today’s challenge is to reconstruct famous quotations that reflect different attitudes towards work.
Don’t forget to read the instructions! Answer key below.