speaking

Academic Hangman

Posted on by Pak Guru

A version of hangman featuring words from the Academic Word List (AWL), and a built-in homework activity for anyone who needs the practice.

Remember to read the instructions carefully before you begin! ×
  • Click or tap letters to reconstruct words taken from the academic word list.
  • Click or tap 'Next word' to get another word.
  • For each word you begin with 9 lives.
  • After you have guessed 5 words correctly, you will be invited to write a text using those words.
  • Alternatively you can reload the page and play again!

OK I understand

Correctly guessed words

a
b
c
d
e
f
g
h
i
j
k
l
m
n
o
p
q
r
s
t
u
v
w
x
y
z

Japan earthquake – tenses

Posted on by Pak Guru

There have been a lot of earthquakes recently, including this one on Japan’s Hokkaido island. Current news stories – although often tragic – are full of interesting grammar as they include past and finished, recently finished, as well as ongoing events and situations. See if you can choose the correct tenses from the news coverage. Continue reading →

More papers and paper

Posted on by Pak Guru

For all you ‘visual learners’ out there, here’s a video version of a previous post in which we looked at the difference between the countable and uncountable forms of the word ‘paper’.

After watching the video you might want to have a go at the gapfill activity accompanying the last post dealing with ‘paper’!

Crime or crimes?

Posted on by Pak Guru

Several posts on GuruEAP deal with nouns that can be either countable or uncountable but with slightly different meanings. Here’s a text packed with examples of one such word – Crime. Select either ‘crime’ or ‘crimes’ from the dropdown menus and then check the answer key for analysis and explanations!

Continue reading →

(A) few, (a) little

Posted on by Pak Guru

Only some students hand in their homework on time.

Indonesian flag 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 →

Idiomatic language in IELTS

Posted on by Pak Guru

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 →