It’s a language that’s not easy to learn, especially the written version. Even native speakers of English find it hard to grasp the finer points of the written language. There are rules galore, some that don’t seem to make sense at all. But that’s just on the surface; when you look deep enough, you’ll see the underlying pattern beneath all the confusion and randomness on top.

Let’s take the apostrophe for instance; its use is one of the most debated and argued in the English language. People are confused as to when it should make an appearance and when it should take a hike. The most common confusion is the one that deals with possession, or in simpler terms, the usage of the apostrophe with the word “its”. When should there be an apostrophe between the t and the s?

There’s a simple enough rule that you can follow in order to get your apostrophe in the right position – If the “s” in “its” is a shortened form for the word “is”, then the apostrophe is inserted between the “it” and the “s”. For example, instead of saying, “It is raining”, I could say, “It’s raining”. The apostrophe replaces the “i” in “is”. This rule can be extended to any other combination of words in English – “there are” becomes “there’re”, “they have” becomes “they’ve”, “cannot” becomes “can’t” and “there is” becomes “there’s”. So the next time you’re tempted to use this little punctuation mark, check to see if it’s replacing a letter or a couple of letters in the alphabet.

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Every New Year millions of people all over the world say the same New Year resolutions to learn English. But the majority of them do not start learning English at the beginning of the year as they are sure that they have much time till the end of the year. If you ask me I will say that it’s not a good idea to delay your English classes. If you made a firm decision to start learning English you should start doing it from the very beginning of the New Year 2009.

Do not waste your time on surfing Internet, it’s time to learn English and you can start having your first English classes today! I am not joking. You should not forget about your Learn English resolutions.

Today I am going to give you several pieces of advice how to start learning English right now and here for free:

1. Do u love to sing songs in English? It can be your first step to master your language skills. Find texts of English songs through Internet and download audio tracks. Now you are ready for your first English lesson.
2. Do u love reading news? Ok, that’s your chance to start reading news in English. You can do it any time and it will help you to learn more about current events and learn new English words.
3. Do u love chatting via Internet? Find your English friend and chat with him for hours in English. Do not be shy to ask him/her to correct your mistakes.

There are lots of other effective ways to start learning English right now (you can find them in my blog) and you can do it easily.

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New Year and Christmas is coming, in a few weeks we’ll be celebrating Catholic Christmas so it’s the right time to buy Christmas presents. But as you remember my blog is created to help you to learn English with me and I think that today we will talk how Christmas presents can help you to learn English.

What is the best present for students who learn English as a foreign language? Right you are, it’s a book in English or a CD with educational materials. But if you live in a country where English is not the official language. It turns very difficult to buy books in the original or it’s not an easy thing to find a book you want. But I am absolutely sure that reading books in the original is one of the best ways to master your language. I also love reading English books and buy then in one place, it’s Amazone.com. Amazone is a word biggest international shop and it’s the best way to find any book in English and order it to any country of the world. I advise you to buy at least 3 books at once as it will help you to save money on shipping.

Do not forget about you friends and relatives, perhaps you will manage to find something interesting for them. As for me I always buy technical magazines for my father and it’s a good New Year present for him (here in Russia we love New Year more than Christmas). Buying books in Foreign Internet shops will also help you to practice your English skills and improve your language as it’s always useful to do something by your own.

Another way to learn English during Christmas holidays is to write and send greetings to your foreign friends. Write different greetings to everyone it will help you to practice your written English and add new words to your vocabulary. If you can call them to congratulate, do it for sure – use your Skype or ip-telephony to make these calls cheaper.

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In one of my previous articles I wrote how you can learn English using Internet, but today I am going to attract your attention to Google products which can help you to learn English in the most effective way. Google is my favorite search engine, I really love googling in Internet but Google has also lots of great products which can be useful for those who learn English as a foreign language. If you are ready, I am happy to present you a brief summary on these products:

1. Not long ago I found some interesting material (I will write about it next time) how to learn English reading original articles in English. And it’s really great as it can help you to improve your English and learn the latest news online. Google News http://news.google.com will help you. Just search for the news in any sphere you like and read them.
2. If you have any difficulties with translation or you don’t know the meaning of the words, it is very comfortable to use Google Online Translation Service http://translate.google.com/. It’s very easy to use, just choose your language, enter a word you want to be translated and get a result in less then a second. You can get a translation of a paragraph or a webpage but the quality of this translation will be rather poor, still it can help you to understand the meaning of the text.
3. If you want to communicate in English on various topics you like, you are to use Google Groups http://groups.google.com/ where you can find lots of different sections and topics. Choose any group you like, join it and communicate. It’s a great way to improve your English written skills and it’s very user-friendly as you can get notifications about new messages to your email box. I also plan to open a new Google Group for this site to help you to learn English more effectively.
4. The other tool I recommend you to use is called as Google Language Tools http://www.google.com/language_tools. Here you can enter any keywords in your native language and get correct search results in English. It’s very convenient if you have just started to learn English and your vocabulary is poor.
5. The last Google Tool I want to tell you about is Google Scholar http://scholar.google.com/. You can search for articles, books and educational materials using it.

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For the last two months lots of my friends have been asking me to help them with their CVs in English. It turned out that in our country lots of people are looking for a job as they were fired because of this world financial crisis. Here we’ve got more unemployed then available free vacancies. And it’s a well-known fact that you should have a good CV to find a better job.

Today I am going to summarize some easy rules how to write a good CV in English. I think that this material will interesting for many of us as it’s always great to have an up-to-date CV especially now when financial crisis can influence anyone’s life. I am not going to write here in details how to “decorate” your CV and how to make it an effective tool for job hunting as you can find lots of information about it in Internet. I just want to present you a common structure for your CV and give you the ways where you can find more information.

So, let’s start. First of all we should pay attention to the structure of your CV:

1. Name
2. Personal data
3. Contacts
4. Education
5. Other education (trainings etc.)
6. Professional experience
7. Foreign languages
8. PC skills
9. Additional info

As you first step, you ca just fill in this information without decorating or formatting it. It will help you to evaluate this information and add or exclude something you have not noticed from the first glance. Only after that you can start decorating your CV.

Lots of examples you can find here: http://jobsearch.about.com/library/cvsample/blcvinternat.htm, if you have any questions, drop me a line and I will try to help you.

That’s all for today. Learn English and practice it everyday. Thank you all who has sent your details for online communication, you can still add your contacts here. It’s much easier to learn English together.

Every day more than one hundred visitors enter this blog and I hope that lots of them want to learn English and practice it. I have a suggestion. If you really want to learn English and practice it with other students you are welcome to post your Skype or GoogleVideo contacts in the comments to this post so we can chat and practice English together. Do not forget to state the time when you are online and available for chat.As for me I think that it is really useful to chat online via Skype to improve your English communication skills and it’s great if you manage to find an hour everyday for online voice communication. I have been using this method to learn English for many years and now I can easily talk with foreigners and it’s not difficult for me to communicate even if I do not know special vocabulary. I am always sure that I can explain my companion what I mean.

So let’s do not waste time and help each other to learn English and improve language skills. It’s always better to do something together.

See you next week.

Lots of people love singing songs but not all of them understand that that singing can be an effective way of learning English. As for me I am a fan of singing and I use my hobby to learn the English language. Today I want to give you advice how to organize your learning process with English songs. It is not a secret that more than a half of all songs all over the world are in English and it’s really great for us as we can use them while learning English. I do not know why by it always a pleasure for me to sing songs in English and learn new words and expressions I meet there. I love watching MTV and when I find a new song I love I go to GOOGLE and enter the title of this song and singer’s name. So using GOOGLE I find the scripts for this song. Then I go to YouTUBE and find there a video clip for this song. That’s all, after that I have everything to practice this song, I listen to it and sing it. If I do not know any word meaning I can use my English dictionary and continue my English lessons.

So you can start your day with singing and you will be surprised to understand that there is no sense in lots of songs in English.

Do you know how Japanese learn English? They take a dictionary and start learning word from letter “A” up to the “Z”. Of course, it’s a joke but there is some good sense in any joke.

In this post I’d like to talk about this way of learning English and making your vocabulary as rich as native speakers have. When I was a child I had a pocket dictionary which I used everywhere when I had time. I opened it and tried to learn any new words I found. Later I began to use this way of learning new English words using my PC and now I use my Iphone 3G.
Let’s talk a bit about advantages and disadvantages of this methodology. Don’t smile, it seems very simple but it can be very important if you want to improve your language skills.

Advantages:

1. Free of charge. You have nothing to pay. But you need to buy a dictionary or download English dictionary from Internet.
2. It’s really easy. You do not need a tutor of teacher of foreign languages. All you need to know is how to read transcription and English alphabet.
3. It’s always great if you know lots of words and it’s very important for good understanding.
4. You can learn professional language. Just buy a professional dictionary (IT dictionary, medical dictionary etc.) and learn specialized words using this methodology.
5. Flexible time frame. You can learn English whenever you want and wherever you like.

Disadvantages:

1. There is no one to correct your mistakes or to help you when you need advice.
2. You should motivate yourself by your own.

Perhaps, you have something else to say about this method. Just post your message in the comments! I am waiting.

It is always great when you have an opportunity to communicate with native speakers to learn English. Nowadays there are lots of ways how you can communicate and learn English online, I have written about it in one of my posts before. But today I want to tell you a bit about my friends; experience. Ilya and Alena live in Moscow and they are very busy during the day and in the evening the have no time for learning as the have to devote some time to their children but they understand that it necessary to know English nowadays that’s why they have found the way out and I think that this a very interesting solution. They decided that they would talk in English when they are at home, they talk with each other in English when they have dinner, when they play with their children etc. But you can ask me: “What about grammar and new words?” And your question will be absolutely reasonable. The have hired a maid (who has worded as teacher before) who is American and she helps them with new words and grammar rules.
Of course, it is rather expensive but it a very effective way of learning English if you have money.

It’s not a secret that a financial crisis is running all over the world, banks are bankrupted, specialists have to their jobs, people try to spend less money etc. But I am absolutely sure that it’s the best time to start improving or learning English if you have not started it already. You can ask me: “Why should I spend my time on this? I need to earn more money and nothing else.” And you are right in some way but here I will try to persuade you that there is some reason in my point of view:

• When the crisis comes lots of people loose their jobs and have to spend some time (the period of unemployment depends on lots of reasons and I am not going to concentrate on them in this article) and it is the right time to spend on your education.
• Nowadays you can learn English even without money. Read my article about learning English through Internet. If you are Russian you can learn English with these free of charge video lessons.
• You need more information to make the right decision. And more information you can find in English. Just read news and analytical articles in English to be sure when it’s the right time to act.

And there are lots of other reasons but I tried to summarize the main three reasons which can motivate you to learn English right now and here.

Have a good time and see you.