Joanne Reilly 
English Academy
 

This is something that I often hear native English speakers get wrong! Follow these tips to work out whether to use what or that. That is a thing That refers to a specific thing "I like that dress you are wearing." - that refers to the dress. What is a question What is used to ask a question " What are you going to wear to the party tonight?" - what asks for more information, in this case about your outfit! "I like that car." In this sentence 'that' refers to the specific

Do you sometimes get stuck trying to work out whether it is 'a apple' or 'an apple'? Is it 'a university' or 'an university'? Keep these tips in mind and you won't get stuck again... Tip 1 As a general rule if a word begins with a vowel a, e, i, o, u then we use 'an'. If a word begins with any other letter we use 'a'. Using this rule we have 'an apple', 'an egg' or ' an ice-cream '. We also have 'a hamburger', 'a banana' or 'a bicycle' for example. an ice-cream However, as wi

When you think of travelling to the UK do you immediately think London? There is so much for everyone to do there and so many well-known sights to see it's the obvious choice. If you are looking for somewhere with great shopping opportunities, combined with the attractions of a seaside holiday, visit Portsmouth and Southsea! Photo taken from www.visitportsmouth.co.uk Portsmouth and Southsea are located right next to each other on the south coast of England. As the name sugge

A beautiful Mediterranean island where English is one of the official languages. This makes Malta the ideal place to enjoy the sunshine and practice your English! We visited in April and had the most amazing time! To save you time looking on a map, Malta is located to the south of Sicily and to the north of Africa. Given this location you can understand why it enjoys around 300 days of sunshine per year! For 150 years it was a colony of the British Empire who brought the Engl

In my opinion, this is the most difficult of the four skills to master. With this skill I feel that we are really 'putting ourselves out...

Listening requires a lot of focus. How often have you found yourself drifting off inside your own head when someone is talking to you, in your own language? You are mentally adding to the shopping list, or trying to compose a response to a WhatsApp message. There are many internal distractions that prevent us from listening. In our native language this is one thing, we might be able to pick up a general idea from the few words we have listened to, but what about in a foreign

How much do you need to write in your new language? Studying to achieve a qualification? You will need to write quite a bit. Going...

I'm guessing that if you opened this blog post then reading is not your favourite pastime. Unfortunately though it's something we all...

These are all great words to use when asking a question, but how do you know which one to use? What Asks a general question about...

Not sure which one is correct? They both are! When a verb (doing word) follows another verb we either use 'to' in front of the second...

Should Should is a word used to give advice , we believe that it's the right thing to do: You should go and wash your hands now, it's...

It all depends on the time you are writing about. Can Can is used to talk about abilities in the present . It is used to make a...

Thinking of visiting the UK but a city trip isn't for you? Why not try the Jurassic Coast? As the name suggests this has a lot to do with...

May and might are used to say whether something is possible. Let's look at the following dialogue: "Has anyone seen Joe?" "He might be...

Learning a new language should be an adventure filled with excitement and challenges! Is the reality though that it's something you have...

We use 'said' so often in English, but there are many more words we could use! Not sure which ones? Read on. It is important to look for...

Will is used to talk about the future and to make decisions in the moment . Shall is used to ask questions using I and we and to talk...

We know we can use the present continuous to talk about what we are doing at the moment (note the shortened version in brackets). I am ...

When you think of travelling to the UK do you immediately think London? There is so much for everyone to do there and so many well-known...

We use 'used to' to talk about things that were true in the past, but are no longer true today. I used to play football every Saturday....