English grammar rules

Here I'm going to write about some useful or funny English stuff I've found within the boundlessness of the Internet.

18.08.2020.

I'm reading "The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾" now which is written in a diary style. This book encouraged me to start my own blog (in fact, the second one).

Problems to solve:

1) still confusing with "have"/"have got";

2) still have problems with "will/going to" and "shall/will" stuff;

3) still trying to learn the usage of present perfect tense;

4) inexplicably have not got any time to try "talks" @skyeng (it is a great pity).

5) thinking about learning more phrasal verbs and idioms to sound like a native.

Just found this:

What Are The Most Common English Idioms?

https://blog.cambly.com/2020/01/25/32878/

Ok, it's strange that they don't have "put one’s foot in it": (informal) say or do something that upsets, offends or embarrasses somebody without intending to. Example: He really put his foot in it when he mentioned the party to her. She hadn’t been invited.

One more expression I suppose they should have included: "get cold feet": to suddenly become too frightened to do something you had planned to do.

However, they do have: “Wait, we have a math test today? Are you pulling my leg?”

I guess I need to start collecting information about popular phrasal verbs too.

19.08.2020.

Have just had my first "talks" @ skyeng with James Blakemore. He is from South Africa, however, he speaks with a perfect accent. The time (15 minutes only) passed very quickly. Everything is OK. Should pay more attention to prepositions.

After work, I went to the city centre. The first thing I saw was a long line of people standing near the Belarusian embassy. There was a lot of police there. When one of the car drivers honked, all the people in the crowd started shouting as if they had been waiting for the signal. I managed to successfully pass by.

Coming home late at night, I found chicken breast fillet in the fridge which was going to expire the next day. I cooked it and eat it while watching "Back to the Future" film (in English of course). Next time should find out how to switch the subtitles off.

20.08.2020.

Had a chat with another person from skyeng project "talks". His name is Mo Shiny. This was a surprise for me that a person with a name Mo would appear to be a man. That's because of another Mo - Moe (just checked her name - she's Moe) from Japan who used to be a lindy hop/boogie-woogie dance teacher with Remy. By the way, this guy (Mo Shiny, I mean) is also from Africa. I've been to Africa once (Sharm el-Sheikh) as a DJ with the guys from air-conditioners selling office (Daikin).

Surprisingly, I've come up with an idea to explore the script of "Back to the Future". There are many informal dialogues in the film, so it may be useful for me.

Found an admirable podcast from teacher Luke about prepositions and collocations (#238 - part 1 and #239 - part 2). The first part started with Luke's sneezing and went pearshaped (in the wrong direction) after that, but I liked it.

21.08.2020.

Started the day with a long talk with Ayanda @skyeng. It's unbelievable, but she is from Africa as my previous guys were. So I've had three talks with people from Africa in a raw. This Ayanda is from city Durban which looks at the photos from Google very much like Sochi here in Russia. She is a positive and life-affirming person, but I suppose her to be too emotional for me. She tends to overreact so I could hardly get a word in a conversation.

24.08.2020

One of my colleagues (from event agency) phoned me yesterday and asked me if I could make a remix on a song about Buratino (the main character of the book "The Golden Key, or The Adventures of Buratino"). She needed 6 verses instead of the original 3, and the end was to be patched: instead of 2 yellings "Buratino" she asked for 5. I did what she wanted. The result is undoubtedly perfect, one would never find all the junctions.

25.08.2020

Had a talk with Tiffany @skyeng. She's from the USA but now lives in Russia, in Arkhangelsk. Her spoken English differs from the language of the previous guys from Africa. I must have been too embarrassed to speak to her, so I should try once more. The task is to keep the conversation going without focusing so much on grammar.

26.08.2020

I've decided to suspend my regular lessons because there are many things to do at work, and I feel a bit tired. Moreover, I'm having intense speaking practice @talks these days. Had a nice talk with Sarah today, she's from Capetown, Africa. She is calm and really involved in the lesson. What is good with her is that she doesn't hesitate to highlight any mistake I make using notes. Our conversation was mostly about travelling destinations, about hobbies. She's got four children.

28.08.2020

Today's conversation with Tiffany was completely different from our first talk. I managed to relax and stay calm during the chat. Everything was OK: we discussed my job, how it happened that she now lives in Russia, where to run in Astrahan and talked about yoga.

01.09.2020

I reserved a time slot today to talk to Melanie Mile, but she didn't turn up. Eventually, I managed to get in touch with a manager of Skyeng's Talks project. She gave me another teacher, Stephanie from Manila city in the Philippines (it's in Asia). As it turns out, Stephanie has got the worse pronunciation so far, but I'm happy to have had a chat with her. This is a good experience anyway. I have no regrets about today's talk.

Moreover, I keep watching "Back to the future" series, the current is the third. Found some lessons on YouTube based on TV series. There are a lot of things to learn from them.

02.09.2020

Today I managed to forget about my English while speaking with a teacher of English! Jeremy Stanbridge is an old school guy, he used to be a DJ after all. He told me he loved old school music. He's a fan of AMD processors and hates Apple's products. He is now in Batumi, Georgia.

08.09.2020

I have just returned from St. Petersburg. It's so wonderful city, so European. I am sure the difference between St. Petersburg and Moscow is great. Moscow has constantly been losing its soul since I know it to please newcomers from smaller towns who want glitter and luxury. I'll keep this short and sweet. Moscow is a city to make money for most people, so they don't really care. Moreover, I expect that the renovation program and new housing development will basically kill the city as a place fit for living. On the contrary, St. Petersburg was built in beautiful Italian and French architectural styles, and its government keeps protecting and preserving its beauty. There are so many things to do in that city, I guess, one needs more than a week to visit at least some of its landmarks. Four days is not enough, but I'm happy though.

10.09.2020

Today's talk with Ruan Lubbe was a bit frustrating. I expected that he would be more involved in our chat, would be interested and not so formal. The lesson was not bad, but other teachers are more vivid and bright.

11.09.2020

I had the second talk with Jeremy Stanbridge today. We just continued talking about music, DJing, mixes and so on. We didn't have time to talk about my job, about swing dances, but maybe next time we'll be able to do that. I'm going to try the "talks" button at skyeng's platform, I think I'll do it next week.

17.09.2020
The next teacher I had a talk with was Dina. I asked her how she was and she told me she was sleepy. This was at 9.15 in the morning.
I liked her way of teaching. She didn't want to talk about herself, so I chose some random topic which happened to be "technology". She asked me a lot of questions and corrected my answers.

22.09.2020
There were some problems on the platform yesterday, but today I managed to have an excellent conversation with Gail (not Jail, 'g' as in 'go'). She is from South Africa, but she has a brilliant pronunciation. We started our chat with a topic "inconvenient questions" or something like this. It's about racism. But we departed from our subject and discussed the media, the pandemic, renovation of buildings in Moscow, and ended up talking about the importance of living near the water. She told me she had two oceans near her house (15 and 25 minutes by car).

01.10.2020

That was funny to discover an error in vimbox platform during today's chat. I clicked the button "find a teacher" and the teacher was actually found, but the bell was ringing too long and the name of the teacher was wrong on the display. So I think now that two teachers were connected at the same time, so the first one was with me at the lesson and the second was waiting for me with the bell going on and on. Wierd, isn't it? The talk was fine. There were some new word combinations: a role model, for example.