Prepositions related to the festive season

Hi! Another common error from our Skype English classes is that which concerns the prepositions of time for this time of year. For example, we say 'at Christmas' and 'on Christmas day/eve' and 'on new year's day/eve'. The day of 'reyes magos' is called 'epiphany' or 'twelth night' and is not a holiday in the UK or the US. The preposition 'on' would be used in these last 2 examples. Hope that helps and Merry Christmas. 

Other nouns to mean 'robber' with Video

This video explains the difference between 'robber', 'mugger', 'pickpocket-er' and 'burglar'.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeMwa-4O8Zg

'To mug' is reasonably easy. It is when someone pickpockets you outside. We are talking about stealing phones, wallets, iPods and the like: small items that you carry on your person. A mugger does this.

'To burgle' is easy too. It's when things from your house are stolen by a thief. A burglar carries this out. 

Concerning 'to rob'.You rob buildings, companies or organisations or people. It is transitive. For example, 'she robbed the bank', 'they robbed the family', 'I was robbed' or 'they robbed el Corte Inglés'. Here, the object is the person or thing that suffers, not what the thrift takes. The noun is 'a robbery'. 

With 'to steal' this is equally transitive but here the object is what is stolen: money, data, a wallet, a phone etc. With 'to steal' when you indicate the innocent party or where the item was taken from, you need the preposition 'from'. For instance, 'she stole the cash from the till', 'I have stolen money from the bank twice' or 'the thief stole the handbag from the frail woman'. We don't usually use a noun with 'to steal'.

Hope that helps. Have a Nice day. http://www.clasesinglesonline.com    

Difference between to steal, to rob, to mug and to burgle

Hi! So another issue students have in our Skype Englishclasses is that associated with the verbs 'to rob', 'to steal' 'to burgle' and 'to mug'. Much confusion arises with these. 

'To mug' is reasonably easy. It is when someone pickpockets you outside. We are talking about stealing phones, wallets, iPods and the like: small items that you carry on your person. A mugger does this.
 

 'To burgle' is easy too. It's when things from your house are stolen by a thief. A burglar carries this out. 

 

Concerning 'to rob'.You rob buildings, companies or organisations or people. It is transitive. For example, 'she robbed the bank', 'they robbed the family', 'I was robbed' or 'they robbed el Corte Inglés'. Here, the object is the person or thing that suffers, not what the thrift takes. The noun is 'a robbery'. 
 

With 'to steal' this is equally transitive but here the object is what is stolen: money, data, a wallet, a phone etc. With 'to steal' when you indicate the innocent party or where the item was taken from, you need the preposition 'from'. For instance, 'she stole the cash from the till', 'I have stolen money from the bank twice' or 'the thief stole the handbag from the frail woman'. We don't usually use a noun with 'to steal'.

 Hope that helps. Have a Nice day. http://www.clasesinglesonline.com

The difference between 'on time' and 'in time':

'On time' means being punctual, e.g. 'I arrived at the meeting on time' (if the meeting is at 17h then you pretty much arrived at that time). 'In time' means any time before the start time of an action, e.g. 'she got to the train station in time for her train to Milan' (she could have arrived 1 min, 5 mins, 15 mins etc before the scheduled departure of the train). This error is not confined to our Spanish English as a second language students. Students whose first language is not Spanish will have this issue. 

Confusion with 2 syllable comparatives ending in 'y'

So a common error often committed by native English speakers is with the double syllable comparative ending in 'y'. Remember, double syllable adjectives ending with 'y' should be treated as a short adjective. Hence we say 'funnier', 'happier', 'luckier' and NOT 'more funny' etc as natives often do. Remember to add the extra 'i' also before 'er' and take off the 'y'. Have a great day. 

Confusion with ‘to practice’ and other verbs for different sports

This is a very problematic word for students in our skype English classes as they all too often translate this literally wrongly when we are talking about sport. So ‘practicar deportes’ would not be translated by ‘I practice sport’ but we would say ‘I do or play sport’. Similarly, ‘practico tenis’ would not be translated with ‘practice’ but in this case we’d say ‘I play tennis’.

We use ‘to practice’ in sport or other activities to mean to go over a routine or to repeat something. For example, we would practice penalties in readiness for a penalty shoot-out. The noun ‘practice’ would be an ‘entrenamiento’. It can also be called ‘training’ in English. For example, we’d go to ‘hockey training’ as well as ‘tennis practice’. If we want to perfect routines by repeating them then we’d use ‘practice’. For example, we would say ‘we need to practice corners’.

With regard to the verb we use with different sports, the structure depends on the type of sport indicated. For team games with a ball, we employ the verb ‘play’. For instance, we’d say ‘she plays rugby, golf, baseball…’. If the sport is also a verb like ‘skiing’ or ‘sailing’ or ‘cycling’ then we have several options. First, we can say simply ‘I run’ or ‘she skies’. Second, it is possible to say ‘she goes skiing’ or ‘he went cycling’. For sports which are not verbs and do not have a ball in use then we would use the verb ‘to do’. For example we would say ‘I do karate’ or ‘I do archery’. As there are so many different sports there can be exceptions to these rules.

Use 'to be on holiday' and not 'to be on holidays'

Hi! Remember, in English we use the structure 'to be on holiday' and not 'to be on holidays'. For example, it'd be accurate to say 'we were on holiday for 2 weeks last month' and not 'we were on holidays for 2 weeks last month'. http://www.clasesinglesonline.com/

Be careful when saying ‘last day’ or ‘next day’:

So in our sessions virtually every client falls into this trap. Avoid saying ‘last day’ or ‘next day’ when you want to talk about the last or next occasion an event such as one of our Skype English classes will happen. For instance, students often say something like ‘I’d like to look at uncountable nouns next day’. The use of ‘next day’ here is a significant error. Remember that ‘next day’ and indeed ‘last day’ are direct translations from the Spanish and they don’t work in the same way in English. As alternatives we could use ‘next/last time’ or ‘in the next/last session’ when mentioning the next or last instance something will take happen. We hope that makes sense.

So which preposition should we use with the verb 'to arrive': in or at?

The preposition that comes after ‘arrive’ is often problematic. Even native speakers have trouble with this. If we are talking about arriving in a specific place name such as a village, region, country, city, park then we must utilise the preposition ‘in’. For example, ‘the England rugby team arrived in South Africa last night’ or ‘we arrived in Rotterdam yesterday’ or ‘she will arrive in the village of West Harting later’. So, when we mention the name of a specific place (village, town, city, county, country…) then we must use ‘in’ with the verb ‘to arrive’. Should the place where we arrive not be a city, village, county etc then we must utilise the preposition ‘at’. For example, ‘I arrived at the police station half an hour ago’ or ‘she will shortly arrive at the cinema’ or ‘he has already arrived at work’ or ‘when will we arrive at Madrid bus terminal?’ Note in the last example that the generic place supersedes the specific place (Madrid) with regard to the implementation of the preposition.

Separate from this is the phrase 'to arrive at a decision'. This is not to be confused with the above.
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How do we translate the word 'fiesta' to English?

Good evening/morning, so a lot of fiestas are taking place right now in Spain. So what would be the closest word to 'fiesta' in English? Well ultimately some loss in translation is inevitable as a fiesta in Spain is a concept that is unique to Spain. Probably, the best word would not be 'party' for 'fiestas' happening in big towns or cities as the 'fiesta' really becomes quite sizable in big towns or cities. In these cases, the most appropriate word would be 'festival'. So Pamplona/Iruña has a bull running festival in early July. Valencia has a festival in March and San Sebastian de los Reyes similarly has a bull running festival in late August. If the 'fiesta' occurs in a village then we can safely name it a 'village party' since we do have village parties in the UK, albeit very different to those in Spain. Also, in the UK, a party can be at someone's residence or in a night club (discoteca). All the best. 

Verb "to discuss" has no preposition

Good morning! So remember the verb 'to discuss' has no preposition. So we cannot say in class 'let's discuss about the new procedure in the follow-up meeting'. It would be ' 'let's discuss the new procedure in the follow-up meeting'. Have a great day.
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2 common and useful phrasal verbs

Good morning/afternoon: 2 common phrasal verbs you will find useful that our English students have trouble with are 'to be fed up with' meaning 'estar harto de' and 'to put up with' meaning 'aguantar algo'. So we could say 'she is fed up with getting up so early' and 'she can't put up with the barking dogs any longer'. Have a Nice day/evening.
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Use of the nuetral possessive 'their'

What to do with possessives when group is both genders or unknown and subject is third person: we can use the neutral possessive. Students in our Skype English lessons have great problems with this. Read on:

The neutral possessive used in third person for people is 'their'. So if we have a group of people composed of both sexes we should use 'their'. Consider: 'each student/everyone should hand in their homework on time'. Unless we know that the people involved is one gender, we should assume that there are 2 genders and thus utilise 'their'. If we know that the group has one sex only then we could employ 'his' or 'her' depending on the gender of the group. An alternative to 'their' often employed is 'his or her'. E.g. each student should hand in his or her homework. Have a good day/night. www.clasesinglesonline.com

Issues with 'since'

Good afternoon! Another problem area that Spanish speaking students have in our Skype English lessons is using 'since' . For instance, you cannot say 'I have been here since 1 year ago'. 'Since' used with the present perfect, present perfect continuous or the past perfect continuous tenses has to have an indication of the starting time of when the action began. So we would say 'I have been in Venice since Monday' or 'she has been studying Norwegian since March 2013' not 'since 1 year ago'. With the 3 afore mentioned tenses make sure you indicate the actual start time. If you translate structures like 'desde hace 1 año' literally you are gonna have trouble. With regard to other tenses not indicated above 'desde' when it indicates when an action starts should not be translated by 'since' but by 'from' for instance. Thus, 'she has class from Monday to Thursday' or 'they will be on holiday from January to March' or 'the trip occurred from June to August'. Hope that helps. Have a great day/night.

http://www.clasesinglesonline.com

Good evening, another common error committed by out clients in our Skype English classes concerns the use of the structure 'one of the'. When this is followed by a noun students have the tendency to put the noun in a singular form. Eg 'one of the pick up is a Toyota'. 'One of the' must be followed by a noun in the plural form. Thus, 'one of the pick ups is a Toyota'. A 'pick up' is a 'camioneta' in Spanish (most of our students are Spanish) in case you were wondering. http://www.clasesinglesonline.com/

'Familiar' shouldn't be used as an adjective of 'Family'

Another common error from our Skype English classes concerns 'familiar'. remember 'familiar' isn't an adjective of 'family' usually. So we wouldn't say 'I had a familiar reunion yesterday' but we'd say 'I had a family reunion yesterday'. 'Familiar' is used to indicate that you have knowledge about something. For example, 'I am familiar with Paris' or 'I am familiar with chemical engineering processes'. Remember, the preposition with 'familiar' is 'with'.