Make Your English Interesting Through Games

Make Your English Interesting Through Games

They say laughter is the best medicine, and we’ve got just the prescription for you! Get the giggles with these fun word games you can play with your friends. Who says studying can’t be fun?

Beginnings and endings

This game focuses on beginning and ending letters of words. The first player says a word, and the next player must quickly say a word that begins with its final letter. For example:

Player 1: English
Player 2: heart
Player 3: telephone
Player 4: elephant

If a person can’t think of a word, hesitates, or gets the letter wrong, they are out of the game. The last person left is the winner.

I spy …

Pick an object that you can see from where you are, for example, an apple on your table. Then say, “I spy with my little eye something red,” corresponding to the object’s color. Then have a friend guess what it might be. “Is it the lamp?” They can keep guessing until they get it right!

As an alternative, you do not have to use a color. Choose any adjective: “I spy … something round” or “I spy … something small.”

Charades

Reveal your acting skills with this game! First think of a popular movie title, and then act it out word by word. Your friends should shout out guesses, and the first person to get it right should take their place on center stage.

Who am I?

Send one person out, and decide what famous person he or she will be. The player returns and asks “Who am I?” Everyone should give one clue: 

Player 1: Who am I? 
Player 2: You are a businessman.
Player 1: Who am I?
Player 3: You are very rich. 
Player 1: Who am I? 
Player 4: You are an American. 

After listening to all the clues, the player has three chances to guess, for example, “Am I Bill Gates?”

Word associations

Begin by saying any word. The next player must quickly say the first related word that comes to mind: 

Player 1: Love
Player 2: Heart
Player 3: Red
Player 4: Fire

Continue this process quickly. If someone takes too long, or if the word is not related, that person is out. The last person to stay in the game is the winner!

Follow the Link HERE for Interesting Games

Read more »

Excellent Websites to Make Your Writing Stronger

Make Your Writing Stronger
1. Skell (Sketch Engine for Language Learning) explores the English language in more than one billion words from news, scientific papers, Wikipedia articles, fiction books, web pages, and blogs.
Skell is easy to use.

• Search for a word or a phrase.
• Click on Examples to get the most presentable sentences containing this word.
• Click on Word sketch to get a list of words which occur frequently together with the searched word.
• Click on Similar words (not only synonyms) where you’ll find words used in similar contexts visualized with a word cloud.

2.Netspeak is a really helpful site to help you write better. It helps you find the word or phrase you’re looking for by suggesting common combinations organised by frequency.
You can find the word(s) you’re looking for by typing signs as seen in the picture below.

• Type ? in your query before, after or in the middle to find a missing word. Type ?? or ??? if you want to find two or three words.
• Use dots (…) to find one, two, or more words at the same time.
• Use square brackets to check which of two or more words is most common, or if none applies. For example: think [ of in ]
• Use curly brackets to check in which order two or more words are commonly written { only for members }
• To find the best synonym, use the hash sign in front of a word to check which of its synonyms are commonly written.

If you want to read some sample sentences, you only need to click the + sign


3. Just the word is a simple quick collocation finder you are going to love.

• Enter the word or phrase you want to search
• Click on “combinations” to see the most common words it collocates with and after each combination, you’ll find its frequency in their corpus (about 80,000,000 words of the BNC).
• In the right-hand frame, you’ll find the part (s) of speech and the types of relation that the word is found in. For example, if you’re looking for the right adjective to modify a noun you’ve chosen, click on the ‘ADJ mod <word>’ link.
• 

4. Words to Use is a nice neat site, which unlike a thesaurus groups theme-related words by parts of speech. Each theme, from “animals” to “vehicles” is divided by parts of the speech- adjectives, nouns, verbs, types of…, phrases, etc.
Are you looking for adjectives that collocate with “movies”? The site lists over 200 adjectives listed in alphabetical order.
Do you want to use a negative word that collocates with “friends”? Or maybe a verb frequently used to refer to friendship? Then, you might want to give this site a try!


5. Collins English Thesaurus
There are some very good thesauruses /θɪˈsɔːrʌɪ/  online, but this one is my favourite.
But, what is a thesaurus and what is the difference between a dictionary and a thesaurus?
A “thesaurus” /θɪˈsɔːrəs/  is a reference work that lists words grouped together according to similarity of meaning (containing synonyms and sometimes antonyms ), in contrast to a dictionary, which provides definitions for words, and generally lists them in alphabetical order. The main purpose of such reference works is to help the user “to find the word, or words, by which an idea may be most fitly and aptly expressed. (source Wikipedia). Unlike a dictionary, a thesaurus does not give you the meaning or the pronunciation of a word.


6. Pro Writing Aid is a fantastic free site that will help you with the final stage of the writing process. This is a tool you want to use after you have written something, to improve it.
Paste the text you want to edit by pressing Ctrl+V. There is a maximum of 3,000 words.
Press the ‘Analyze’ button. A window will appear while the analysis is being run.
Once the analysis is complete the processing window will disappear and the summary screen for your analysis will be displayed. This will give you an overview of any issues and suggestions found in your writing.
 
 

Source

Read more »

Amazing Tattoos

     

The word tattoo, or tattow in the 18th century, is a loanword from the Polynesian word tatau, meaning "correct, workmanlike". The Oxford English Dictionary gives the etymology of tattoo as "In 18th c. tattaow, tattow. From Polynesian (Samoan, Tahitian, Tongan, etc.) tatau. In Marquesan, tatu." Before the importation of the Polynesian word, the practice of tattooing had been described in the West as painting, scarring, or staining. Sailors on the voyage later introduced both the word and reintroduced the concept of tattooing to Europe.

This is not to be confused with the origins of the word for the military drumbeat — see military tattoo. In this case, the English word tattoo is derived from the Dutch word taptoe (OED).

The first written reference to the word tattoo (or tatau), appears in the journal of Joseph Banks (24 February 1743 – 19 June 1820), the naturalist aboard Captain Cook's ship the HMS Endeavour: "I shall now mention the way they mark themselves indelibly, each of them is so marked by their humor or disposition".

The word "tattoo" was brought to Europe by the explorer James Cook, when he returned in 1769 from his first voyage to Tahiti and New Zealand. In his narrative of the voyage, he refers to an operation called "tattaw".

Tattoo enthusiasts may refer to tattoos as "ink", "pieces", "skin art", "tattoo art", "tats", or "work"; to the creators as "tattoo artists", "tattooers", or "tattooists"; and to places where they work as "tattoo shops", "tattoo studios", or "tattoo parlors".

A tattooed man's back, Japan, c. 1875

Mainstream art galleries hold exhibitions of both conventional and custom tattoo designs such as Beyond Skin, at the Museum of Croydon. Copyrighted tattoo designs that are mass-produced and sent to tattoo artists are known as "flash", a notable instance of industrial design. Flash sheets are prominently displayed in many tattoo parlors for the purpose of providing both inspiration and ready-made tattoo images to customers.

The Japanese word irezumi means "insertion of ink" and can mean tattoos using tebori, the traditional Japanese hand method, a Western-style machine, or for that matter, any method of tattooing using insertion of ink. The most common word used for traditional Japanese tattoo designs is Horimono. Japanese may use the word "tattoo" to mean non-Japanese styles of tattooing.

Anthropologist Ling Roth in 1900 described four methods of skin marking and suggested they be differentiated under the names "tatu", "moko", "cicatrix", and "keloid".

SOURCE

Read more »

Quotes about Success

75 Inspiring Quotes  about Success

"If you set your goals ridiculously high and it's a failure, you will fail above everyone else's success." James Cameron

"Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it." Henry David Thoreau

"Things work out best for those who make the best of how things work out."John Wooden

"Entrepreneurs average 3.8 failures before final success. What sets the successful ones apart is their amazing persistence." Lisa M. Amos

"If you are not willing to risk the usual, you will have to settle for the ordinary."Jim Rohn

"Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life--think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success." Swami Vivekananda

"Stop chasing the money and start chasing the passion." Tony Hsieh

"All our dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them." Walt Disney

"If you are willing to do more than you are paid to do, eventually you will be paid to do more than you do." Anonymous

"Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm." Winston Churchill

"Whenever you see a successful person, you only see the public glories, never the private sacrifices to reach them." Vaibhav Shah

"Success? I don't know what that word means. I'm happy. But success, that goes back to what in somebody's eyes success means. For me, success is inner peace. That's a good day for me." Denzel Washington

"Opportunities don't happen. You create them." Chris Grosser

"Try not to become a person of success, but rather try to become a person of value." Albert Einstein

"It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change." Charles Darwin

"Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people." Eleanor Roosevelt

"The best revenge is massive success." Frank Sinatra

"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." Thomas Edison

"A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him." David Brinkley

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." Eleanor Roosevelt

"The whole secret of a successful life is to find out what is one's destiny to do, and then do it." Henry Ford

"If you're going through hell, keep going." Winston Churchill

"What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise." Oscar Wilde

"The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success." Bruce Feirstein

"Don't be afraid to give up the good to go for the great." John D. Rockefeller

"Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you." Nathaniel Hawthorne

"If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." Albert Einstein

"There are two types of people who will tell you that you cannot make a difference in this world: those who are afraid to try and those who are afraid you will succeed." Ray Goforth

"Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can." Arthur Ashe

"People ask, 'What's the best role you've ever played?' The next one." Kevin Kline

"I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have." Thomas Jefferson

"The starting point of all achievement is desire." Napoleon Hill

"Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day-in and day-out." Robert Collier

"If you want to achieve excellence, you can get there today. As of this second, quit doing less-than-excellent work." Thomas J. Watson

"All progress takes place outside the comfort zone." Michael John Bobak

"You may only succeed if you desire succeeding; you may only fail if you do not mind failing." Philippos

"Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear--not absence of fear." Mark Twain

"Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone."Pablo Picasso

"We become what we think about most of the time, and that's the strangest secret." Earl Nightingale

"The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary." VidalSassoon

"I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everyone." Bill Cosby

"Though no one can go back and make a brand-new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand-new ending." Carl Bard

"I find that when you have a real interest in life and a curious life, that sleep is not the most important thing." Martha Stewart

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."Mark Twain

"The first step toward success is taken when you refuse to be a captive of the environment in which you first find yourself." Mark Caine

"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect." Mark Twain

"The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus." Bruce Lee

"Rarely have I seen a situation where doing less than the other guy is a good strategy." Jimmy Spithill

"Keep on going, and the chances are that you will stumble on something, perhaps when you are least expecting it. I never heard of anyone ever stumbling on something sitting down." Charles F. Kettering

"If you genuinely want something, don't wait for it--teach yourself to be impatient." Gurbaksh Chahal

"You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something--your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life." Steve Jobs

"If you want to make a permanent change, stop focusing on the size of your problems and start focusing on the size of you!" T. Harv Eker

"Successful people do what unsuccessful people are not willing to do. Don't wish it were easier; wish you were better." Jim Rohn

"The No. 1 reason people fail in life is because they listen to their friends, family, and neighbors." Napoleon Hill

"In my experience, there is only one motivation, and that is desire. No reasons or principle contain it or stand against it." Jane Smiley

"Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time." George Bernard Shaw

"I don't want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well." Diane Ackerman

"Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going." Jim Ryun

"Our greatest fear should not be of failure ... but of succeeding at things in life that don't really matter." Francis Chan

"If you don't design your own life plan, chances are you'll fall into someone else's plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much." Jim Rohn

"Nobody ever wrote down a plan to be broke, fat, lazy, or stupid. Those things are what happen when you don't have a plan." Larry Winget

"To be successful you must accept all challenges that come your way. You can't just accept the ones you like." Mike Gafka

"Be content to act, and leave the talking to others." Baltasar

"You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it." Margaret Thatcher

"Be patient with yourself. Self-growth is tender; it's holy ground. There's no greater investment." Stephen Covey

"I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite." G. K. Chesterton

"Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up." Thomas A. Edison

"The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize." Robert Hughes

"What would you attempt to do if you knew you would not fail?" Robert Schuller

"Always bear in mind that your own resolution to success is more important than any other one thing." Abraham Lincoln

"Successful and unsuccessful people do not vary greatly in their abilities. They vary in their desires to reach their potential." John Maxwell

"Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It's quite simple, really: Double your rate of failure. You are thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn't at all. You can be discouraged by failure or you can learn from it, so go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because remember that's where you will find success." Thomas J. Watson

"Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere." Albert Einstein

"Success is just a war of attrition. Sure, there's an element of talent you should probably possess. But if you just stick around long enough, eventually something is going to happen." Dax Shepard

"My tombstone? I'm thinking something along the lines of, 'Geez, he was just here a minute ago.'" George Carlin

Read more »