Ron's ESL Blogs

Dictionaries are very important tools for English learners. They make things more clear, give valuable information about vocabulary, and in many cases help teach grammar.

With that said, the learner should know how to choose his dictionaries.

There are some excellent English-English dictionaries, such as the Unabridged Merriam-Webster, that can make the learner scream in horror… It is simply way too big and complicated for the average learner. Actually, it can even be way too big and complicated for the average English speaker!

Other dictionaries can be too small. They might have too little words, and too little information for each word. So they can have little or no use.

So the trick is to select the perfect one for you. You should ask yourself the following questions:

- Are the definitions clear to me? Can I easily understand them?
- Does it give enough example sentences? (These are highly helpful.)
- Does this dictionary have most of the words I am looking for?
- Can I get it together with a handy CD? (This can actually be very useful and time saving!)

There are other features that make a dictionary more desirable, such as many illustrations, usage notes, grammar notes, and other cool extras, so you might want to look for those too.

Did you know many good and popular dictionaries have a free online version? You can read about them, and about other recommended dictionaries in this English Dictionary Guide.

Ola Zur is the editor of Really Learn English Vocabulary and Easy English Grammar, an illustrated guide to English.

Interjections are sounds, words or phrases that express the speaker’s emotion.

Here are some examples:
Ouch! It hurts!
Hmm… That’s an interesting question.
Hey! What are you doing?
Wow, that’s wonderful!
My goodness, what happened?

What is special about interjections is that they remain unaffected by the rest of the sentence. They do not change their form. They do not have singular/plural form, different tenses etc. Also, a single interjection can be considered as an Entire sentence!

Example:
Goodbye!
(That’s the whole sentence…)

Sometimes regular words in the language function as interjections.

Examples:
Yes!
Sorry!
Ok.

How to use interjections?
You can use them to express emotions such as surprise (e.g. oh!), annoyance (e.g. damn!), joy (e.g. Hurray!), etc. They are also used to greet (e.g. hi!), pause your speech (e.g. um…) and so forth.

Writing tip: When combining the interjection with the rest of the sentence you should usually use an exclamation mark (!) or a comma (,) depending on the strength of the statement.

Examples:
Wow, this is awesome!
Ah, that’s nice.

Interjection is a part of speech. Click here for more data on the English parts of speech.

The prepositions “at”, “in” and “on” can be confusing for English learners. Their meaning is so close that it is sometimes hard to tell when to use each word.

Here are some guidelines that will help you decide on the correct preposition to use:

1) When you want to speak about a precise time, use “at“.

Examples:
The movie starts at nine o’clock.
They arrived at 6 PM.
The meeting is at 4:30 this afternoon.

2) When you want to speak about long periods of time (such as months, seasons, years, etc), use “in“.

Examples:
I returned to Canada in 1998.
We first met in June.
The lake will unfreeze in the spring.

3) When you want to speak about a particular day, use “on“.

Examples:
She will be back on Thursday.
I was born on January 2nd.
They will join us on Thanksgiving.

Ola Zur is the editor of Really Learn English Vocabulary and Easy English Grammar.

English plural forms tend to be pretty simple, in most cases. You usually add s/es/ies in the end of the word and your job is done.

Examples:

kid -> kids

box -> boxes

baby -> babies

However, some words change differently.

Examples:

child -> children

man -> men

woman -> women

person -> people

mouse -> mice

foot -> feet

fish -> fish

sheep -> sheep

datum -> data

bacterium -> bacteria

How can you know the plural form of each word? You can always check it in the dictionary.

Ola Zur is the editor of Really Learn English Vocabulary and Grammar with Illustrations, an illustrated guide to English.

One of the most frequent words in English is “run”, but did you know it had over 40 different meanings?

Well, it does. We won’t go over all of them in this post, but we’ll definitely cover the important ones for you to know.

So here are the meanings and examples of the word “run” (past tense: “ran”)

Meaning #1: to move very quickly.
Example: “He ran after the bus, but it didn’t help.”
“The children are running up and down the stairs.”
“He is too old to run.”

Meaning #3: to work or operate.
Examples: “This computer scan is running for over an hour.”
“Our new website is up and running.”
“Don’t leave the car when the engine is running.”

Meaning #3: to be in control of something.
Examples: “I am running this company.”
“This manager does not run his team very well.”
“Do you know how to run this machine?”
“Can you run a disk cleanup?”

Meaning #4: to try to win an election.
Examples: “Jonathan is running for president.”
“He doesn’t have much chances of winning, since Martha is running against him.”
“He wants to run for mayor, but he doesn’t have the funds.”

Meaning #5: to flow.
Examples: “Rhine River runs all the way through Europe.”
“Tears were running down her cheeks.”
“Cold water was running out of the tap.”

Ola Zur is the editor of Really Learn English with Illustrations, an illustrated guide to English.