Podcast ! 🎤

Hello guys! 😊

Here we decided to make something different.

This is a podcast about famous people that I did with my boyfriend Chris.

I hope you like it! 👇👇

                            

Reported speech 😎

What is it?

You can use reported speech to report what a person said without using the exact words that he or she said.

It can be used in two ways: direct and idirect speech.

Direct speech

Here you literally say what the other person said with quotation marks.

Example: Mariana said, "I am sad today."

We usually called direct speech to the positive or negative statements too.

Indirect speech

On the other hand, on idirect speech you say what the other person said, but without quotation marks. It means that you should use the word "that" to introduce what the other person said, and probably you will need to change the verb tense.

Here you have example of how to use reported speech depending on the type of tense:

 Notice that when you develop an indirect speech you change the main verb of the sentence. This is not complicated, depending on the kind of tense in which the direct speech is you must change the verb.

❄ This video will give you a deeper explantion about this topic:

Transitive and Intransitive verbs 🤓✍

Transitive verbs

💥A transitive verb is an action verb that needs a direct object to receive that action and to complete its meaning. 

💥Also, you can answer the questions "who" or what" to know if the verb of the sentence is transitive.

💥Transitive verbs follow this formula: Subject + transitive verb + object

Examples: - Lucas loves his mother. 👉 Who does Lucas love?

                  - Mónica is watching TV. 👉  What is she doing?

Intransitive Verbs

💥They are the ones that do not need a direct object receiving the action.

💥Usually, if your answer to the questions "who" or what" is not an object, let me tell you that you have an intransitive verb.

💥Intransitive verbs have a very simple formula: Subject + intransitive verb

Examples:  - Julia talks.

                   - I agree.

This video would help to understand better this kind of verbs:

Bye guys 👋

See you! 😊

Embedded questions ❓🤔

 

Hello! 😊

Today we are going to review a little bit about embedded questions.

First of all, what are embedded questions?

❄ This kind of question is included within another question or usually in statements. Actually, native English speakers tend to use them more than direct questions.

❄ You may say, but what is the difference between a direct and embedded question?

Here is an example:  Direct question: What time did the plane arrive?

                              Embedded question: I wonder what time the plane arrived.

❄ Another important fact that you need to know about these type of questions is that they often start with the following phases: 

Could you tell me

Do you know 

Can you tell me

I wonder (commonly in statements)

Remember: if you start a question with one of the previous expressions (except the last one), the structure of the question changes.

Example:  Regular question: Where is the library?

                 Embedded question: Can you tell me where the library is?

As you can see, embedded questions are not always an exact question, but they can be used in a sentence or even inside regular questions.

Here you have a video for a deeper explanation about this topic:

Thanks for reading.

See you in the next post! 😉

Clauses! 😎

Adjective, adverb, and 

noun clauses ⛄🎄

Hi guys! I hope you are enjoying the holidays. 😊

Do you know the difference between a dependent and independent clause? 

❉ An independent clause is a sentence with a subject and verb that transmit a complete thought. It makes sense by itself.  

 ❉ On the other hand, a dependent clause does not express a complete thought. It is not a sentence and this type of clauses can not stand by itself. Besides, dependent clauses MUST be joined to another clause, in order to avoid creating a sentence fragment.

💥Adjective clauses 

They are subordinate clauses that describe a noun or pronoun.

Examples: 

- The TV show called Friends, which is my favorite TV series, is celebrating its 26th anniversary this year.

- I live in a country where there is no army.

💥Adverb clauses

They are dependent clauses that modify the verb, adjective, or adverb.

Examples:

- I think that chamomile tea is delicious, as long as it does not have too much sugar.

- After the storm passed, we went outside to survey the damage

💥Noun clauses

It is a subordinate clause used as a noun. Also, they can be used as:

❉ Subject

❉ Direct and indirect object

❉ Object of a preposition

❉ Predicate noun

Examples: 

- For when the true king arrives, prince Arturo will have to answer for his crimes. 

- whatever my mom cooked is fine for me. 

Cause-Effect essay

Hello! 👋

Today we are going to review a little bit about cause and effect structure words that you can use to write in this kind of essay. Besides, here are some words to use in the sentences:

facial mask / pandemic / social distancing / become infected / high-risk population group

🔅 Nowadays people must use a facial mask due to the coronavirus. 

🔅 As a result of the pandemic, I can not see my friends face to face.

🔅 There are many people in the country who are having parties again. As a consequence, more people will become infected.

🔅 Covid-19 has a significant effect on the high-risk population group. 

🔅 Since people are not keeping social distancing anymore, the virus is spreading faster.

Connecting sentences!

 Hi again! 😃💜

Other important topics of grammar are transition words and run-on sentences.

When you are writing an essay or paragraph it is necessary to add some words or punctuation marks to connect all the sentences correctly. Otherwise, you can make the mistake of writing run-on sentences.

On the other hand, run-on sentences need to be avoided in writing because they appear when 2 different and independent sentences are connected wrong. 👎

Here you have some exercises! 😁👇

Answers 💥

2. Usually volcano eruptions follow several earthquakes. For example, in the 24-hour period before the eruption in May, nine earthquakes were recorded.

3. At many U.S. universities female students dramatically outnumber males, so college administrators are considering how to attract more male students.

4. Many students have to decide whether to go to college full-time and take out a student loan or go to college part-time and get a job.

5. Dancers develop a sense of balance and a sense of grace.

6. Two of the boys speak Finnish because they study at a Finnish school on the weekends.

Answers!

2. Since we live in a large apartment building, I know a lot of other kids who are my age and we can always find something to do.

3. Sometimes I can’t answer the teacher’s question, but I know the answer.

4. Members of varsity sports teams aren’t supposed to hold part-time jobs, but it’s not legal for the school district to forbid them.

5. It’s not legal for the school district to forbid them to have jobs, so it’s like an unspoken rule.

6. Most of the crossword puzzles in this book are so long; I can’t do them all at once. Therefore, I have to go back once or twice or sometimes even three times to get all the words. 

* I hope you learned something regarding this topic.

See you later! 😎

Responding to a reading essay !

Hi guys! 💜

Here is the first sample of an essay that I will show you. This is a diagnosis essay that I made with my partner Chris for our written communication course. 😎📝

Honestly, this kind of essay was really difficult to understand, probably because we have never written an essay responding to an article. 

I mean, this essay is not perfect, and writing it was an odyssey. 😅

Do you like video games? 🎮 Well if you do I hope you enjoy reading this essay!

                                                         Outline

Thesis Statement: Playing video games has its cons and pros, but it is not always related to violence; it could have a different effect depending on the age and mental instability of people.

I.             Children age

A.     Not old enough to play specific games

                          1.    Age restrictions

2.    Not attention from parents 

                B.   Not the same mentality as adults

1.   Everything is real

2.   Imitation 

II.            Mental instability

A.   Video games affect people with mental problems

1.    Recreate scenarios

2.     Reality and fiction

B.    More attention from parents to kid´s behavior

 

1.    Violent conduct

2.    Video games allowed 

Conclusion: Therefore, video games are not always dangerous for players; it depends on certain factors like how old is the person and his mental health.

                                     Are video games really linked to violence?

      Currently, with all this digital world, playing video games has become very popular among young people. Unfortunately, more kids are starting to play aggressive games since they are pretty young. Most of the time people associate video games that are considered violent with harmful behavior. Probably this is because they usually think that all these games always influence people's behavior in a really bad way. Actually, if a violent event occurs in schools, colleges or even at homes, they usually relate it with young video game players. For example, many years ago there was an accident in a Columbine school. It was a sunny and peaceful day, but suddenly a student pulled out a gun and started shooting. Most viewers said that it was likely because of the influence of some video games. In part they are right, but not everything about this is completely true. According to an article about video games, there are many people playing violent video games like Halo and Counter-Strike, but they have never killed a person (Scheffter, 2007, pag.162). Young people used to play these games because it is a way of distracting themselves from their own problems and literally to get away from the real world. Not all the games are violent and there are many kinds of video games that people can use just to get fun or even to learn about something.  In fact, playing video games has its cons and pros, but it is not always related to violence; it could have a different effect depending on the age and mental instability of people.

       Playing video games is one of the favorite hobbies for many children and young people, but it is very important to keep in mind the appropriate age for such games. Actually, there are many people who are not old enough to play specific games. Each game has an age rating and without it, the video game cannot be launched on the market and sold as commonly happens. For this reason, every single game that is sold in stores has certain age restrictions. The objective of establishing these specific ages is to protect children from violent contents. Unfortunately, most parents do not pay enough attention to the restrictions and the kind of games that they buy for their kids. Shaffler affirms the following “There are studies that look for correlations between exposure of these games and real-world aggression. This work suggests that kids who are more immersed in violent video games may be more likely to get into physical fights, argue with teachers, or display anger and hostility. (Schaffter, 2007)” Shaffler is right, but that is because the studies to collect this information was done on children. Age is a very important factor in this topic of violence and video games. Children just imitate everything that they see because they do not know the gap that we as mature people know. If children see a firefighter on TV they will want to be that firefighter. It is the same for video games, no matter if they are violent or not. Besides, it is relevant to take into account that children do not have the same mentality as adults. During their childhood they are not conscious of what is good or bad, so kids usually think that everything is right. Also, as it was mentioned before at certain ages they tend to imitate everything they see. Probably if they see violence from games since 5 to 7 years it will affect their behavior, but not because of this, every single gamer is going to be aggressive. Children should not play these violent video games because they do not process the same information as a mature person.

     Children's age is really important when it comes to playing violent video games, but the mental instability of a person is relevant too. Video games can have a big impact on the behavior of people with mental problems. They do not think and see things around them the same way other people do. Regarding this aspect, some analysts say that people probably use these games to escape from their difficulties and it can be useful according to their mental condition (Scheffter, 2007, pag.162). People with mental issues who play a huge amount of hours per day is a really worrying situation. They could start thinking about recreating what it is shown in the games. It means that they can commit really violent crimes in awful scenarios. The main problem of people with this mental instability is that usually they do not distinguish reality from fiction, so they should not play too many violent games like other people do. In addition, parents who know that their kids are mentally unstable should pay more attention to their children's behavior when they are playing certain video games. For instance, if they were already aggressive people, it can open the door to a more violent conduct. Like it was said before not all games affect people in the same way or sometimes playing games does not have an impact on them at all. Always remember to be really careful about the video games that children with mental disorders are allowed to play. Checking what they are playing and avoiding violent games as possible could prevent future tragedies.

     In conclusion, children should not play these video games because they are very violent and usually kids do not have the mental capacity to digest this kind of data. Parents should always be aware of their children and to watch what kind of games they are playing. Also, it is important that parents or any legal guardian of a person with a mental disability remember to be always alert about the kind of video games that their children can play because they do not see the world around them in the same way as other kids. Unfortunately, violent games can make their mental state worse, even if they are old enough to play these aggressive games. Many more studies are needed to determine if this kind of video games are truly linked to cases of aggression in today's children. Because there are many factors that influence these acts such as those mentioned above, age, mental state, and others such as a history of family abuse. (Scheffter, 2007, pag.163). Therefore, video games are not always dangerous for players; it depends on certain factors like how old the person is and his mental health.

Grammar Review

 Grammar? 😵💣

You might think that it is too boring and let me tell you that somewhat it is.

The truth is that grammar topics in English are not funny at all, but they are needed to write better essays. 📝📝

Here it is a quick review of some main sentences and parts of speech that you should know to write in English. 💻👀

Take a look at this!

Welcome to this English world! 💥

Hello everybody, my name is Melanie and I´m 20 years old.

* I study English teaching at the UCR and this is my second year in the career.

* To be honest I had never done a blog by myself. Actually, in the previous course or written communication, we did a blog like this, but it was in groups.

* I am a fan of the tv series called "Friends"  and I also like reading. 

* The goal of this blog is to share my knowledge of English and what I constantly learn in the online classes with you. 

                                 Enjoy it!