In my last post about writing a TOEFL essay, I talked about your introductory paragraph. Usually, people don’t have time for more than their thesis and two main points or reasons. Today, I want to talk about the body of the essay – the main information section of the essay. In the body of the [...]
In this video blog, I talk about the 3rd Street Farmer’s Market in the Fairfax District in LA. It’s a permanent farmers’ market – with a lot of prepared food and a few farmers’ stalls (kiosk, small area for selling things)- and a common tourist place. It’s right next to the Grove, which is a [...]
Okay, so, you may or may not agree that gay marriage is a good thing. Even here in California, which is a hippie (person from the 60′s or who follows the 60′s way of thinking – free love, sandals, long hair…) liberal-land (a place where many people have liberal/socialist/left-leaning beliefs), only around 50 percent of [...]
In this blog post, I talk about gay marriage being allowed in California. I use quite a few IF clauses to give you some more examples. One thing I want you to remember is that after IF, you need a subject and a present verb, usually simple present, but sometimes it can be present progressive [...]
The IF Clauses or Conditional clauses are really tough (hard, difficult). So, we’re going to start out with the basics. First, I’ll talk to you about the present real conditional. This is when you are talking about a real situation in the present that is not necessarily going to happen, but it might happen. So, [...]
You need to learn science vocabulary for life and the TOEFL. Nowadays, people often discuss science and technology in regular conversation, so make sure you learn the basics, especially about the human body and computers. Here’s a little test for you with very basic vocabulary: 1. What is a belly button? 2. Where is a [...]
When you tell a story about something that happened to you, you often want to tell people what someone said. If you use indirect speech, it will be very impressive. You can even include indirect speech in your examples for the TOEFL essay. If you do it correctly, you will get a higher score because [...]
Vocabulary and Transcript You know, today I was planning on going to the beach and I thought, you know, a lot of my students have a problem with that sound, beach, that e sound, eee. The big confusion – it seems to be – comes between the e sound and the soft i sound. “i” [...]
This is one of the most confusing parts of English grammar. Normally, you should not use THE before a name. But sometimes THE is part of the name. For example, THE United States of America! Or the U.S. You can also say the U.S.A., though it’s very rare, except in military culture, to say the [...]
If you want to write a strong TOEFL essay or even a good email, you have to get good at using details in your writing. In this blog post, I talk about an experience I had in which a really sweet transvestite did my makeup. (sweet = nice) (transvestite = a man dressed as a [...]