Practicing Business English

What do I need to study?

Social interactions


Introductions

Socializing

Inviting

Requesting

Telephoning


 




Business Correspondence


Letter writing

Memos

Proposals

Business plans

Advertising

Other communication


 




Business Meetings


Phrases for discussion

Agendas

Assignments and Follow-up


 




Business Presentations


Professionalism

Organization

Visuals

Audience awareness


 




Business Vocabulary


Products and Services

Promotion

Finance and Banking

Accounting and Invoicing

Technology

Channeling


 




Business Activities


Buying and Selling

Cultural skills

Networking

Negotiation

Contracts

Business English

Business English The Australian Radio network provides a great site to learn Business English through concrete examples and situations. There are tips and exercises after each lessons. You must enjoy it.

BBC Learning English | Business English Learn and improve your English through business related topics.

English for Presentations - Effective Public Speaking Skills

Business English  Doing Business in English

Useful Expression for  business English

 

Business English Pod  Learn Business English at your convenience with our free MP3 Business English Podcast.

Bloomberg.com - Financial news - Investment Tools - Market Data

American Business Jargon

Business English for EFL, ESL students.

BusinessWeek: Daily & Breaking News from the world of business.

MBA Programs at Business Schools

Worldwide directory of MBA schools and programs that includes admission tips, scholarship links

Weekly Business Writing Tips

English Net Links - Business English

English Dictionary Online

Merriam-Webster Dictionary

You can hear the pronunciation of words.

AskOxford  You probably know the famous Oxford Dictionary. This is the online version with a lot of advantage compare to the hardcover book thanks to its richness of resource such as writing tips, grammar tips, ask the expert, the quotes of the day.  You can also find the Children Dictionary from this site and other world of English dictionaries such as Australian English , New Zealand English, American English and Canadian English.

Visual Dictionary. To learn by way of image with thematic, clear and precise pages, with concise and rigorous texts.

Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary

You can add it to your browser.

Newbury House dictionary of American English  contains over 40,000 entries. With simple, clear definitions, and provides a wealth of sample sentences and idioms.

Encyclopedia Britannica

Lets users simultaneously search the encyclopedia, expert reviews of the Web's best sites, timely articles from leading magazines, and related books.

Encarta World English Dictionary A big talking dictionary, click to hear the pronunciation of the word.

Wikipedia!

A free, open-content encyclopedia in many languages.

Your dictionary.com

More than 1500 dictionaries representing more than 230 languages.



Answer.com

A great site with all definition of every concept and term

Babel Fish

Machine translations of texts.

Eurodicautom

The European Commission's multilingual term bank. The focus is on specialized and technical terminology.

VDict (Vietnamese Dictionary) is the best and totally free Vietnamese-English-French Online Dictionary 

When children should learn a second language?

Did I mention that it is also so much fun to connect with your child in such a meaningful and exciting way? It was strange, my mother was the one to first communicate with Johnny through sign language and she and I both noticed an almost immediate shift in his temperament. He became even more relaxed than before and seemed to be much more contented during those times when he would normally be frustrated with us not understanding his needs because he now was able to tell us!

I recommend to any parent, guardian or child worker to start small with simple signs for words you use every day. Remember that baby/small child hands are not quite as nimble as ours yet so the more simple the better. I found a book that really works for us however there are many many resources available to you for free on the Internet. Keep an eye out also for any courses locally available to parents, guardians and child workers as those can also be an excellent way to learn and share the joy of being able to communicate with your little one(s).

Treasure each moment with your child. These times won't last forever but the memories will!

English Learning Resource for Children

• ESL Kids Lessons. Free Video Slide Lessons, ESL Printables – Worksheets, Flashcards, and Phonics.



• Disney website - great for kids including activities, games, music, song



• English songs for childrenKizclub.com provides lots of educational activities in language arts for preschool and elementary age children



• Starfall.com The Starfall learn-to-read website is offered free as a public service. A fun site to learn to read English.



• Woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/interactive/onlinestory.htm - Online stories - children can hear and read stories online



• Cartoon Network - The kid favorite site for games and cartoon



• Discovery Kids - Check out Discovery Kids shows, games and more online



• Website for Children of AmericanOnlinePBS Kids. A lot of activities for kids to learning English: Games, stories, music.



• British Council's Learn English Kids. You can listen to songs, read and listen to stories.



• Sillybooks.net A lot of free audio book and stories for children.



• Internet4classrooms.com A great website for children to learn Math - from grade 1 to grade 8.

• Time for Kids. A weekly magazine for kids that delivers the most current news.

• School Discovery. Discovery Channel's Website with lesson plans and learning contents for all kinds of subjects for K-12.

• Kids' Health. Dealing with feelings, recipes, everyday illnesses, injuries, and kids' talk.

• Kids Domain. A great site with a lot of games and free software to download.

• Picture Books. Free online picture books by professional illustrator and Writer Dandi Palmer.

• Franky Fox & Friends. Free online picture books by professional illustrator and Writer Dandi Palmer.

• Weekly Reader. A popular site for kids and teens. Read this week's feature story.

• Room 108. A primary education site for kids with lots of free online games but all with an educational focus.

• ESL Kids Lab. Printable ESL Worksheets, Games Videos, Kids Vocabulary & Grammar Quizzes,Powerpoint downloads.

• PBS Kids. Games, stories, music, and coloring.

• Story Place. The Preschool Library and Elementary Library with new activities and themes being added each month.

• Kids Web Japan. An attractive site for kids to learn about Japan.

• Space Place. NASA's Website for kids. Games, animations, projects, and fun facts about Earth, space and technology.

• British Council's Learn English Kids. You can listen to songs, read and listen to stories.

• Education Place Kid. Wacky Web tales, brain teasers, and best reading activities.

• International Children's Digital Library. The best in children's literature are made available online.

• Scholastic. Popular website of the largest publisher of children's books.

• Brain Pop. Popular site for kids to learn English and other subjects.

• Fairrosa Cyber Library of Children's Literature. A fairly big collection of classics, folk tales, and professional journals.

• Kid Genius. Free educational software to teach alphabet, numbers, counting, and so on.

• Phonics. There are phonics posters, flash cards, coloring sheets, game cards, handouts and more.

• KidSource Online. A parenting newsletter with a lot of good advice.

• Carol Hurst's Children's Literature Site. This is a collection of reviews of great books for kids, ideas of ways to use them in the classroom.

• ESL Play House. An excellent resource for teachers of young learners.

• Teach children ESL. Download free worksheets and flashcards, play free games and songs.

• ESL Kids Stuff.Some excellent links for both teachers and students.

Improving vocabulary

Tips for improving vocabulary

English is the richest language with the largest vocabulary—over 1,000,000 words—on earth. Yet the average adult has a vocabulary of only 40,000-50,000 words. Imagine what we're missing! Here are some strategies for unlocking the meanings of new words and a process for remembering the new words and their meanings.

Context

You can often get at least part of a word's meaning from the way it's used in the sentence. So, when you come to an unfamiliar word while reading, rather than first looking it up in the dictionary, try to figure out its meaning from the words around it. Often the author provides clues to help you unlock the general meaning.

"Perihelion is the point in the earth's orbit when the distance between the earth and the sun is at its minimum, as opposed to aphelion."

Glossary

If your book has a glossary it will give you the specific definition for this field of study. A glossary, a mini-dictionary in the back of a text, contains only the definition that fits the use in this book.

apheloin The point in the earth's orbit when the distance between the earth and the sun is at its maximum.

Dictionary

To find exactly what a word means and where it comes from look it up in the dictionary. The dictionary is a reliable source of definitions plus correct spellings, pronunciation, parts of speech and derivations. To use this resource book effectively however, you must understand the abbreviations it uses and the variety of information it includes. Since you may find a variety of definitions for a word, always fit the definition back into the original context to be certain it makes sense.

aph·elion n. pl -elia [NL. fr. apo + Gk helios sun—more at solar]: the point of a planet's or comet's orbit most distant from the sun—compare perihelion

Structure

Knowing the parts of words—prefixes, roots, suffixes—helps you understand and unlock the meanings of whole families of words. A prefix is the part that's sometimes attached to the front of a word; there are about 100 common ones. The root is the basic part of a word; most of our root words come from Latin and Greek. A suffix is often attached to the end of a word.

apo prefix from Greek meaning away from

helios comes from Greek meaning the sun

Now, other words with apo or helios start to make sense such as apolune=the point in the path of a body orbiting the moon that is farthest from the center or heliophyte=a plant thriving in full sunlight.

Read, Read

In addition to using these strategies it's important to read a variety of a materials. The more you expose yourself to new words, the more words you will learn.

Improving Vocabulary Resources

Irregular Verbs

English Vocabulary - Learn words by image and pronunciation

Building a better vocabulary - An article guiding you to improve your vocabulary

Test your vocabulary - A self-study English vocabulary quizzes

Vocabulary Training - Test your vocabulary

Vocabulary page from learnenglish.de - a lot of vocabulary terms to learn and practice

Free Rice One of the most popular vocabulary learning websites, which automatically adjusts to your level of vocabulary.

Vocabulary, Free Word Puzzles and Activities

Everyday Vocabulary Anagrams - 600+ Anagrams - Over 600 anagrams sorted by topic and number of letters. Includes randomly chosen ten-question quizzes.

English Vocabulary (Ohio ESL) - Idioms. Reference. Vocabulary for Special Purposes

Vocabulary Improvement Program -Vocabulary Improvement Program that provides a study of roots, prefixes, and suffixes.

Learning Vocabulary Word search, hangman, quiz, and match games.

Pronunciation

These English pronunciation tips will help you get the most out of your  Pronunciation Power program.



Tip 1

Do not confuse pronunciation of words with their spelling! For example, "threw" and "through", although spelled differently, are pronounced the same.

Also, identical letters or letter clusters in words do not always produce the same sound. For example, the "ough" in "though" and "through"  represents a different sound in each word. Learn to practise what you hear, not what you see.



Tip 2

Imagine a sound in your mind before you say it. Try to visualize the positioning of your mouth and face. Think about how you are going to make the sound.

Tip 3

Listen to and try to imitate the Pronunciation Power instructor. In addition to listening for specific sounds, pay attention to pauses, the intonation of the instructor's voice and patterns of emphasis. This can be just as important as the pronunciation of sounds.



Tip 4

The English language has many different dialects, and words can be pronounced differently. It is important, however, that you pronounce words clearly to ensure effective communication.

English Pronunciation

ronunciation tips from BBC - a great site to learn British English pronunciation including pronunciation tests

American English Pronunciation Exercises for every sound with audio available. You need to install the RealPlayer in order to listen.

International Phonetic Association's The major as well as the oldest representative organization for phoneticians since 1886.

Mouth Mangler A fun site with audio and let you repeat as many times as you want.

Sentence Stress What sentence stress is, why it is important.

Sounds of English Detailed instruction on how to pronounce each sound.

Word Stress  Learn where to put a stress in a word.

Online English Pronunciation. Okanagan University College, with QuickTime video to show you how to pronounce each sound.

Online Language Laboratory. Online pronunciation guides to 9 varieties of the English language.

American English Pronunciation Practice. Minimal pair practice and quizzes by Charles Kelly.

Authentic American Pronunciation. Practice pronunciation of basic English words and sentences.

Pronunciation practice. The world's most visited pronunciation practice website, over 40 native speakers, and 10 languages.

Accent Reduction. Tongue Twisters with audio from ESL Mania.

Tongue Twisters. The world's largest collection of tongue twisters, with 2680 entries in 105 languages.

Talk English. Learn how to speak English fluently - Sample sentences on every topics - click on the sentence to hear the pronunciation.

Confused words

Here is a list of easily confused words:

accept  adoptive  adverse  advice  affect  all ready  all together  allot  allusion  altar  ambiguous  among  amoral  appraise  are  augur  award  bad  beside  brake  breathe  by  by  can  canvas  capital  censure  cite  clothes  coarse  compare  compare to  complement  consul  continuous  council  decent  definite  defuse  delusion  delusion  descent  desert  discreet  draft  egoism  envelop  flounder  forth  good  grisly  hear  hoard  hole  hour  imply  incidence  incite  instance  its  knew  know  later  lay  lead  leave  loose  luxuriant  marital  notable  object  officious  passed  peace  perspicuous  plain  pore  precede  precedence  presence  principal  proscribe  quiet  quiet  rain  rain  raise  regretful  sea  sit  site  stationary  statue  statue  story  than  their  their  threw  to  to  tortuous  vain  vain  vociferous  waist  weak  wear  wear  weather  whether  whose  your

except  adopted  averse  advise  effect  already  altogether  a lot  illusion  alter  ambivalent  between  immoral  apprise  our  auger  reward  badly  besides  break  breath  buy  bye  may  canvass  capitol  censor  site  cloths  course  contrast  compare with  compliment  counsel  continual  counsel  descent  definitive  diffuse  illusion  allusion  dissent  dessert  discrete  draught  egotism  envelope  founder  fourth  well  grizzly  here  horde  whole  our  infer  incidents  insight  instants  it's  new  no  latter  lie  led  let  lose  luxurious  martial  noticeable  subject  official  past  piece  perspicacious  plane  pour  proceed  precedent  presents  principle  prescribe  quit  quite  reign  rein  rise  regrettable  see  set  sight  stationery  statute  stature  storey  then  there  they're  through  two  too  torturous  vane  vein  voracious  waste  week  were  where  whether  rather  who's  you're