Master English With Tim

Sometimes native English speakers talk like their mouths are full of chewing gum- common words and phrases come out in ways that are extremely hard to understand: “don’t you” becomes “doncha”, “didn’t you” is pronounced “dincha”, and “I am going to” is pronounced “ongana”, or even “omma”! For better or worse, these chewing gum pronunciations are extremely common, and affect all kinds of words and phrases, not just common ones. Listen to English teacher, polyglot, author and world traveler Tim Sexton

The verb GET is one of the hardest words in English. Or is it? In Episode 6, Tim shows that even if GET has a lot of meanings, all of those meanings are in just four categories: movement, change of condition, receiving or taking, and convincing others to do something for us. In this episode, you will listen to 131 examples sentences with GET so you learn and understand this verb better than ever before.

How do you construct questions? If you’ve learned English, you’ve probably asked yourself this question many times, even after learning rules about questions in the classroom. However, learning the rules for making questions is just one of two different ways to learn how to construct correct questions. The other way is just to learn a big number of correct questions without thinking about why they are correct. Is the old, rules-based approach bad? Not at all! Each way- the rules way and the lots of

In episode #1 some weeks ago (Episode #1: Understanding Speech and Text For Better Grammar. – English with Tim), I showed how gaps in our understanding of input- speech we hear and text we read- can cause us to make mistakes in grammar when it’s time to speak or write. But how do we find the gaps? One way is with dictations, exercises where you try to reproduce in speech or writing the exact words a teacher says to you.

In January and February of this year (2023), I worked and traveled in Tajikistan, visiting three cities: Dushanbe, Bokhtar (southwest) and Kulob (southeast). Listen to my experiences and impressions from this little-visited Central Asian country of 9 million people.Note: this episode was originally published with 51 photographs on my personal website.

The New General Service List, or NGSL, is a popular list of the 2800 most used words of English. Every student who wants to know English at an advanced level needs to know the words in this list well. Listen to find out how you can learn these important words!

Why do people make grammar mistakes? Many of the reasons for mistakes start long before students open their mouths to speak or put pen to paper. Listen to Tim, an experienced English teacher from the US, to find out why.