Express Publishing ELT

It crops up in our speech dozens of times every day, although it apparently means little. So how did the word “OK” conquer the world? Allan Metcalf, author of OK: The Improbable Story of America’s Greatest Word enlightens us.
 
“OK” is one of the most frequently used and recognised words in the world.
It is also one of the oddest expressions ever invented. But this oddity may in large measure account for its popularity. It’s odd-looking. It’s a word that looks and sounds like an abbreviation, an acronym.     read more >>

The article below suggests that people naturally sing pop songs in an American accent, so how about trying this out in class? Getting the students to both sing recorded songs and their own compositions could help them with their pronunciation.

Singing with an American accent comes naturally and it not just a way to break into the US charts, a new study suggests.     read more >>

How should we pronounce “schedule”? How do you pronounce it – with a hard “k” or a soft “sh” sound? Well, in a study by the British Library, interim results suggest a third of Britons taking part now adopt the American-style “skedule” over the traditional British “sh” pronunciation. Other US pronunciations taking root, according to researchers, are “pay-triotic”, in place of “pat-riotic”, and “advertISEment”, instead of “adVERTisement”.

The research, which is ongoing, is part of a series of projects connected to the British Library’s Evolving English exhibition. It involves volunteers using the library’s website to submit a recording of themselves saying six prescribed words and stating where they are from.     read more >>

Ask anyone you know from a different language background to say hello. It’s a pretty common word and used in variations in many languages. Can you tell where they’re from by their accent? As a native English speaker myself, I can tell if someone’s from Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Australia or South Africa as soon as they speak a word or two. I can distinguish a German speaking English from a Greek; a Spaniard from a Swede     read more >>