If you’re one of our regular readers you’ll be familiar with articles about idioms, but every now and then we like to share a recap for our new subscribers. Here are Spellzone we believe that one of the reasons English is such a difficult language to learn is because it’s full of idioms. Every few weeks we take a list of popular idioms and translate them for our second-language English speakers. An idiom is an expression which has a figurative meaning rather than a literal one. For example, when someone says ‘needle in a haystack’ they probably aren’t actually talking about a needle and a haystack, but about something that is as difficult to fi...
Since many of our users have been using our e-learning resources more than usual over the last several weeks, we have been doing our best to help our community stay connected. We began this month by sharing three ways we have improved our site to help our users. We returned to our 10 Words series this month and put communication at the heart of our list. Here are 10 ways to talk about talking. In this post we looked at words that have evolved thanks to technology and the internet. Stay tuned for part 2. This month we tried something new with our Word for Wednesday posts and grouped them around the same theme. The theme we chose was animal...
Our chosen theme for April's Word for Wednesday posts is animals. So far we’ve looked at rhinoceros, ostrich, and python. The word animal has been used in English to describe sentient living creatures since the early fourteenth century, before which the word beast was more common. It comes from the Latin 'animale' meaning ‘being which breathes’, from ‘anima’ which means ‘breath’ or ‘soul’. So far we’ve looked at the word origins of rhinoceros, ostrich, python, and flamingo. For our final animal-themed Word for Wednesday post, our chosen w...
Our chosen theme for April's Word for Wednesday posts is animals. So far we’ve looked at rhinoceros, ostrich, and python. The word animal has been used in English to describe sentient living creatures since the early fourteenth century, before which the word beast was more common. It comes from the Latin 'animale' meaning ‘being which breathes’, from ‘anima’ which means ‘breath’ or ‘soul’. This week we’ve got another bird word for you – flamingo. These iconic wading birds are known for their bright pink or scarlet plumage, long legs, and neck....
Our chosen theme for April's Word for Wednesday posts is animals. The word animal has been used in English to describe sentient living creatures since the early fourteenth century, before which the word beast was more common. It comes from the Latin 'animale' meaning ‘being which breathes’, from ‘anima’ which means ‘breath’ or ‘soul’. Last week, we explored the origins of the word rhinoceros and this week’s animal is rather different looking. Today, our chosen word is ostrich. Ostriches are the largest living birds, known for their speed, long necks, and two-toed feet. Today, wild ostriches...
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