Archive for year 2009
Happy New Year
12/31/2009
Hello Everyone! Happy New Year!
In some places midnight has already passed…Happy New Year too you! As I write this, in Montreal the party has yet to begin. The weather was super cold a couple days ago, but luckily it has warmed up and is currently only -5! People are ready to get bundled up (dressed in warm clothes) to go out and celebrate New Year’s.
All of us at Culips are looking forward to bringing you even more, funky new episodes and other fun functions on our site in the new year! Robin, Jessie, Harp and I hope to be in more contact with you!
Thanks for listening! We truly appreciate it! And….HAVE A GREAT NEW YEAR!
youtube English
If you read this blog, you may have noticed that I like to post videos. I love finding new and interesting videos online. Do you often visit youtube? Do you view the youtube site in English?
The other day I was looking at youtube.com and I started thinking about how bad the English as on this site. For every video there are comments left by all different kinds of people. The English comments often contain a lot of spelling mistakes, no punctuation and not many complete sentences. Have you ever noticed this before?
The reason for this is partly due to texting. Many people have cell phones and use them to send text messages. When we send text messages, we often do not use the correct spelling because we want to get as much information in as we can and we need to keep the message short. This means that people take short cuts and take letters out of the words to make them shorter. Sometimes we use numbers as part of words too.
Here are a couple examples of English Text words:
Regular English Texting English
Night Nite
Later L8r
See C
You U
Your/You’re Ur
I also found a video on youtube about this problem. Check it out below. It is also a good idea to view the comments for this video. As many of the people who viewed this video care about grammar, the comments are written in proper English with complete sentences. If you compare the comments of this video to comments of other more popular videos, you should be able to see the difference!
C U L*R!
Countdown to 2010!!!
Hello Culips Listeners,
We hope that you have had a wonderful year, we sure have! We wanted to thank you for all your ongoing support. We really appreciate all the positive comments, here or through emails. Our membership is growing daily and has more than doubled in the last year; we hope that 2010 will be another great year for you and Culips.
At Culips, we will be taking a short break to rest and relax during the holidays. In this break we will be featuring a countdown of our Top 4 most popular episodes. Also during this short break we will be preparing to gear up for some exciting new changes, including a new website design and a forum for you to discuss your English questions.
For the month of December we will be counting down to 2010 by posting our most popular podcasts EVER! If you have already heard these episodes, please browse through the pages of podcasts as there are many great episodes on the page that you may have missed.
Happy Holidays to everyone! Our next brand new episode will be uploaded on Jan 2, 2010, which will be perfect for any New Years resolutions to improve your English.
Sincerely,
The Culips Team
Expression: Corny
11/29/2009
by Culips
in Catch Word
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Sometimes movies are corny, or music is corny. It is a fun adjective that can describe just about anything. A synonym for corny is cheesy, and it has nothing to do with cheese! Check out this episode to hear our corny examples.
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Harp: Corny.
Jessie: I like it.
Harp: I like it as well.
Jessie: So, does that mean having to do with corn?
Harp: Um, no, not at all.
Jessie: What does it mean?
Harp: Something that is corny is something that is cliché, unoriginal; it’s oldfashioned.
Jessie: OK, so corny is an adjective describing something that’s not very sophisticated, maybe kind of sentimental.
Harp: Yeah, exactly.
Jessie: Not original.
Jessie: I like it.
Harp: I like it as well.
Jessie: So, does that mean having to do with corn?
Harp: Um, no, not at all.
Jessie: What does it mean?
Harp: Something that is corny is something that is cliché, unoriginal; it’s oldfashioned.
Jessie: OK, so corny is an adjective describing something that’s not very sophisticated, maybe kind of sentimental.
Harp: Yeah, exactly.
Jessie: Not original.
Podcast/ Lipservice: Culips ESL Podcast, Photo: flydime
Expression: Down-to-earth
11/14/2009
by Culips
in Catch Word
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Are you a down-to-earth person or do you often have you head in the clouds? Are you realistic and sensible or are you a dreamer? In this episode we look at expressions used to describe people. Armando sent us a question about the expression down-to-earth and we decided to dedicate an episode to it and its synonyms, grounded and feet on the ground. Thanks Armando!
Harp: Right, so someone who is down-to-earth has all of these qualities and you can find out definitions to each of them on the Lipservice. Should we give some examples of how to use down-to-earth?
Jessie: Right, well, my friend Becky for instance is really down-to-earth. She never shows off or acts like she is better than other people. She is just honest and she always just acts genuine and real.
Harp: OK, that makes sense. She is a down-to-earth person.
Jessie: Right, but my cousin on the other hand…He tells everyone that he is a down-to-earth guy but he spends all his time dreaming about being a movie star. He is always dreaming about being something else.
Harp: So, he is not down-to-earth at all.
Podcast/ Lipservice: Culips ESL Podcast, Photo: Quasic
