Blending Learning

I attended a workshop at the recent ESL teacher's conference on blending learning (classroom, computer based, on-line) and considered how this could benefit tutored learners.  Most of our tutors and learners use email and it's a skill newcomers need to do well but often find difficult.  An email conversation is great practice for your learner.  As well, you can assign homework or provide links to web-sites that will help them.  For example, you could ask your learner to watch a youtube video and write a summary to bring to your next session.  Let me know if you try this and how it goes!

Collective Nouns

Collective nouns are nouns which stand for a group or collection of people or things.  They include words such as audience, class, committee, crew, family, government, group and team.  They are treated as singular, with a singular verb. 

√ The whole family eats supper together.

√ The government is announcing an election soon.

√ He prefers an audience that arrives without expectations.

A common error for English learners is to use the plural verb because the word repesents more than one person.  For example, "My family are going on vacation."  Although these nouns consist of more than one person, the word represents one entity.