Speaking English - Classroom vocabulary and expressions

486,718 views ・ 2011-11-15

English with Ronnie


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

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Surprise, it's me. How are you? Today, I'm going to teach you, by request from you, the
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viewers out there in England, some classroom language or expressions or vocabulary. Maybe
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you are planning to study English in a different country, or maybe you are going to study English
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in your own country, and the classroom is an all-English environment. Or if you're lucky
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enough to come to a foreign country and study English in an English-speaking country, maybe
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you'll want to know basic classroom language. So, the first one that is very important in
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the classroom is talking about your grades or your marks. So, you will probably have
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an English proficiency test that will test your ability in English, and they will give
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you a grade or a mark. Grades and marks are the same thing. The only difference is sometimes
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they give you a percentage. For example, you could get 83% on your test, or when I was
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in high school, for example, they gave you letter grades, A, B, C, D, E. Now, A is the
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best, and it gradually goes down. I cannot tell you specifically where A and B and C
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and D start and stop, because every institution and every school is different. Percentages
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are easier to figure out, but obviously if you get an A, it's going to be very good.
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I'm not too sure if a lot of places go down to E. I don't think they do, so we'll just
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take that off. The other thing that they will do sometimes is they'll give you an A+, as
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if an A wasn't good enough. An A+ or an A++, I guess an A++ would be 100%, which is extremely
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good. So you can get A, B, C, D+, you can also get A, B, C, D+, or minus, which will
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look like this, a minus sign. The best thing to do is ask your instructor what the grades
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are for that. So the way that you do that is you say, "Teacher," or if you call the
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teacher by their first name, "Ronnie," you could say, "What was my grade?" Or you could
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say, "What was my mark on the test?" What was my mark or what was my grade on the test?
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If you get an F, it means you failed miserably. It's a very bad mark. So maybe F means fail.
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That's not right. So you can ask the teacher, "What was my grade?" or "What was my mark?"
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The next thing, the thing that everyone hates, are tests or exams. Do you know the difference
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between tests and exams? Tests are shorter in length, meaning there's about one or two
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papers, and in time, maybe it's an hour or half an hour. It's a short exam if you'd like
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to think about it like that. An exam, brutal, is very long. In high school and in elementary
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school, we usually have a test. Most language schools will give you a test. If you're taking
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something like TOEFL or TOEIC, that's going to be an exam. Exam instills fear of one or
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two or three hours of you writing the test. But you can do it. Good luck. So tests or
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exams, you're going to want to know what to study for when you have to study for your
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test or your exam, and you're going to want to know the date, obviously, of the exam.
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It's important to go on the right day and to be a little early, but we'll get to that
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later. So as far as the tests or exams go, you want to know what's the material. So you're
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going to ask your teacher what's on the test or what's on the exam. This implies what material
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you will be tested on. Is it going to be grammar? Is it going to be listening? Is it going to
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be making sentences? Is it going to be writing paragraphs? Are you going to have to write
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an essay? So it's always good to ask your teacher what's on the test or what's on the
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exam. And the date, you can just ask them when is the exam or when is the test. And
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probably asking the time is a good, very good thing to ask as well. The next one is important.
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If you're in class and all of a sudden you have to go to the toilet. We call this in
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English being excused. Being excused means you're leaving some situation and you're going
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to be very polite about it. All you have to do, some teachers want you to put your hand
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up or just ask them outright. You can say, "Can I please," be polite, "go to the washroom?"
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So you can put your hand up and say, "Can I please go to the washroom?" You can also
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say, "May I please go to the washroom?" "Can I" is much more natural. "May I" is a little
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bit more polite, but as long as you say, "Please," your sentence is 100% polite and correct.
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A lot of my students say, "Teacher, I go to bathroom." "Teacher, I go washroom." You
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need to say, "I go to the washroom," or, "I go to the bathroom," is the correct beautiful
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English phrase of that. And the last one, uh-oh, being late. Maybe you're late for school.
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Maybe you missed the bus. Maybe you slept in. In English, we don't say, "I overslept."
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I understand what you're telling me, but we don't say that in English. We say, "I slept
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in." So maybe you're late. Maybe you slept in. Maybe I missed the bus. Maybe you drank
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a lot the last night, and your alarm went off, and you just couldn't wake up. Whatever
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happens, happens. I would guarantee that most of the time, the teacher will be very accepting
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of you being late once in a while. But if you're late every day, there's a problem.
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So the best thing to do is don't lie. Don't tell your teacher that you went to Mars, and
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then you had a spaceship, and your spaceship got a flat tire, and then a dog came and ate
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your head. Your teacher's not going to appreciate the lie. Maybe the creative storytelling would
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be good, but basically, don't lie. Don't just say, "I don't know." What do you mean, "You
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don't know?"
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The other thing is, if you're absent, which means maybe you weren't in class one day,
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again, just tell the teacher the honest truth. Say, "I was sick," or, "I didn't want to come
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to school." Be honest. No teacher should get angry at you, or you shouldn't have to feel
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uncomfortable if you simply don't want to go to school. That's my opinion.
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Now, high schools and language schools are all different. A lot of them will deduct marks,
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or will take attendance, and if you have a lot of nights or a lot of absence, this is
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not good. Go to school, learn your stuff, have fun, have a good time, and now you can
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learn classroom language in English. Ta-ta.
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