Speaking English - Classroom vocabulary and expressions

Surprise, it's me. How are you? Today, I'm going to teach you, by request from you, the

viewers out there in England, some classroom language or expressions or vocabulary. Maybe

you are planning to study English in a different country, or maybe you are going to study English

in your own country, and the classroom is an all-English environment. Or if you're lucky

enough to come to a foreign country and study English in an English-speaking country, maybe

you'll want to know basic classroom language. So, the first one that is very important in

the classroom is talking about your grades or your marks. So, you will probably have

an English proficiency test that will test your ability in English, and they will give

you a grade or a mark. Grades and marks are the same thing. The only difference is sometimes

they give you a percentage. For example, you could get 83% on your test, or when I was

in high school, for example, they gave you letter grades, A, B, C, D, E. Now, A is the

best, and it gradually goes down. I cannot tell you specifically where A and B and C

and D start and stop, because every institution and every school is different. Percentages

are easier to figure out, but obviously if you get an A, it's going to be very good.

I'm not too sure if a lot of places go down to E. I don't think they do, so we'll just

take that off. The other thing that they will do sometimes is they'll give you an A+, as

if an A wasn't good enough. An A+ or an A++, I guess an A++ would be 100%, which is extremely

good. So you can get A, B, C, D+, you can also get A, B, C, D+, or minus, which will

look like this, a minus sign. The best thing to do is ask your instructor what the grades

are for that. So the way that you do that is you say, "Teacher," or if you call the

teacher by their first name, "Ronnie," you could say, "What was my grade?" Or you could

say, "What was my mark on the test?" What was my mark or what was my grade on the test?

If you get an F, it means you failed miserably. It's a very bad mark. So maybe F means fail.

That's not right. So you can ask the teacher, "What was my grade?" or "What was my mark?"

The next thing, the thing that everyone hates, are tests or exams. Do you know the difference

between tests and exams? Tests are shorter in length, meaning there's about one or two

papers, and in time, maybe it's an hour or half an hour. It's a short exam if you'd like

to think about it like that. An exam, brutal, is very long. In high school and in elementary

school, we usually have a test. Most language schools will give you a test. If you're taking

something like TOEFL or TOEIC, that's going to be an exam. Exam instills fear of one or

two or three hours of you writing the test. But you can do it. Good luck. So tests or

exams, you're going to want to know what to study for when you have to study for your

test or your exam, and you're going to want to know the date, obviously, of the exam.

It's important to go on the right day and to be a little early, but we'll get to that

later. So as far as the tests or exams go, you want to know what's the material. So you're

going to ask your teacher what's on the test or what's on the exam. This implies what material

you will be tested on. Is it going to be grammar? Is it going to be listening? Is it going to

be making sentences? Is it going to be writing paragraphs? Are you going to have to write

an essay? So it's always good to ask your teacher what's on the test or what's on the

exam. And the date, you can just ask them when is the exam or when is the test. And

probably asking the time is a good, very good thing to ask as well. The next one is important.

If you're in class and all of a sudden you have to go to the toilet. We call this in

English being excused. Being excused means you're leaving some situation and you're going

to be very polite about it. All you have to do, some teachers want you to put your hand

up or just ask them outright. You can say, "Can I please," be polite, "go to the washroom?"

So you can put your hand up and say, "Can I please go to the washroom?" You can also

say, "May I please go to the washroom?" "Can I" is much more natural. "May I" is a little

bit more polite, but as long as you say, "Please," your sentence is 100% polite and correct.

A lot of my students say, "Teacher, I go to bathroom." "Teacher, I go washroom." You

need to say, "I go to the washroom," or, "I go to the bathroom," is the correct beautiful

English phrase of that. And the last one, uh-oh, being late. Maybe you're late for school.

Maybe you missed the bus. Maybe you slept in. In English, we don't say, "I overslept."

I understand what you're telling me, but we don't say that in English. We say, "I slept

in." So maybe you're late. Maybe you slept in. Maybe I missed the bus. Maybe you drank

a lot the last night, and your alarm went off, and you just couldn't wake up. Whatever

happens, happens. I would guarantee that most of the time, the teacher will be very accepting

of you being late once in a while. But if you're late every day, there's a problem.

So the best thing to do is don't lie. Don't tell your teacher that you went to Mars, and

then you had a spaceship, and your spaceship got a flat tire, and then a dog came and ate

your head. Your teacher's not going to appreciate the lie. Maybe the creative storytelling would

be good, but basically, don't lie. Don't just say, "I don't know." What do you mean, "You

don't know?"

The other thing is, if you're absent, which means maybe you weren't in class one day,

again, just tell the teacher the honest truth. Say, "I was sick," or, "I didn't want to come

to school." Be honest. No teacher should get angry at you, or you shouldn't have to feel

uncomfortable if you simply don't want to go to school. That's my opinion.

Now, high schools and language schools are all different. A lot of them will deduct marks,

or will take attendance, and if you have a lot of nights or a lot of absence, this is

not good. Go to school, learn your stuff, have fun, have a good time, and now you can

learn classroom language in English. Ta-ta.