Speaking English - Classroom vocabulary and expressions

487,021 views ・ 2011-11-15

English with Ronnie


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

00:00
Surprise, it's me. How are you? Today, I'm going to teach you, by request from you, the
0
0
15000
00:15
viewers out there in England, some classroom language or expressions or vocabulary. Maybe
1
15000
10400
00:25
you are planning to study English in a different country, or maybe you are going to study English
2
25400
8200
00:33
in your own country, and the classroom is an all-English environment. Or if you're lucky
3
33600
6040
00:39
enough to come to a foreign country and study English in an English-speaking country, maybe
4
39640
7360
00:47
you'll want to know basic classroom language. So, the first one that is very important in
5
47000
8480
00:55
the classroom is talking about your grades or your marks. So, you will probably have
6
55480
6320
01:01
an English proficiency test that will test your ability in English, and they will give
7
61800
6600
01:08
you a grade or a mark. Grades and marks are the same thing. The only difference is sometimes
8
68400
7720
01:16
they give you a percentage. For example, you could get 83% on your test, or when I was
9
76120
10520
01:26
in high school, for example, they gave you letter grades, A, B, C, D, E. Now, A is the
10
86640
11000
01:37
best, and it gradually goes down. I cannot tell you specifically where A and B and C
11
97640
8440
01:46
and D start and stop, because every institution and every school is different. Percentages
12
106080
7960
01:54
are easier to figure out, but obviously if you get an A, it's going to be very good.
13
114040
9000
02:03
I'm not too sure if a lot of places go down to E. I don't think they do, so we'll just
14
123040
7000
02:10
take that off. The other thing that they will do sometimes is they'll give you an A+, as
15
130040
8720
02:18
if an A wasn't good enough. An A+ or an A++, I guess an A++ would be 100%, which is extremely
16
138760
8800
02:27
good. So you can get A, B, C, D+, you can also get A, B, C, D+, or minus, which will
17
147560
8960
02:36
look like this, a minus sign. The best thing to do is ask your instructor what the grades
18
156520
10280
02:46
are for that. So the way that you do that is you say, "Teacher," or if you call the
19
166800
6800
02:53
teacher by their first name, "Ronnie," you could say, "What was my grade?" Or you could
20
173600
12920
03:06
say, "What was my mark on the test?" What was my mark or what was my grade on the test?
21
186520
9640
03:16
If you get an F, it means you failed miserably. It's a very bad mark. So maybe F means fail.
22
196160
13720
03:29
That's not right. So you can ask the teacher, "What was my grade?" or "What was my mark?"
23
209880
7640
03:37
The next thing, the thing that everyone hates, are tests or exams. Do you know the difference
24
217520
7280
03:44
between tests and exams? Tests are shorter in length, meaning there's about one or two
25
224800
9080
03:53
papers, and in time, maybe it's an hour or half an hour. It's a short exam if you'd like
26
233880
6880
04:00
to think about it like that. An exam, brutal, is very long. In high school and in elementary
27
240760
12240
04:13
school, we usually have a test. Most language schools will give you a test. If you're taking
28
253000
7120
04:20
something like TOEFL or TOEIC, that's going to be an exam. Exam instills fear of one or
29
260120
8920
04:29
two or three hours of you writing the test. But you can do it. Good luck. So tests or
30
269040
9840
04:38
exams, you're going to want to know what to study for when you have to study for your
31
278880
7120
04:46
test or your exam, and you're going to want to know the date, obviously, of the exam.
32
286000
5520
04:51
It's important to go on the right day and to be a little early, but we'll get to that
33
291520
6480
04:58
later. So as far as the tests or exams go, you want to know what's the material. So you're
34
298000
5960
05:03
going to ask your teacher what's on the test or what's on the exam. This implies what material
35
303960
16680
05:20
you will be tested on. Is it going to be grammar? Is it going to be listening? Is it going to
36
320640
5400
05:26
be making sentences? Is it going to be writing paragraphs? Are you going to have to write
37
326040
6400
05:32
an essay? So it's always good to ask your teacher what's on the test or what's on the
38
332440
7840
05:40
exam. And the date, you can just ask them when is the exam or when is the test. And
39
340280
9920
05:50
probably asking the time is a good, very good thing to ask as well. The next one is important.
40
350200
11760
06:01
If you're in class and all of a sudden you have to go to the toilet. We call this in
41
361960
6720
06:08
English being excused. Being excused means you're leaving some situation and you're going
42
368680
5520
06:14
to be very polite about it. All you have to do, some teachers want you to put your hand
43
374200
4960
06:19
up or just ask them outright. You can say, "Can I please," be polite, "go to the washroom?"
44
379160
22040
06:41
So you can put your hand up and say, "Can I please go to the washroom?" You can also
45
401200
7320
06:48
say, "May I please go to the washroom?" "Can I" is much more natural. "May I" is a little
46
408520
7920
06:56
bit more polite, but as long as you say, "Please," your sentence is 100% polite and correct.
47
416440
8080
07:04
A lot of my students say, "Teacher, I go to bathroom." "Teacher, I go washroom." You
48
424520
9640
07:14
need to say, "I go to the washroom," or, "I go to the bathroom," is the correct beautiful
49
434160
9040
07:23
English phrase of that. And the last one, uh-oh, being late. Maybe you're late for school.
50
443200
8400
07:31
Maybe you missed the bus. Maybe you slept in. In English, we don't say, "I overslept."
51
451600
12680
07:44
I understand what you're telling me, but we don't say that in English. We say, "I slept
52
464280
4080
07:48
in." So maybe you're late. Maybe you slept in. Maybe I missed the bus. Maybe you drank
53
468360
14520
08:02
a lot the last night, and your alarm went off, and you just couldn't wake up. Whatever
54
482880
7880
08:10
happens, happens. I would guarantee that most of the time, the teacher will be very accepting
55
490760
7360
08:18
of you being late once in a while. But if you're late every day, there's a problem.
56
498120
6120
08:24
So the best thing to do is don't lie. Don't tell your teacher that you went to Mars, and
57
504240
8400
08:32
then you had a spaceship, and your spaceship got a flat tire, and then a dog came and ate
58
512640
4880
08:37
your head. Your teacher's not going to appreciate the lie. Maybe the creative storytelling would
59
517520
6320
08:43
be good, but basically, don't lie. Don't just say, "I don't know." What do you mean, "You
60
523840
8480
08:52
don't know?"
61
532320
1320
08:53
The other thing is, if you're absent, which means maybe you weren't in class one day,
62
533640
6200
08:59
again, just tell the teacher the honest truth. Say, "I was sick," or, "I didn't want to come
63
539840
6560
09:06
to school." Be honest. No teacher should get angry at you, or you shouldn't have to feel
64
546400
8320
09:14
uncomfortable if you simply don't want to go to school. That's my opinion.
65
554720
5600
09:20
Now, high schools and language schools are all different. A lot of them will deduct marks,
66
560320
7400
09:27
or will take attendance, and if you have a lot of nights or a lot of absence, this is
67
567720
6400
09:34
not good. Go to school, learn your stuff, have fun, have a good time, and now you can
68
574120
7120
09:41
learn classroom language in English. Ta-ta.
69
581240
22480
About this website

This site will introduce you to YouTube videos that are useful for learning English. You will see English lessons taught by top-notch teachers from around the world. Double-click on the English subtitles displayed on each video page to play the video from there. The subtitles scroll in sync with the video playback. If you have any comments or requests, please contact us using this contact form.

https://forms.gle/WvT1wiN1qDtmnspy7