Aprende y practica inglés con el semanal del inglés de LP Method!

GRAMMAR UNDER THE HAMMER

Elementary

Some LP Elementary Students know that:
when you put the indefinite article (a) in front of a noun you must write and say aN if that noun begins with a vowel (a, e, i, o, u). For example, An Apple, aN Englishman, aN Idiot, aN Orange, aN Umbrella
But also you can say aN Interesting person. Interesting is an adjective but it begins with a vowel (I)
Pre-Intermediate

All LP Pre-intermediate students should know that:
MUST has no past tense. If you want to say that you went to the doctor yesterday because it was necessary for you to go, you can say “Yesterday I HAD TO go to the doctor.” You can say “I must go to work from Monday to Friday” but “I HAD TO go to work last Sunday because there was an emergency in the factory”
Intermediate

Many LP Intermediate students know that:
MAKE is used principally for fabrication and invention (MAKE a cake, MAKE a new toy, etc.)
or to express something that didn’t exist before (MAKE a mistake, a decision, a noise).
And the know that DO is used to express an action, especially routine (DO sports, DO work, DO exercise); for domestic activities, e.g. gardening, shopping, washing up, etc. and to express something that was prepared by somebody else, an interview, a crossword puzzle, the football pools, an exam.
Contrast the question and the answer in the following:
-What are you DOing?
-I'm MAKing a cake

Advanced

Most Advanced Lp students know that:
to kick the bucket means to die
but they don’t know that to snuff it also means to die
Native

Every Native speaker knows that:
To feel the pinch means to slowly experience financial difficulties because of circumstances beyond your control,
e.g.
The Spanish tourist industry is feeling the pinch because other cheaper destinations are coming on the market

Some native speakers don't know:
The past tense of the verb to LIE (down) is LAY, as in I was tired so I went upstairs and LAY on the bed. For more on this mistake see PEDANTS’ PURGATORY in the Lp Blog.

News

Imagen de noticia LP AT LAST!!! Many summers and winters have passed since we took our first faltering steps in Linguapuncture. Those people who have seen Linguapuncture in its original version either on CD form or as shown on BBC or RTE in November 2005, will see that the whole graphic design has been replaced. This was carried out in order to achieve the necessary simplicity which would guarantee usability online. Present-day internet technology would not easily support the heavy Flash design in which the programme was originally made for use on CD. It was already clear by 2005, five years after we began, that our future lay not on CD but online. However the road to the present online version has not been an easy one and has been beset with mistaken judgements and technological setbacks. Hindsight is 20/20 vision, as they say. But we have persevered and now we are proud to present Linguapuncture in its new form. While Linguapuncture will continue to be the name of our company, we have changed the name of the programme to LpMethod.

As distinct from the original Linguapuncture programme, LpMethod will be supplemented each Monday morning with The Weekly Review which you are reading now.*

We hope that you will find the long wait for Lp online has been worth it. Enjoy!

*Native readers should remember that this online magazine is directed at people for whom English is not their first language.