Plural Nouns

    Good afternoon guys! Today  we are going to talk about plural nouns. Here, there is the list of SpellingCity's plural nouns practice.

Most nouns make their plurals by simply adding –s to the end (e.g. cat/cats, book/books, journey/journeys). Some do change their endings, though, the main types of noun that do this are:

1. Words ending in a consonant + "y": "y" changes to "i" and add "es".

party / parties (fiesta/s)

city / cities (ciudad/es)

2. Words ending in a vowel + "and" add an "s".

boy / boys (chico/s)

toy / toys (juguete/s)

3. Words ending in "s", "ss", "sh", "ch", "x", "or" add "is".

bus / buses (bus/es)

glass / glasses (copa/s)

brush / brushes (cepillo/s)

watch / watches (reloj/es)

box / boxes (caja/s)

tomato / tomatoes (tomate/s)

 There’s one exception to this rule. If the -ch ending is pronounced with a ‘k’ sound, you add -s rather than -es:

singular	plural
stomach	stomachs
epoch	epochs

4. Words ending in "f" or "fe": change the "f" or "faith" to "see."

leaf / leaves (hoja/s)

wife / wives (esposa/s)

Many nouns are pluralized in an irregular manner. There are two cases:

1. When the plural and singular do not change.

fish (peces o pescados)        sheep (ovejas)

2. When the plural varies irregularly. Therefore, there is no rule which must be followed and learned the irregular shapes of each.

Singular	Significado	Plural	Significado
man	hombre	men	hombres
woman	mujer	women	mujeres
child	niño	children	niños
person	persona	people	personas/gente
tooth	diente	teeth	dientes
foot	pie	feet	pies
mouse	ratón	mice	ratones

Let´s go to review!

    Hi bloggers!  
    Today I will make a brief count everything I've been incorporating to my English vocabulary since I started the summer program with Spellingcity.com. Sometimes I know many of the words of the lesson, but they serve me to learn new words and review the words that I already know. 
    I found very useful class about homophones, words that are phonetically similar but with differences in their writing and meaning, so it is sometimes difficult to know which one is to be used and we must  inferred from the context. I also liked the vivid verbs, a completely new subject for me. I learned that vivid verbs refer to highly descriptive words that convey meaning or action in a much stronger way. For example, sauntering describes the process of walking more vividly. I had no knowledge about this topic so I found it very interesting. Moreover, the lessons about long vowel silent "e" pattern, long vowel patterns for /a/, /e/, /o/ and long /u/ sound were very useful to improve my pronunciation and thus achieve a higher level of diction.
However, all the lessons were very interesting.
    These are all new words that I incorporated into my vocabulary since I've been with Spelling City:
shelf, fox, bug, sort, hole, whole, wiggled, sipped, snorted, cuddled, hissed, giggled, begged, matter, firefly, fingerprint, snowflake, sunburn, trail, degree, throat, fluffy, empty, clever, sticky, polite, rude, smooth, chewy, clue, bark, sink, unable, refill
   I'm sure that I will continue learning many new things in the coming weeks. That´s a fact!!!

Reviewing the Summer Program

This blog is being used by Alexandra to study English and to learn a bit about blogging.  For VocabularySpellingCity, we have happily donated a free summer membership to her to help her learn English and to see how useful our site is for ESL (English as a second language).

I'm involved with VocabularySpellingCity. My first observation when I look at the summer assignments for her (which can be found inside the folder on this page) is that they are mostly taken from different teaching resources on VocabularySpellingCity.

For instance, the first day's assignment was High Frequency Words. This is taken from a teacher resource on sight or high frequency or dolch words (different names for much the same thing).  

The second assignment is on nouns and places with words such as:  home, school, library, farm, bank, mall etc.  Here's a question, are these vocabulary lists useful for building English skills?

The third assignment is short vowel sounds. This list derives from the teaching resource on beginning spelling curriculum.

So, I'd like to know which of these lists she finds the most useful to her learning English and which ones are not so useful?

Prefixes un- & re-

   Hello!   
   A prefix is a word part (afix) that is added to the beginning of a root word.Today's lesson was about the prefixes un-and re-: the prefix un- means "not" or "opposite of"; the prefix re- means "again" or "back to". Learning prefixes will help us better understand meanings of words.
    The words that were the basis for the explanation were:

    When the prefix re- and un- are added to a base word the meaning of the base word changes. The structure of the preset words is:

Prefix

+

Base Word

=

New Word

Meaning

re-	make	remake	to make again
re-	tell	retell	to tell again
un-	fair	unfair	not fair
un-	sure	unsure	the opposite of sure

Multiple Meaning Words

   Good aftenoon, guys! As in Spanish, in the English language there are words that are spelled the same but have different meanings based on the context in which it is used; these are called homonymous.

Today Spellingcity.com provided the following list:

 bark = ladrido                              I reconize the sound of my dog´s bark.                                        

bark = corteza                              The bark protects the outside of the tree.

 sink = hundirse                             Wood floats in water, but a metal hammer would sink.

 sink = fregadero, pila, lavabo        The faucet in the kitchen sink is dripping.

 watch = observar                          The boys like to watch TV.

 watch = reloj de pulsera                He checked for the time on the watch he wore.

 rock = balancearse                        I rock the baby by moving her back and forth.

 rock =  roca                                  A boulder is a large rock than a pebble.

 park = parque                               I will go to the parkto have a picnic.

 park = aparcar                              Mom will park the car in the driveway.

    To further I invite you to read the articles section in Spellingcity.com or by clicking here. However, I leave a list with 30 of these words. See you soon, bye!

string - noun

a thick thread or cord

string - verb

to connect as in making a line

fight - noun

a battle or combat

fight - verb

to carry on or maintain

track - noun

1.) evidence left by an animal 2.) a guide rail for a train

track - verb

to hunt down

point - noun

1.) a sharp edge 2.) a particular purpose

point - verb

to aim

spring - noun

1.) a coil 2.) the season after winter

spring - verb

to jump or move upwards

place - noun

a particular area

place - verb

to arrange or put down

swing - noun

1.) an object that you set on that goes back and forth 2.) a style of dance

swing - verb

to move back and forth

paint - noun

a liquid that covers up things

paint - verb

to coat, cover, or decorate

block - noun

1.) a wooden piece usually cut into square or rectangle 2.) a stop of an opponent from coming toward you in sports

block - verb

to stop or prohibit from going

dress - noun

1.) a formal piece of clothing for girls 2.) clothing

dress - verb

to put clothing upon

board - noun

1.) a piece of wood cut into a long strip 2.) daily meals

board - verb

to get on a train, plane, boat, etc.

raise - noun

increase in the amount of money for a job

raise - verb

to lift up or increase something

picture - noun

a photograph or illustration

picture - verb

to imagine or see in ones mind

shovel - noun

a tool used to dig up dirt

shovel - verb

to remove from the ground with a tool

dream - noun

1.) images of thoughts while sleeping 2.) a goal or aspiration

dream - verb

to see or imagine