Vocabulary Issues

Pequinês - Pekingese dog /pekin'es/
Agir de má fé - to act in bad faith

Jokes

Let's keep it simple

The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the EU rather than German which was the other possibility.
As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a five year phase-in plan that would be known as "Euro-English".

In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of the "k". This should klear up konfusion and keyboards kan have 1 less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f". This will make words like "fotograf" 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be ekspekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkorage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of the silent "e"s in the language is disgraseful, and they should go away.

By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v". During ze fifz year, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.

After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi to understand ech ozer. Ze drem vil finali kum tru! And zen world!

Hints on Writing Compositions

1. The most important thing is to ead the question carefully, and make sure that you answer every part of it.
2. Make notes on what you are planning to include in your composition, ans work out a clear and logical plan.
3. Think about the register you should write in. Is it formal or nformal? If you are writing a note, letter, article or report, who is it for?
4. To make your plan clear, write in clearly-defined paragraphs, which should be indented, or separated by a line space. Each paragraph should represnt a step forward in your thinking, or a new topic, but paragraphs should be connected to each other with liking words.
5. When writing compositions at home, keep a list of your favourite/common mistakes, and check your compositions for these before handing them in.
6. Do not become too reliant on your dictionary. You will not be allowed to use one in your exam/test.
7. Mistakes should be neatly crossed out with one pen stroke. Try to present your work as tidily as possible. If your handwriting is difficult to read, make sure it is at least legible.
8. Try to keep close to the required number of words.

Marking Code

VT: verb tense - I've seen him yesterday.
SV: subject Verb agreement - He go.
WW: wrong word -It was raining, hen, I took my umbrella.
He gave my the book.
My car, what I bought last week ...
AR: article - I live in the London.
WF: wrong form - I stopped to smoke.
SP: spelling - He's writting a letter.
WO: word order - I get up usually at seven o'clock.
( ) leave out - He told (to) me the story
S/P singular/plural - There are two museum in the town.
PORT: Portuguese influence - He' got a trousers on.
P: punctuation - I like Mary.she's a nice person.
PR: preposition -She arrived at London.
?: unclear
!!: silly mistake
//: paragraph
γ: something is missing - I've got γ books.
√√: good