Learning a Language | English Vocabulary Challenge (Adjectives)

Adjectives make our conversations interesting. With interesting adjectives, you can describe perfectly your feelings and paint fantastic, accurate pictures in your conversations and writing. Everyone learns the most common adjectives first, good, bad, happy, sad. But these adjectives are used so much they become boring after a while! Well, now it’s time to expand your vocabulary with some excellent new adjectives. Read the text below about Diana’s experience of learning English and then try our quizzes below!

“I studied English for years in school in Greece. To be honest, I hated it. After 10 years of studying the grammar, doing exercises from textbooks and listening to our teacher talking, I was exhausted. The whole thing was so boring and tiring. At the end of school, we had exams in English for speaking, reading, writing and listening. During my revision for the exams, I was very on edge. I was very stressed and I couldn’t remember lots of things. This made me frustrated and I started to get angry with myself. After 10 years of studying this language, I still could not remember the difference between the present perfect and the past perfect.

Anyway, my exams came and went and then I was waiting for the results. I got the result of my writing test back… I got an F! In that moment I was so upset. I tried so hard in the test and all those years of studying were for nothing. I thought about all of the textbooks I had read, and all the hours spent listening to my teacher and it made me really mad. What a waste of time.

So in the end I decided I could never learn English. After a long time studying, I still couldn’t speak it. I got an F in my speaking test too! I was really annoyed, because during my classes, I never got the opportunity to speak, I just listened to the teacher! Later I decided I wanted to go travelling and find a job in London. I was annoyed because my English was still so bad but I really wanted to go. So I found a little English school in my town and started having online lessons. My teacher was great and the lessons were so interactive. I had lots of opportunities to speak and I was thrilled with this.

After a couple of months, I felt very confident and I booked myself an IELTS test. My teacher gave me lots of encouragement and I studied very hard for the exam. The results came back and I got an 8. I was so thrilled and relieved to finally get a good grade in English. I felt on top of the world. Now I can go to London, find a job and speak lots of English!”

Learning a Language | Definitions Quiz

Match the word to the correct definition

Learning a Language | True or False

Decide if the statement is true or false

Cockroach Disaster | English Vocabulary Challenge

We all meet difficult situations here and there. Sometimes it’s work, family, friends and in this modern world, it’s often money-related as well. But difficult situations don’t need to be all bad. We can use them to practice our simple past verbs and learn new vocabulary! Take a look at this story below about a difficult situation and then try our quizzes below to test your understanding of the story and knowledge of the words! 

“Yesterday I came home to find something very unpleasant in my house. Apart from the usual mess (because I’m not a tidy person!) I came home to find tons of gigantic cockroaches crawling around my front room!

I don’t know how they arrived, because I certainly didn’t let them in! But when I looked through the door, I saw maybe 10 or 20 of them all crawling around my floor, crawling under the sofa, the chairs and even the rug! Even if I’m a messy person, this was a new level of disgusting. They were huge and some were the size of my little finger!

So, I quickly remembered that my friend Harry, a couple of weeks ago, had had a similar problem with cockroaches. Luckily for him, he’s very rich, and he bought lots of supplies to get rid of the pests. He told me last week that he sprayed his whole house with pest spray and finally got rid of the cockroaches. So I took my mobile and phoned him straight away.

I asked Harry if I could borrow his pest supplies, because now I had the same problem, but to my surprise, Harry said no! He said he didn’t want to lend me his supplies because they cost a lot of money and maybe he would need them for the future. I was furious! I am not a rich person and I can’t afford pest supplies like Harry. He will always be able to afford more supplies, so I thought it was very insensitive. It seemed the pest supplies meant more to him than our friendship.

So in the end, I lost a good friend. But it’s not all bad, I made lots of new friends soon after… 10 or 20 of them in fact!”

Cockroach Disaster | Definitions Quiz

Match the word to the correct definition

Cockroach Disaster | True or False

Decide if the statement is true or false