The word 'thing' is ubiquitous, i.e. it’s everywhere. A good thing, a bad thing, many things, something, anything, everything; we use the word a … [Read more...]
About Stuart Cook
Stuart is an English teacher and runs the Speakspeak website. He currently lives in Prague and has been teaching English for 20 years. Follow Stuart on Google+
Eggheads, couch potatoes and tough cookies – 8 English food idioms
June 2, 2013 By 5 Comments
The number of categories for English idioms is seemingly endless. We have weather idioms, where we might hear that it's raining cats and dogs; colour … [Read more...]
Chips vs. fries: the top 5 differences between American and British food vocabulary
May 21, 2013 By Leave a Comment
In most cases Americans and Britons have the same words for speaking about food. A steak is a steak, apples are apples, and potatoes are potatoes. … [Read more...]
Better and better, more and more: repeating comparative adjectives to show change
May 7, 2013 By 3 Comments
Let's take a look at the way English repeats comparative adjectives to describe a continuous change. Change can happen to different degrees: just … [Read more...]
Confusing words: near, close
April 1, 2013 By 6 Comments
When used in the sense of 'not far' or 'a short distance away', the adjectives near and close have the same meaning and are interchangeable.We can … [Read more...]
10 (some tongue-in-cheek!) DOs and DON’Ts for online learning
March 24, 2013 By 1 Comment
Have you ever thought about doing an online learning course? Well, the chances are that if you're a regular visitor to this site and do our grammar … [Read more...]
Does I’d mean ‘I had’ or ‘I would’?
March 18, 2013 By 6 Comments
The contraction I’d can mean either ‘I would’ or ‘I had’. If you're unable to understand the meaning of I'd (or he'd, she'd, we'd, … [Read more...]
‘Smoke-free’ doesn’t mean ‘smoke freely’, and Russia gets a smoking ban
March 7, 2013 By 3 Comments
In the news recently there have been some interesting things about tobacco smoking. We've also had some questions about smoking in our English forum, … [Read more...]
Confusing words: they’re, their, there
February 26, 2013 By Leave a Comment
English learners often have a problem with they're, their and there because these words have the same pronunciation despite having different spellings … [Read more...]
8 ways of saying ‘approximately’
February 19, 2013 By 2 Comments
If we want to say that a number, quantity, time or price is 'quite accurate but not exact', we have several options in English. The most formal way … [Read more...]
