Vocabulary for Friendships: An Old Friend
| This entry is the first of the An Old Friend series. This entry is available as a Adobe Acrobat file for printing or use in a class.This entry is spoken, so that you can listen to it while you read. (MP3) |
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We talk a lot about work when we learn English. The logic is that most people learning English are learning it for their jobs. But, there’s a lot more to life than work. There are—just for example—friends!
Today, we’re going to talk about friends. This is different from talking to friends, because I think you probably talk to your friends—your old friends, anyway—in your native language. But, imagine for a moment that you’re at dinner with a business contact and you’re speaking English. Who should walk into the restaurant but your best and oldest friend! Is your English good enough to introduce your friend? Where did you meet him or her? How long have you been friends?
This week we’re going to talk about old friendships. To do that, we’re going to learn vocabulary to make clear who your friends are. . . and who are the people you ‘just know.’ We’ll cover vocabulary for talking about time. Since we started talking about forming longer sentences last week, we’ll continue with that by talking about how to use commas to add extra information to a sentence.
And, finally, we’re going to talk about a mistake that a lot of my students make when they talk about meeting friends. . . and meeting with friends. And there will, of course, be a quiz at the end of the week, so pay attention!
Writing Practice
A good way to get ready for this week’s lesson is to think of who you consider your oldest and best friend. What is his or her name? What is the information you’d tell someone about him, if you met him in a restaurant. Do you have any good stories about the things the two of you did together? How long have you known him?
Think of all the information that you’d want to tell someone about your oldest friend. And then write a paragraph just the way you’d say it. If you post your paragraph here as a comment, I’ll be glad to help you by correcting your English.
