Friday is quiz day!  I know that everyone enjoys taking quizzes.

Today, you’ll hear me talking about why I like public transportation. . . and when I don’t like it.  And then there will be the now-familiar listening quiz.  If you’re reading this in a feed-reader, you may need to view this entry on the webpage for the quiz to work.

It’s Friday again and that means it’s time to see how much English you’ve learned in the last week.  This week’s listening is me describing my container garden.  It’s where I try to grow my tomatoes, because I really like garden fresh tomatoes.

After the listening, there’s the quiz in the format that you’re used to, now: five questions on the listening, five questions from last week’s English lessons.

Good luck!

This entry is the beginning of the “Garden Fresh” series.  The other posts in this series are: Basic Vocabulary (for the garden) Garden Verbs Garden Idioms My Container Garden (The listening Quiz) 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)

We say that something (usually a fruit or vegetable) is ‘garden fresh’ when it comes directly from the garden. The only tomatoes I like, for example, are garden fresh tomatoes. I can’t get enough of them. Because I love fresh tomatoes so much, I have a small container garden on my balcony every year. You’ll hear more about that on Friday, in the listening quiz. Tomorrow and the rest of this week, we’ll be talking about gardens and gardening.

I thought it was a topic that fit well with the beginning of spring. This way, if you’re out in your garden working, you’ll be able to think about what you’re doing in English.

Tomorrow we’ll talk about what a garden is, exactly, and Wednesday we’ll talk about the verbs we use in the garden. For those of you who—like me—don’t have a garden. I don’t want you to think that this will be a week of vocabulary that you can’t use. A lot of this vocabulary also applies to areas of your life outside the garden. And Thursday we’ll learn several idioms that come from the garden—maybe we can call them ‘garden fresh idioms’—but that you can use in several different contexts.

And, just like I promised in the first paragraph, on Friday I’ll tell you about my own gardening attempts—all the gardening we can do in an apartment—and there will be questions on everything you learned this week in the listening quiz.

For the week, though, it might be good to have a little bit of vocabulary for gardening. Here are three words that you will need to discuss your garden. . . and to understand the rest of what happens this week.

Vocabulary

Plant: We all know what a tree is. It’s what you get an apple from. But is a tree a person? Of course not! Is it an animal? Nope. A tree is a plant. In fact, any living thing that gets its energy from sunlight can be called a plant. (Biologists might call me crazy, but for normal people, I think that’s a good definition.) Your garden is where you take care of the plants that are important to you.

Seed: Plants don’t start life as babies. They start life as tiny seeds. You put seeds into the ground and give them water and they grow into plants in your garden. For most gardeners, the cheapest way to buy plants is to buy seeds.

Weed: You want your garden to be full of plants. But you don’t want just any plants, you know exactly what plants you want in your garden. The problem is that the plants that seem to grow most are the ones you don’t want. These are weeds. A weed is any plant that’s growing where you don’t want it to grow. I don’t know why, but it always seems as though weeds grow faster than the plants you want. Most gardeners spend a lot of time taking the weeds out of their gardens.

Photo Credit
The photo above is from Flickr.  It was taken by Laura (& Garrett), who made it available under a Creative Commons license.  Thanks, Laura and Garrett!

It’s time for the Friday listening quiz.  Today, you’ll hear me speak shortly about what I do to keep my weight down.  And then you’ll hear–and read–five questions on what I’ve said.  That will be followed my five purely listening questions–you won’t be able to read the questions–on what we’ve talked about this week.

The audio for this quiz, including all ten questions, is a little bit under ten minutes, so make sure you have some time before you start.  If you’re reading this in a feed reader, you may have to click through to the website for the quiz to work.

It’s time for this week’s listening quiz. Today, you’re going to hear me talk about a phrase we use in English: “A square peg in a square hole.” Before you start the recording, you might want to look at the photo above and think about what it might mean.

When you’re ready, start the recording and be ready to take the quiz.

Photo Credit
The photo above is from Flickr.  It was taken by xrrr and made available under a Creative Commons license.  Thanks, xrrr, for making this photo available!

It’s Friday and that means it’s time for the weekly quiz. This week, we’re going to make the quiz a little bit different. If it goes as well as I hope, this will be the new format for quizzes at Bite Size English.

The quiz is in three parts. The first part is only listening: you will hear me speaking about why I want to be your English teacher. I’ll use the vocabulary and grammar that we learned this week to describe myself. The second part will be questions on the listening: you will be able to see these questions, and the possible answers, below. The last part, however, will be only listening. You’ll hear the questions and the answers, but won’t be able to read them.

Because this quiz uses a recording, you will have to either mark your answers quickly, or to press the pause button (the same button that you use to start the recording) to make it stop while you think about the answer.

Good luck!

If you’re reading this in a feed reader, the quiz works best on the website.

After a week of talking about home technology, it’s time for the quiz!  Have you been paying attention this week?  Did you work on the vocabulary that you didn’t know?  It’s time to find out.

This week’s quiz is five questions.  If you’re reading this in a feed reader, you may have to load the webpage for the quiz to work correctly.

After a week of investing, and the very interesting ‘guest’ entry from Carl of “Behavior Gap,” you should know everything there is to know about investing.  Or, at least, about investing vocabulary.

Now, I’m sure you want to test your knowledge of investing vocabulary.  Here’s your chance: five questions on the vocabulary we learned this week: