Hello! Hello! Hello everybody! Another video lesson is here to help you with your English. I chose two questions this week which I got from Marcelo and Seid Ahmed.  There is a lot of grammar, vocabulary and my own Peppy touch to help you remember. In the middle of the video, you will find a great interactive quiz and later on I play my fender bass(let’s see how well that goes for future videos).

Possessives

The basic rules always work like a charm when you are at the basic to upper-intermediate level. Then when you reach advanced and fluency, you realize there are many exceptions. One of the reasons for this is that English speakers can refer to something which can either be: a thing or a person(people). Take ship, for example, you could use:

Apostrophe s

the ship’s(crew of the ship) Captain.

of + the/a/an/x(zero article)

the engine of the ship(the vessel)

As an adjective

You will also notice that it is common to see people using “ship” as an adjective:

ship(adjective) engines

small boat(adjective) engines

Register(level of formality)

If you were chatting with your friends, you’d NEVER say, “oh, I just saw the son of your boss at the supermarket”. It’s too long and formal. However, you will see it in writing and more formal speech such as in newscasts, especially to point out someone’s position in a famous family like the Royal family in the UK. William, son of Diana and grandson of Queen Elizabeth. To help you practice the possessions explanation, I have included an interactive quiz which should help you with more tricky terms for certain members of the family.

More Get Phrasal Verbs

Get phrasal verbs are back in Learn English live 9. To help you remember the new one I teach, I played the same bass I have been using to record my songs all the way back to 2007. I remember teaching a student from the Ukraine and we were having TOEFL class. Out of the blue, he started singing all of the “get phrasal verbs” from Steve in Paris. He had uploaded the video to his iphone and listened to it on the bus. I was happy to see that I had got across to him in a way that is fun for both of us.

Here is the video and free extra family quiz.

Fun Vocab. Quiz!