Count to 100 - Special Edition for kids

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9-pEVaO4pM&feature=related

I have received some e-mails requesting lessons and tips for kids. Here you are! This is a fun video for you to teach your kids how to count to 100 in English. Give it a go!


Hope you like it and your kids learn it!

Rodrigo P. Honorato

Would x Used to

Hey Flabbergasting people, what's going on?

I have talked to a friend of mine that goes by Leow, but his real name is Leonardo Machado, about the English Language and some of its characteristics and myths. Leow is an English teacher and Summer Camp Counselor both in Brazil and in the US. He has been studying Languages at the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Brazil and from what I can see, he is an outstanding professional ESL teacher. Other than that, he is one of my friends who usually come up with really challenging questions, which surely make me learn and reflect on the English Language.

About a month ago he came up to me and asked about the use of WOULD in Simple Past sentences and I couldn't picture the scene. However, it made me sleep on that and I came to a conclusion that might help you use the modal verb WOULD. 

Usually people use WOULD in conditional clauses such as "If I had money, I WOULD go to Paris." or "I WOULD go by plane if I had bought the tickets." 

The expression WOULD LIKE replaces the verb WANT. It sounds more polite as well. See examples:

"What WOULD you LIKE to eat? Well, I WOULD LIKE some waffles with syrup."

But have you ever thought of using WOULD to replace USED TO? Well, I have been using it ever since I learned English, but it was the first time I reflected on it. Here are some examples.

"When I was a toddler, my mother WOULD pick me up at school everyday."

"When my mother moved to London, I WOULD cry every single night before I went to bed."

Remember, WOULD can ONLY replace USED TO when the TIME is specified and when the verbs that come right after it are DYNAMIC VERBS =ACTION VERBS.

Thanks for stopping by,

Rodrigo P. Honorato

Verbs that are followed by -ing verbs

Hey y'all, How have you guys been?

As you may already know, there are many types of verbs in the English Language such as: Phrasal Verbs, Modal Verbs, Auxiliary Verbs. One of these types are the following. When these verbs are immediately followed by another verb, they come up with the gerund form (-ing). Here are some verbs and examples.

1. To avoid - You should avoid smoking!
2. To consider - My mother considered going by plane.
3. To enjoy - Do you enjoy dancing.
4. To feel like - I don't feel like traveling with my parents.
5. To finish - Did you finish eating?
6. To imagine - I imagine myself going to Paris with my girlfriend.
7. To keep - You should keep studying English!
8. To mind - Do you mind opening the window? It's really hot in here!
9. To miss - I really miss chatting with friends.
10. To regret - I regret having assigned that document.
11. To quit - Would you quit studying if you won the lottery?
12. To give up - He gave up studying and I don't support that at all.
13. To stop - You must stop smoking.
14. To love - I love helping my friends out with some English Language tips.
15. To hate - She hates reading books. How come?

Hope it can help you somehow.

Rodrigo P. Honorato

Sociable Teaching - Brand New Blog

Hey Everyone,

I highly recommend this blog. I, together with a group of teachers, have developed this website where you are welcome to leave comments and expose your viewpoints. Click on the link below and give it a go!

http://dawghouston.tumblr.com/

Rodrigo P. Honorato

Financial Planning - Men X Women

Dan was a single guy living at home with his father and working in the family business. When he found out he was going to inherit a fortune when his sickly father died, he decided he needed a wife with which to share his fortune...

One evening at an investment meeting he spotted the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Her natural beauty took his breath away. "I may look like just an ordinary man," he said to her, “but in just a few years, my father will die, and I'll inherit $200 million." Impressed, the woman obtained his business card and three days later, she became his stepmother.

Women are so much better at financial planning than men…

Rodrigo P. Honorato

Which English should I speak?

Everybody wants to speak English because it is the Globalization language, or because their careers depend upon it, or maybe it is just for the sake of studying a foreign language, but what does the market really want from English-as-a-second-language (ESL) speakers? Join us in this conversation and let us find out what the Business World expects from us, ESL speakers.

7 Billion People on Earth - Which language brings them together ?

I have thought a lot about it lately. We’ve been told that the world’s population has reached 7 billion. All these people fit into Los Angeles area which means we have enough space for every single family, but there are still people with no land to crop and live without being a modern-time slave. It is really frustrating to witness it and not being able to do anything to change. Maybe, you can be heard out there if you are versed in English. Have you thought about that?

More than 7,000 languages are spoken on Earth, but one out of them stood out: The English Language. If you are eager to be heard, begin to speak English now. No matter how intelligent and how many great ideas you have if you are not able to communicate with the world. Oh, I wish Portuguese were the Globalization language, but it’s not. That is, I want to share my thoughts and spread the word all over the world. So, I need to speak English.

What about you? Are you ready to communicate with the world?

If you can read this, you should give thanks to a teacher.

Watch this video: 7 Billion People on Earth

Rodrigo P. Honorato 

English or Spanish? Ingles o Espanol?

Special Thanks to My Mother. A Little About Me.

On March 4th,1986 Rodrigo Pelegrini Honorato was born in Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil. His father, a truck/bus driver, was 38 and his mother, a saleswoman, was 44. Due to her age, most doctors claimed her son would not make it because it was a very dangerous pregnancy. However, he was healthily born. Eight years before Rodrigo was born, his sister Fernanda was a newly-born pretty baby-girl. They were a typical Brazilian family: Father and mother, daughter, brother, and of course, the fish in a beautiful clean aquarium...

Well, I am done with writing my life-story in third person. 

Okay, My sister and I have always been to public schools in Belo Horizonte. As you might have heard before, public schools are shitty and teachers are usually not well-prepared theoretical and practically. Whatever! When I was 10, my father found out he had a type of cancer called leukemia. We all freaked out right off the bat. Well, think about it in my shoes: I was 10, my sister was 18 my mother was 54. I could not work because I was too young and my mom could not work because she was too old. At the very least, she was retired. It's only a minimum-wage check but it would surely help us get by. 

Two years went by and our father passed away. Life turned out to be an even harder nut to crack, but Jesus had always been there for us. He still is. Ever since, my mother has become my "parents". She is our father and mother now. Raised us as if nothing had happened. She has always been strong.  We traveled together, we laughed, we forgot about difficult times. Our mother was always there...

Well, my sister graduated from the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Electrical Engineering and got a great job, got married to a great man and gave birth to my cute little nephew Caua. I'm graduated from Pontifical University of Minas Gerais. Have lived and worked in the USA as a camp counselor and motorboat driver. Now, I am an English teacher in Brazil and make a living with stand-up comedy shows and singing. I have this blog, a car, and an open mind and heart to help anybody who needs a helping hand. 

Our widowed mother strongly backed me and my sister up at all times. In my whole family, mother and father sides, my sister and I are the only ones who made to college level and graduated from it so far. I do have reasons to be proud of the mother and sister I have. 

Mom, I love you and give thanks for everything you have done for our family. 

With love,

Rodrigo Pelegrini Honorato aka Lil' Dawg

Follow me on Twitter: @Dawg_Houston

Interview carried out by Leila Ribeiro from www.sala.org.br

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuMaVl-NSnY

I would very much like to thank Ms. Leila Ribeiro (Twitter: @LeilaGirassol ) for the interview. It's in Portuguese, my mother tongue. However, I rap in English at the end. Hope you have fun!

Dawg Houston

Stop Trying To Translate.

TEACHERS and STUDENTS...

I am going to go straight to the point due to the fact that I woke up a little bit mad about this topic. If you are teacher here in Brazil, probably, at sometime in your life as a teacher, you told your student that translation will NOT help them learn the second language they are applying for. I know that it is a long and tough discussion, but I had to come over here and express what I have been feeling about it. 

ESL TEACHERS have to keep in mind that the students' first language is the basis for everything they do: dreams, communication, meaning, how they read and understand the world, how they express their deepest fear and feelings, and so forth. That is, for things to start to make sense, they automatically connect the objects to their first language and then they translate into the foreign language. The only problem is that they forget about PRAGMATICS (the use of the language) and SEMANTICS (the meaning). And the outcome is usually something that does not make sense in English. Our job is to help them see through WORDS, read between the lines. Teachers, show your students that WORDS ARE NOT LANGUAGE, they are only a really small part of the language. 

ESL STUDENTS, you cannot translate from your mother tongue to English by ONLY translating the words. You have to keep in mind that English has a different structure itself and, most importantly, it's impossible to translate different cultures by using the same words. 

Google Translator, Dictionaries, Thesaurus, or any other thing you use to help you understand are welcome, but you cannot use it to make sentences or translate things literally because they do not make any sense.

i.e.:

- Preciso tirar agua do joelho. (Preciso fazer xixi)

- Need take out water of the knee. (IT IS NOT ENGLISH) - The correct translation is - I need to go pee, I need to go to toilet, I need to use it, I need to take a piss.

The point I'm trying to get across with is that there is NO LITERAL TRANSLATION.

Teachers of Elementary Levels, it is your job to show your students from the get-go that translating will not help them learn the foreign language. As a matter of fact, it will make their lives more difficult because when they come across PHRASAL VERBS, IDIOMATIC EXPRESSIONS, COLLOCATIONS, AND SLANG TERMS, they will try to understand by basing them on their mother tongue and unfortunately it will not be possible. 

Alright, I am out. TRY TO UNDERSTAND ENGLISH IN ENGLISH. USE THE LANGUAGE. STOP ASKING ABOUT THE LANGUAGE ITSELF. 

Lil' Dawg

How To Beat Your Kids - Jamaican English (PATOIS)

This video was posted in order to make you more familiar with PATOIS. It's a really funny video. Hope you have fun watching my Jamaican boy.

Me gaan!

Grandma - WTF

Sometimes I wonder what happened to our grandmothers. That's why I made this video. Check me out!

Rexy Gives Patois Lesson: Speak Like a Jamaican!

What gwan? Whap'am?

As y'all already know, the English language is as rich as Bill Gates. There are a plethora of words, expressions, slang terms, and dialects. My intention with this post is to promote one of the zillions of ethnolects/dialects of the English language. 

PATOIS is the dialect spoken in much of Jamaican territory. It is a combination of English, Creole, French and some other languages spoken in the Carribean Islands. This dialect has been widespread because of raggae music and movies with Jamaican people. Unfortunately, Patois, African American Vernacular English, and some other ethnolects spoken by black people are still looked down upon, but this is another problem.

Hope you enjoy the accent and the vocabulary. Leave a comment, share it, and subscribe.

Me gaan!

GARDEN SNAKES CAN BE DANGEROUS - HAVE FUN!

Snakes also known as Garter Snakes (Thamnophissirtalis) can be dangerous. Yes, grass snakes, not rattlesnakes. Here's why.

A couple in Sweetwater, Texas , had a lot of potted plants. During recent cold spell, the wife was bringing a lot of them indoors to protect them from a possible freeze.

It turned out that a little green garden grass snake was hidden in one of the plants. When it had warmed up, it slithered out and the wife saw it go under the sofa. She let out a very loud scream.

The husband (who was taking a shower) ran out into the living room naked to see what the problem was. She told him there was a snake under the sofa.


He got down on the floor on his hands and knees to look for it. About that time the family dog came and cold-nosed him in his behind. He thought the snake had bitten him, so he screamed and fell over on the floor.
His wife thought he had had a heart attack, so she covered him up, told him to lie still and called an ambulance.The attendants rushed in, would not listen to his protests, loaded him on the stretcher, and started carrying him out.


About that time, the snake came out from under the sofa and the Emergency Medical Technician saw it and dropped his end of the stretcher. That's when the man broke his leg and why he is still in the hospital.


The wife still had the problem of the snake in the house, so she called on a neighbor who volunteered to capture the snake. He armed himself with a rolled-up newspaper and began poking under the couch.. Soon he decided it was gone and told the woman, who sat down on the sofa in relief.


But while relaxing, her hand dangled in between the cushions, where she felt the snake wriggling around. She screamed and fainted, the snake rushed back under the sofa. The neighbor man, seeing her lying there passed out, tried to use CPR to revive her.The neighbor's wife, who had just returned from shopping at the grocery

store, saw her husband's mouth on the woman's mouth and slammed her husband in the back of the head with a bag of canned goods, knocking him out and cutting his scalp to a point where it needed stitches.

The noise woke the woman from her dead faint and she saw her neighbor lying on the floor with his wife bending over him, so she assumed that the snake had bitten him. She went to the kitchen and got a small bottle of whiskey, and began pouring it down the man's throat.


By now, the police had arrived. Breathe here...They saw the unconscious man, smelled the whiskey, and assumed that a drunken fight had occurred. They were about to arrest them all, when the women tried to explain how it all happened over a little garden snake! The police called an ambulance, which took away the neighbor and his sobbing wife.


Now, the little snake again crawled out from under the sofa and one of the policemen drew his gun and fired at it. He missed the snake and hit the leg of the end table. The table fell over, the lamp on it shattered and, as the bulb broke, it started a fire in the drapes.


The other policeman tried to beat out the flames, and fell through the window into the yard on top of the family dog that, startled, jumped out and raced into the street, where an oncoming car swerved to avoid it and smashed into the parked police car.


Meanwhile, neighbors saw the burning drapes and called in the fire department. The firemen had started raising the fire ladder when they were halfway down the street. The rising ladder tore out the overhead wires, put out the power, and disconnected the telephones in a ten-square city block area (but they did get the house fire out).


Time passed! Both men were discharged from the hospital, the house was repaired, the dog came home, the police acquired a new car and all was right with their world.


A while later they were watching TV and the weatherman announced a cold snap for that night. The wife asked her husband if he thought they should bring in their plants for the night.


And that's when he shot her.

Stand Up with Dawg Houston

Hey everybody,

Well, for those who don't know what else I do, here you are! This is my first stand-up comedy video. It was shot at Newton Paiva, a university in Belo Horizonte, Brazil in 2011. It was an awesome experience for me. I found out there is nothing that makes me happier than making other people laugh. I hope you have fun whilst you are watching this video. Comments are very welcome!

Thanks,

Lil' Dawg

President Obama on the Death of Osama bin Laden (SPOOF)

This is a spoof video of how the president of the United States should announce

the death of Osama bin Laden. Hope you like it!

Fo sho' ya gon' like dat!

Rodrigo Pelegrini Honorato

rphingles@gmail.com

Get ready for next topics! They're hot!

Hey What's up flabbergasting people,

I have been a little bit busy lately that's why I haven't posted anything for all of us. However, I'm coming back soon with numerous interesting topics. Stay tuned!

Rodrigo Pelegrini Honorato

English for the workplace: Don't apply for that training course!

English for the workplace: Don't apply for that training course!: "Last year I applied for a teaching job at a large multinational. As always, I sent in my references and copies of my certificates, and a few..."

"O Professor Que Eu Quero Ser"

“O professor que eu quero ser”

                Sob o ponto de vista proposto em sala, comecei a pensar em qual tipo de professor que quero ser. Já partindo do pressuposto que há vários tipos de professores, gostaria de me destacar em meio aos “grandes” como esses que tenho tido na graduação em Letras e aqueles que me deram toda base, na educação infantil e fundamental. Penso que não há um tipo correto de professor, contudo acredito que o bom professor seria como um camaleão, o qual se adapta a diferentes situações e contextos sociais.

              Quando penso em meu futuro lecionando línguas portuguesa, espanhola e inglesa, imagino-me fazendo alguma diferença na vida de crianças, adolescentes, jovens e adultos. Quero ser um professor do qual os alunos se lembram como aquele que me ensinou a fazer isso ou aquilo ou aquele que me mostrou um caminho alternativo. Quero ser amigo e mostrar a realidade, acolher e repreender quando necessário. Quero ser atualizado quando se tratar de tecnologia, não se esqueçam que escrita é tecnologia, e metodologia de ensino. Quero poder fazer com que meus alunos se sintam confortáveis em sala de aula. Quero ser fonte de conhecimento sobre alguns assuntos, porque acredito que não podemos e devemos ser versados em tudo. Quero ser informado desde o BBB e o funk que está na moda, até a filosofia e processos cognitivos ocorrentes em adolescentes nos países islâmicos. Quero ensinar meu aluno a questionar e não somente aceitar as coisas como elas são ou como elas nos são apresentadas. Quero ser aquele professor brincalhão que sabe quando parar e, mais que isso, consegue mostrar paro o aluno que agora é melhor parar. Quero ser aquele professor cujo nome, quando dito, acarretará uma serie de lembranças de aulas interessantes e divertidas.

                Em suma, penso que o professor de sucesso e aquele que, além de sua matéria, ensina o aluno a ser cidadão, a sonhar, a ver a mesma coisa sob pontos de vista distintos. O professor que eu quero ser sou eu com todas minhas complexidades e particularidades. 

Rodrigo Pelegrini Honorato

Professor de Linguas

A Part-Time Teacher and Part-Time Singer.

As you can see, I am not a possessional singer. I am a professional ESL Teacher, but let me show you what my hobby is. hope you like my songs: Love Story and U Bettah Be Prepared. Both were written by Lil' Dawg or Rodrigo Pelegrini Honorato, me! 

I have found out what makes me feel good when I am alone of feeling bad: SINGING. What about you? What makes you feel better? Hope you have an answer to this question, but if you don't, I suggest you sing whichever kind of music that makes you feel excited and cheerful. 

Hit me up with comments and suggestions,

Rodrigo Pelegrini Honorato aka Lil' Dawg
ESL Teacher and Part-Time Singer
rphingles@yahoo.com.br

The use of the term "FUCK"

What the FUCK is going on with y'all?

You might be thinking it is an awkward topic. Well, it is but alongside with its awkwardness you must agree that it is an extremely important word in the English language. It is so important that out of thousands of words that start with the letter "F", FUCK is the only one referred to as the "F-word".

Because of its important and the numerous emails requesting an explanation of the word FUCK, I together with the Flabbergasting English group have decided to post on the use of the term FUCK.

First of all, I would like to let you know that it is not a cool word to be used amongst your parents, teachers, bosses, or any other people you consider to be respected as an authority.

Second of all, it is considered to be a FOUL LANGUAGE. That is, you do not want to use this term at a job interview, church service, Sunday school, or with the principal and/or your teachers.

Okay, now that you are schooled with the social part of the word FUCK, we can start the pragmatical part, which means the usage itself by people who speak English natively or as a second language. This term is used in movies, series (some equivalent words such as "freak", "freaking", "frigging"), and definitely in songs. In addition, it is important to know that intonation and situation together will define what the word exactly means.

Check out the picture above.

EXAMPLES:

Bruno Mars, in his cool song "Billionaire" he says "I wanna be a billionaire so freaking bad..." freaking = fucking which means "so much, very much..." so in this passage fucking only emphasizes how much he wants to be billionaire. Got it?

Oh fuck! = "Oh gosh!" it is usually used when someone is having a problem like he got caught on camera shoplifting. When the security guard approaches him, he goes like "Oh fuck! I got caught!"

Fuck yeah! = Hell yeah! = Heck yeah! = Oh yeah! - Generally used when something doing okay It is also used when either you excitedly accept an invitation or your team score a goal. Like, "Hey, wanna go to the party, I got two tickets 100% off". and you go "Fuck yeah, baby! ". 

Fuck you = Screw you = You already know it! If you don't, fuck you! (Just kidding!)

Shut the fuck up = shut up - It is usually used when someone says something really stupid or when the person is really mad. "Hey, I know why your girl broke up with you. It is because you are tall." and you go "What? Man, shut the fuck up your stupid!"

Those are only a few examples. Hope it helps you understand it better when you hear those. Have a fucking nice day!

Rodrigo Honorato

ESL Teacher

rphingles@yahoo.com.br