Michelle's independent resources for ESL Students at Vancouver Community College

This is a Canadian ESL blog for Intermediate and Advanced Students who want to learn and improve their English. Each PAGE above contains thousands of free English lessons, tutorials and practice exercises to help you learn and improve your English grammar, reading, listening, pronunciation, speaking, writing and editing. Some of the resources are Canadian. Others are from around the world.

The resources on this Canadian blog are all free, and I spend a lot of my time working on it, so please consider becoming a SUPPORTER. I appreciate all the support I get. It is the fuel that keeps me going.

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Saturday, July 25, 2015

ESL TED TALKS Quiz: The Hidden Power of Smiling

Just a simple smile can have a real impact on both ourselves and others around us. Watch this Ted Talk in which Ron Guzman explains how and why. Take the quiz to see how well you understood.

The interactive version of the quiz is below.
For a paper version of the quiz:  






Monday, July 6, 2015

TED TALKS QUIZ: Texting That Save Lives

Nancy Lubin is the CEO at Do Something.org, an organization that focuses on using the en ergy of teenagers to tackle issues they are passionate about and participate in social change. 


Recently, her organization began to communicate primarily through texting rather than email. They discovered this method of communication is 11 times more effective than email communication because texts have a 100 percent open rate.

In the midst of texting more than 200,000 teenagers each week about instituting changes at their schools and in their communities, Lublin and her coworkers discovered an unintended consequence: Teenagers began texting back about being bullied, participating in cutting and being abused. Text messaging became an inadvertent crisis hotline.

In her 2012 TED Talk, Lublin discusses how texting can save lives and how using teenagers’ primary means of communication to speak to them provides the opportunity for crisis intervention, referrals and even prevention.

Watch the video and do the quiz.  






Wednesday, July 1, 2015

Canadian Dance Moves: Ask a Canadian

article from Huffington Post 

Brazilians have samba. Americans do the disco. But is there a dance that is truly Canadian?
Well, Liam Kearney and Stina Diƶs may have invented a dozen. Borrowing the  music from Juliav Bentley and Andrew Gunadie's You Tube video "Canadian Please,"  the pair have created a video called Canadian Dance Moves. 

A charming  homage v homage to Canada's wholesome personality Canadian Dance Moves features dance moves called the Lumberjack, the Friendly Backpacker, and even one called Carry the Two Four, which has a special meaning in Ontario and Quebec where a majority of people buy their beer in cases of 24 rather than in six or12 packs as they do in the west.

click on the link below for the quiz  

CANADIAN PLEASE! A Canada Day Song

Canadians often get the reputation of taking each other too seriously, but we're also famous for our strong sense of humour as you can see in the song below.