Tag Archive: online classes

Tara’s ESL Blog: Job Interviews in English – Be Prepared!

When you prepare for an interview (with me, or on your own) you should start out with the following steps, in order to focus on what you should say, and get rid of the extra details that aren’t important or beneficial to you being hired.

General “You” Review: You need to know what you want and whether you have what it takes to get it!

What position am I trying to get?
Do I fit the qualifications for the position?
Does my resume/C.V. highlight my qualifications, and match the position I am applying for?

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Tara’s ESL BLOG: Job Interviews in English – An Introduction

Job Interviews: Oh, how we hate them!

But they are a necessary evil as we say. Luckily, I know how to make it as easy and pain-free as possible – even if English is your second language! The number one thing to remember is that in a job interview you are technically “marketing” yourself to the employer. So make sure to present yourself – and your English skills – in the most effective way by preparing for the interview with an experienced coach. When preparing for a job interview with me, we go through each step of the process, giving you the tools you need to truly market yourself during the interview instead of just reciting memorized information about yourself. The key is to look good, sound good, and most importantly feel good about what you are saying to the interviewer. So how do we do it?

Prepare, practice, present!

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Tara’s Travel Tales: “Sushi On A Plane” – an ESL story

“Sushi On A Plane”

Lesson Level: Advanced

I should start off by saying that my love for sushi, and Japanese food in general, is almost as great as my love for travel. One day last year, while I was backpacking in South East Asia with my mother and best friend, I got the opportunity to enjoy BOTH at the same time. Having not had breakfast at the hostel in Bangkok, Thailand we rushed to the airport with more than enough time to check in for our flight to Myanmar, and also check out the facilities for some grub.

To our great delight, we found a sushi restaurant that we had already fallen in love with a few weeks prior – and it was open at 8 am! My best friend Kellie and I looked at each other and without words we just knew: Sushi. On. A. Plane. Best idea ever! We sat down quickly, and ordered our favorite items with gusto – our mouths watering as we waited for our beautifully-wrapped to-go bags. There would be no airplane food for us lady bosses! No sir! We would have Sushi at 30,000 feet!

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Tara’s ESL Blog: Best Fictional Novels for ESL Students

Here is a list of my favorite short novels in English! You can read these on your own, or with me!

All of these books are considered “easy-reading” with short chapters and useful vocabulary. To learn more about each book, just click the links below where you will be taken to the Spark Notes Plot Overview – try to read the first paragraph. Then to check your understanding, do the multiple choice questions at the bottom! Have fun, choose a story and read on!

1. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl (*approx. 176 pages)

2. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho (*approx. 163 pages)

3. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card (*approx. 384 pages)

4. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown (*approx. 359 pages)

5. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (*approx. 128 pages)

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Tara’s ESL Blog: How to make English a Priority in your Free Time

How’s it going everybody! So, today I want to talk to you about your free time and learning English. Many students ask if it is necessary to study English outside of class. I respond with a question, “If you want to do something really well, must you put in the time and effort to become good at it?” The answer is always the same – YES. Even if you are a natural (born with the abilities) you still have to practice, a lot! As a student and teacher of foreign language it is my personal and professional opinion that the level of effort invested equals the level of language fluency achieved. Simply put:

EFFORT = FLUENCY

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Tara’s ESL VLOG: Using Advanced Future Forms

Here we will discuss some of the more advanced future forms that you will hear a native speaker use quite often, especially when talking about the immediate future. Let’s take a look at them and a few examples for each:

To be due to: to speak about something that is scheduled

I am due to visit my Grandmother this weekend.
You are due to be in the office early on Monday.
She is due to get a promotion in late September.

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Tara’s ESL Blog: Is it “Fun or Funny”?

Using Fun and Funny in English: 2 little words that cause BIG confusion!

How’s it going everybody! Today we are going to talk about a common vocabulary mistake that many students of English make, that is easily remedied with a little explanation. If you go to a party and you have a good time, which word should you use? If you watch a movie that makes you laugh a lot, which word should you use? These questions and more will be answered today.

First of all, these two little words can be unclear because even though they LOOK very similar, in reality they are very DIFFERENT. But, no worries! By the time you finish this lesson, it will much easier to distinguish WHEN to use WHICH word. So, what do these words mean and how should you use them? What are their parts of speech? How many meanings do they have? Let’s take a look!!!

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Tara’s ESL VLOG: American Pronunciation – Part 3 – Consonant Sounds

Today’s video is the third installment of a series of videos about pronunciation that I am making for my students and YouTube viewers. In the first video we went over the Alphabet and the names of the letters that you are familiar with. The second video discussed the vowels and the use of the Color Vowel Chart. This video will focus on the Consonants, and the sounds they make. The most important part of today’s’ lesson is to remember that the “names” of the letters, ARE NOT the sounds they make. Today, we will practice the sounds. If you study the sounds of English then you will be able to improve your fluency by mastering STRESS and LINKING – 2 important components to sounding like a native speaker, and being understood by native speakers. So, let’s get started, and take a look at how to produce the consonant sounds of the English language.

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Tara’s ESL Blog: Using the BASIC tenses

“Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift, which is why we call it the present.”

― Bill Keane

One of my favorite quotes by Bill Keane talks about the concept of time, or tense as we say in English grammar. The quote tells us that the past cannot be changed, the future is uncontrollable, and that the present moment is all that we have. I personally find a lot of truth is this statement, but does that mean that you only need to learn how to use the PRESENT tense? Of course not! If that were true then you would not be able to tell me about your trip to Europe last year, or your plans to visit China next year. Plain and simple: The BASIC tenses in English (or any language you are learning) are necessary in order to be able to properly communicate and be understood by native speakers.

Many of my students have trouble organizing the different tenses in English. In order to help ESL students understand the tenses better, I created this blog to explain them as simply as I could. Below, you will find the BASIC tenses in BOLD (dark black). These are the most common tenses and should be mastered if you want to be able to communicate in English. You should keep in mind that the “simple” tenses are just that! SIMPLE! They are clear, concrete ideas. They have specific forms. The more complex tenses are listed below the BASIC tenses so that you can get an idea for their uses as well.

Now, let’s take a look at the tenses in use:

Present Simple: This moment. = what is happening/occurring NOW.

“I teach. I work. I sleep. I eat.”

Present continuous: an ongoing action in this moment. “I am teaching/working/sleeping/eating.”
Present perfect: something that happened in the recent past, which continues still or ended (yet, already), with an emphasis on RESULTS (what / how much / how often). “I have taught/worked/slept/eaten.”
Present perfect continuous: an ongoing action that happened in the recent past, with an emphasis on DURATION of time (how long). “I have been teaching/working/sleeping/eating (since, for + time).”

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Tara’s ESL VLOG: The Future Part 2 – Simple Rules

What’s up everybody! My name is Tara Musich and I am a certified and experienced teacher of American English. Today I am presenting you with a video that’s part of a series that I am making on the Future Tense. Today’s video is about some special rules for using the future tense. These are some rules that I have shared with several of my students while working on using this tense and I thought it would be nice to share with you – my YouTube viewers and subscribers. So, we’re going to go over four rules together. We’ll go over the rule and then take a look at the example. You can look in the text below to follow along, if you like!

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Tara’s ESL VLOG: American Pronunciation – Part 2 – Using the Color Vowel Chart

Here is the second video in a series of videos that I want to share with you about pronunciation. Today we are going to take a look at just the VOWELS. By VOWELS I mean the 5 letters in the alphabet that create the SOUNDS of English – A, E, I, O, U (and sometimes y – but we will talk about that in a later video).

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Three Good Ideas about Learning Language

1. Reading allows you to connect with the language, and it builds your vocabulary within a specific context – which makes your speaking stronger.

Many people “moan and groan” when presented with the prospect of having to read something – anything! As a lover of language, written or spoken, this was never a problem for me as I love to read literature of all types. However, as a teacher of English, I realize that not all my students feel the same way that I do, and so I asked myself how I could help my students to enjoy reading more. It seemed like the best answer was: only read what you are interested in!

You should put extra effort into finding a form of literature that is appealing to you – don’t read anything that seems boring to you! I have found in my experience that there is something for everyone, whether it is a paragraph of text or dialogue, a comic strip, a news article, a famous poem, a short book or even a series of novels! If your teacher has presented you with a text that you are not interested in, SPEAK UP, and tell them! The most important thing for you and your English language learning is to choose a subject that is not only useful in daily life, but also very interesting to you.

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Tara’s ESL VLOG: The Future Part 1 – Will, Going To & Gunna

There are 2 forms that native speakers use to speak about the future. Many teachers and textbooks will tell you that there are rules for how to use each of them, but you should focus on using them interchangeably. Native speakers of English do this, so you can too! Once you can USE them easily, and switch between the two forms, then you can focus on the grammar rules. Let’s take a look at the following “language equations”:

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