this / that I have trouble deciding whether to use "this" or "that" when referring to a reason or something said before. Here are two examples: a) Didn't you realize Andrew is only partially sighted? Oh, THAT explains why it's Barbara who always drives the car! b) There has been a family feud going on for about ten years. As you can imagine, THIS makes birthdays and Christmas parties rather tense affairs! Are "that" and "this" interchangeable in the sentences above? My ear tells me they aren't, but I can't come up with a reason or something resembling a rule.

no good / no use Here's another sentence taken from an exercise: "She informed me it was no ...... arguing with her and I should have read the sign, an almost invisible piece of card saying 'X-rays' just in front of her". I'd say "use", "it was no use arguing with her", but the official answer is "good". Aren't they more or less equivalent?

warn about / against "When I was a child my mother was always warning me ......... lifts from strangers" expected answer: about accepting my answer: against accepting Is my answer acceptable?

could / be able to "It's not surprising we ..... (not find) the house. You gave us the wrong address!" I wrote "weren't able to find", but the official answer is "couldn't find". The official one is probably more common, but I don't think that mine is wrong. After all we're talking of a single episode so "able to" should be okay.

1000-character limit

I find this 1000-character limit very annoying. I'm sure you've noticed that comments can't be longer than 1000 characters.

Most posts are way shorter than 1000 characters, but sometimes I feel like writing a long post (I don't count characters when I write).

What's the rationale behind this limitation?

 

Have you been watching some TV shows or TV series lately?

I think that watching movies or TV series at least an hour a day is a good way to improve your English.

Right now I'm watching "Friday Night Lights", a tv series about American football. You should find it entertaining even if you don't like American football, because it's not just about the game, but the lives of the characters. It's got it all: friendship, betrayals, drugs (related to football), etc...

Another interesting and more light TV series is "The Big Bang Theory". You probably know it already, but if you don't, you should seriously give it a shot.

It's about a bunch of very smart guys who have some problems interacting with "normal" human beings. The main characters are two physicists but what's hilarious is that they apply their knowledge of physics to every situation, often with unexpected results and reactions from others.

Life as a non-native speaker Writing in a foreign language is very taxing. You constantly need to strike a balance between what you want to say and what you can say without making mistakes. But maybe you don't care about making mistakes. What's wrong with mistakes? Our languages are redundant enough that we can understand each other even in presence of mistakes. Right that isn't, yeah? I mean, isn't that right? But then it comes a time when you need to actually talk to somebody and oops... you have no time to think and you realize that maybe, just maybe, you might need to relax your zero-mistake policy a little and cut yourself some slack. Ok, maybe you need to relax your policy more than a little, but at least you can get your meaning across, can't you? You wish. You're talking as if the only words you knew were "I", "can", "speak", "English"... "not". But after a while (read an eternity), things start to get better and you're pretty fond of yourself: you're speaking English! Hurray! You're feeling happy and full of yourself and then you come across that f****** dude on youtube who talks 100000 languages and you think WT*!