Dogs... do you like them?

Hello, everybody! Surfing around the net I found this interesting website about words and their meanings. It's part of Voice Of America and it's called Special English. It helps people learn American English while they learn about American life and stay informed about world news and developments in science. It provides users with information they cannot find elsewhere.

There, I had the chance to read and listen to this show: Dog Talk: Life in a Dog-Eat-Dog World. This VOA Special English program, WORDS AND THEIR STORIES, was written by Jill Moss and read by Faith Lapidus.

There you can read about the many uses of the word DOG in different expressions. As I mention before this is a podcast which means you can listen to the article or download it to your computer or I pod to listen to later.

Any way, here there are some of the things I learned from it and wanted to share with you.

1. Dog’s life: carefree existence. Dogs have no troubles or responsibilities. They can come and go as they please, sleep all day, and never have to work.
2. Dog-eat-dog world: That means many people are competing for the same things, like good jobs.
   
3. Work like a dog: according to this a person has to work really hard to be successful.
4. Dog-tired: When you work really hard you will feel like a really tired dog.
   
5. Sick as a dog: you feel really sick.
6. Every dog has its day. This means that every person enjoys a successful period during his or her life.
   
7. You can never teach an old dog new tricks. using this expression means that you believe that older people do not like to learn new things and will not change the way they do things.
8. Meaner than a junkyard dog: People who are unkind or uncaring can be described this way.
9. His bark is worse than his bite: Sometimes a person appears to be mean and threatening but is really not so bad.
10. In the Doghouse: married people used this term when they are angry at each other and they may not treat each other nicely until they apologize to each other.
    
11. To let sleeping dogs lie: It means it's better to leave things as they are.
12. The dog days of summer: these are the hottest days of the year.
    
13. To rain cats and dogs: we use this when it rains really hard.

Do you know any other expressions or terms using the word dog in it? Please, share it with us.
* photo by BryonRealey

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Common Craft videos...Excellent!

We are going to start posting a series of little videos from a series called "Common Craft Show" by Lee Lefever, which can be watched, listened to and read. They explain some basic things about using some of the tools we use in class or the use of web 2.0 tools.

Here it is the first one:


After you watch the video, tell us about how you use photos and if you think that this video is teaching you something.

When do you use an apostrophe?

Hello, There! Well, I found this question at the Wikianswers site.
There you can ask a question or find interesting questions like this one. It is indee a very interesting question...... I found out that apostrophes have three uses:

1) to form possessives of nouns
a)add 's to the singular form of the word (even if it ends in -s): For example: Doris's class, the girl's book.
b) add 's to the plural forms that do not end in -s:
the children's game, the mice's tails
c) add ' to the end of plural nouns that end in -s:
houses' roofs , three friends' letters
d) add 's to the end of compound words:
my brother-in-law's money ?
e) add 's to the last noun to show joint possession of an object:
Todd and Anne's apartment

2) to show the omission of letters
Apostrophes are used in contractions. A contraction is a word (or set of numbers) in which one or more letters (or numbers) have been omitted. The apostrophe shows this omission. Contractions are common in speaking and in informal writing. To use an apostrophe to create a contraction, place an apostrophe where the omitted letter(s) would go. Here are some examples:
don't = do not
I'm = I am
he'll = he will
who's = who is
shouldn't = should not
didn't = did not
could've= could have
'60 = 1960

3) to indicate certain plurals of lowercase letters.
Forming plurals of lowercase letters Apostrophes are used to form plurals of letters that appear in lowercase; , e.g. "three ps" versus "three p's." To form the plural of a lowercase letter, place 's after the letter. Here are some examples:

p's and q's = a phrase indicating politeness, possibly from "mind your pleases and thankyous"?
Nita's mother constantly stressed minding one's p's and q's.
three Macintosh G4s = three of the Macintosh model G4
There are two G4s currently used in the writing classrom.
many &s = many ampersands
That printed page has too many &s on it.
the 1960s = the years in decade from 1960 to 1969
The 1960s were a time of great social unrest.
Don't use apostrophes for possessive pronouns or for noun plurals.

* taken from http://wiki.answers.com/Q/When_do_you_use_an_apostrophe
* Image taken from: http://onthemarkwriting.files.wordpress.com/2007/08/apostrophe.png