How to Make Google your English Teacher

赛波 2008-12-26

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Disclaimer: The material herein is designed to assist language learners and not replace English teachers entirely.

Google is a very popular search engine, but did you know that it could also serve as an English Teacher? Let me show you a few ways that you can use Google to practice your written English and more...

1. Did I say that the right way?

There are often several ways to say the same thing in English. So, how do you know if the way you are phrasing your sentences is correct? I would suggest that you compare various sentences in Google and pick the sentence that is most popular among the search results.

For example, I searched the sentence "What do you mean by that?" on Google and received 489,000 search results. I then looked up the sentence "What is it that you mean?" and found 74,300 search results. From this comparison, I would deduce that "What do you mean by that?" is generally more widely used as an English expression than "What is it that you mean?"

2. Should I say that over here?

Thanks to the movie "Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery," the phrase "Yeah Baby!" has become a popular slang phrase in America. Is this generally accepted slang in Italy? What about the United Kingdom? What about Russia?

To investigate this, I searched the phrase "Yeah Baby" and ask Google to only return search results from pages in certain locales. For example, the command site:uk only returns web pages that are hosted in the United Kingdom.

· "Yeah Baby" site:uk returned 37,000 search results from the United Kingdom.

· "Yeah Baby" site:it returned 5,520 search results from Italy.

· "Yeah Baby" site:ru returned 17.900 search results from Russia.

So, from this experiment, I would ascertain that the phrase "Yeah Baby" is more popular in the United Kingdom than Russia and much more popular than in Italy. Make sense? Click here for a list of top level domains (such as co.uk) and the countries that correspond to them.

3. Is there a word missing?

By using an asterix in a sentence, Google will assume that a word is missing and search for phrases that it thinks fills in that blank. For example...

By searching, How are you * today?

Google returns search results that includes:

· "How are you doing today?"

· "How are you feeling today?"

· "How are you guys today?"

· "How are you coping today?"

Click here to see for yourself and pay attention to the phrases that are bolded.

4. Is there another word I could use?

By using Google's Tilde command (~), you can find words that Google thinks are synonymous to the word you are searching for. For example, if I wanted to find words that are similar and/or associated with "coffee," I would perform the following search:

~coffee

Click here to see the results. What you will notice is that certain words are bolded and these are the keywords to focus on. In this case, these keywords include: Starbucks, Starbucks Coffee, caffeine and cafe.

5. Where can I find a practice test?

Would you like to practice for your TOEFL (Teacher of English as a Foreign Language) exam? You can find all sorts of practice tests by following these Google search examples:

· Click here to find free TOEFL practice tests

· Click here to find free TOEIC practice tests

· Click here to find free IELTS practice tests

· Click here to find free ESL or EFL practice tests

6. Where can I find free ebooks on practicing or learning English?

· Click here to find free ebooks on learning English

· Click here to find free ebooks on practicing English

7. How can I practice my word association?

If you would like to make sure that you are associating the right words with the right objects, I would suggest that you enter keywords in Google’s image search. For example, the term “flowers” brings up images of different types of flowers. However, there will be occasions when a word’s meaning is dependent on how it is being applied. For example, the word “windows” brings up images of Microsoft Software as well as different types of windows that appear on buildings. In those cases, I suggest typing a sentence into Google’s image search for a reference point.

Here are a few examples for inspiration. Click the highlighted words below for additional insight into that word.

· “Look at the windows on that house,” he said.

· “My computer runs on Windows,” she replied.

· “I made a bank deposit today,” she said.

· She whispered softly, “…by the river bank.”

· The baby is eating from a bowl.

· He goes to the bowling alley every week, just to bowl strikes.

An additional resource to use would be the digital library of Life Magazine. Google has indexed the photographs of Life magazine from the 1860’s to the 1970’s. Click here to see an example of the word “cowboy” as depicted by Life Magazine. Click here to search more images from Life Magazine.

8. What does that word mean?

If you do not know what a word means, Google has a free dictionary available to you. Simply use the “define” command. To do this, type “define:” and then the word that you want to discern. For example, click here to see how Google defines the word “realize.”

9. How can I practice my English by karaoke?

Singing English pop songs is a great (and fun) way to pick up the English language. Performing the song with the original artist via music video is even better. If you have a favorite artist, you can find the lyrics to several of their songs on Google. In the event that you know the song title, but not the artist, you can still find the lyrics. Here are a few examples:

Click here to find lyrics to various songs by Alicia Keys.
Click here to find lyrics to the song, “Are you gonna’ go my way?”
Click here to find lyrics to several songs by Sade.

To find the lyrics you have an interest in, simply change the name of the artist or song title in the examples above.

10. How do I say that in English?

Do you have an idea of what to say in your native tongue, but unsure how to translate that into English? Well, some words or phrases do not translate well from language to language. However, if you would like to try, Google has a tool that could prove quite useful. It is called Google Translate. (Click here to see it for yourself.)

Simply add text in your native language (1), choose your native language as the first option (2), choose English as the language you want your text translated to (3) and then click the “Translate button (4). Google will then give you the translation. It is that easy.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jim Stroud is a Social Media Development Manager for EnglishCafe, the premier English learning community for global professionals. Its parent company - GlobalEnglish Corporation is the leading provider of on-demand business English communication learning and support for the world's top companies.

Click here to read Jim Stroud’s profile on EnglishCafe.
Click here to read Jim Stroud’s blog on EnglishCafe.