oldtimer

You are supposed to add your company to your current work permit. WPs are place specific and not a general permit for working anywhere.

Dearest creature in creation,

Study English pronunciation.

I will teach you in my verse

Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.

I will keep you, Suzy, busy,

Make your head with heat grow dizzy.

Tear in eye, your dress will tear.

So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.

Pray console your loving poet,

Make my coat look new, dear sew it.

Just compare heart, beard, and heard,

Dies and diet, lord and word,

Sword and sward, retain and Britain.

(Mind the latter, how it's written.)

Now I surely will not plague you

With such words as plaque and ague.

But be careful how you speak:

Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;

Cloven, oven, how and low,

Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery,

Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,

Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,

Exiles, similes, and reviles;

Scholar, vicar, and cigar,

Solar, mica, war and far;

One, anemone, Balmoral,

Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;

Gertrude, German, wind and mind,

Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

Billet does not rhyme with ballet,

Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.

Blood and flood are not like food,

Nor is mould like should and would.

Viscous, viscount, load and broad,

Toward, to forward, to reward.

And your pronunciation's OK

When you correctly say croquet,

Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,

Friend and fiend, alive and live.

Ivy, privy, famous; clamour

And enamour rhyme with hammer.

River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,

Doll and roll and some and home.

Stranger does not rhyme with anger,

Neither does devour with clangour.

Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,

Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,

Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,

And then singer, ginger, linger,

Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,

Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.

Query does not rhyme with very,

Nor does fury sound like bury.

Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.

Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.

Though the differences seem little,

We say actual but victual.

Refer does not rhyme with deafer.

Feoffer does, and zephyr, heifer.

Mint, pint, senate and sedate;

Dull, bull, and George ate late.

Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,

Science, conscience, scientific.

Liberty, library, heave and heaven,

Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.

We say hallowed, but allowed,

People, leopard, towed, but vowed.

Mark the differences, moreover,

Between mover, cover, clover;

Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,

Chalice, but police and lice;

Camel, constable, unstable,

Principle, disciple, label.

Petal, panel, and canal,

Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.

Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,

Senator, spectator, mayor.

Tour, but our and succour, four.

Gas, alas, and Arkansas.

Sea, idea, Korea, area,

Psalm, Maria, but malaria.

Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.

Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

Compare alien with Italian,

Dandelion and battalion.

Sally with ally, yea, ye,

Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.

Say aver, but ever, fever,

Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.

Heron, granary, canary.

Crevice and device and aerie.

Face, but preface, not efface.

Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.

Large, but target, gin, give, verging,

Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.

Ear, but earn and wear and tear

Do not rhyme with here but ere.

Seven is right, but so is even,

Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,

Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,

Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.

Pronunciation -- think of Psyche!

Is a paling stout and spikey?

Won't it make you lose your wits,

Writing groats and saying grits?

It's a dark abyss or tunnel:

Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,

Islington and Isle of Wight,

Housewife, verdict and indict.

Finally, which rhymes with enough --

Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?

Hiccough has the sound of cup.

My advice is to give up!!!

I've seen a very similar one in Headway Advanced a good number of years back albeit a much shorter one.

I've been roped into giving some English lessons to a group of medical workers.

Is this classed as illegal even though I'm not getting paid for it as I have a tourist visa?

Yeap. It is illegal. You should go down to the police station asap and confess, or just continue teaching with the knowledge that your chance of being caught is very small, and should you be that unlucky to be caught, it is likely that you can pull the monopoly trick and 'buy yourself out of trouble' without even having to wait out three turns!

The easiest classes I have found to teach are small multilingual classes of motivated adults in which English is the only lingua franca. The more challenging classes are the exact opposite: large mononlingual classes of demotivated children in which English is not the only lingua franca! I'll stick with

I sent my kids to GMT in Vanessa Building , which is located near Chidlom Central. They specialize in tutoring children attending international schools. Their tutors are highly qualified and experienced. The business card of the director has more letters after his name than most names have! Letters are no guarantee of quality, but you tend to get what you pay for. Their rates are over a 1000 an hour. Both our kids got through their exams with flying colours. The school recently changed its name.

Anyway to get back to the UK situation. Saying u may return with him will not mean anything. He has to stand alone financially ie. should have evidence of his own ability to finance the trip even if you gave him the cash. It is much better for him to have had enough cash in his bank with proof for at least 6 months before he goes to the UK. A credit card is a must - coz supposing he argued with his sponsors and they chucked him outta the arse? He has to prove he is be able to cope on his own financially for travel, food and accommodation for the whole period. Sponsors word don't mean a lot - hard cash and evidence does. He should also be fully covered for medical insurance. Secondly, it would have been much better to get his old or new employers to vouch that he is working for them now and that they have given him leave of absence for the duration of the trip. They are looking for reasons why he should want to return - so a current job, education course, property, family dependents etc all help - but evidence, evidence.

I wouldn't agree with some of this. I know several people who have had no job, income, credit card or assets who got visa's. The onus is on the sponsor to provide evidence of support, accommodation etc.

Obviously it helps if the applicant has a good job, land, house or whatever. But in reality, how many Thai's could afford to come to the UK for several month's and pay for the whole trip themselves?

http://www.ukvisas.gov.uk/en/howtoapply/infs/inf3sponsors

RAZZ

The authorities are simply looking for three things:

1. a valid reason to go to the UK

2. a valid reason to return to Thailand

3. enough money to finance a trip

Going to the UK for 3 months to study English is a valid reason. A letter from your employer stating that you have 3-month's leave for developmental purposes and a job waiting for you is a valid reason to come back. Lots of cash in the bank will help to prove the finance situation while a letter from a guarantor in the UK offering accomodation and willingness to pay for repatriation could help in borderline cases. Good luck

I was looking at the Dell website the other day and they offer a machine with Ubuntu pre-installed and configured for everything.

any chance I can get that in LOS and save the Vista tax?

or maybe to ask my question another way..

I am going to get a new computer soon and rally have Zero interest in getting anything windows. I am just going to go straight to Ubuntu

So what laptop should I buy based on that? I am in CM but come to BKK often enough.

The new Acer Aspire 1 is tiny and goes for around 15,000 with Linux pre-installed. My suggestion, however, would be to download Ubuntu and put it on a cheap laptop yourself. I'm no computer expert, but with help from linux.org, I managed to do it.

I am a member of our local gun club, in fact most of the long stay expats are.

The club is owned and run by the police, we can purchase a fire-arm, but not in our own name, and it can never be taken out of the club...... as it's illegal.

So basically, what you are saying Thaddeus is that while it is illegal for a foreigner to purchase a gun, there are ways around this? I don't think that the OP is interested in keeping a gun at a gun club anyway - at least that's the impression I get from his post.

My wife kindly purchased a gun and gave it to me as a birthday present...So, should I go to police and hand it over, given that now it is technically mine although it lives in her safe, in her house (since I can't own a house either)? Or, should I just say it's hers and I use it every now and then?

I agree with both responses. "Just now" applies to the present, not the past. Reference to the past, if a time reference is needed to show close proximity to a past event, might be "just then" or "right at that time."

It appears to be a sentence dreamed up by a non-native speaker, such as a Thai teacher of English who at that time just did not realize that she had stolen the language.

Agreed. But....if you add 'She said that' on the front it is perfectly correct, because reported speech can have that backshift in tenses where simple past becomes past perfect.

:-)

CELTA is the new name (10 years old?) for the University of Cambridge Local Examinsations Syndicate / Royal Society of Arts Certificate in TEFLA. This course was the shortened version of the UCLES/RSA Diploma (which is now known as DELTA). The UCLES/RSA Diploma used to be known as Certificate in TEFL(A). I remember that my RSA Dip supervisor did not have a Diploma because when he took the course (around 40 years ago?) it was known as a Certificate.

I'm sure that someone else knows more or are willing to surf the Net and give you more info..

We are a friendly, established language centre in Silom Road near the BTS and underground. We URGENTLY need 2 native english speakers to teach at our centre and at a boys school near China town. Up to 25 hours per week available. Email us at dos (at) excel-english if you are interested.

No complete email address, no details/salary. All in all a thoroughly unprofessional advert.

You can find more information about Excel English on the website: http://www.excel-english.com

I agree the 'call for interest' was far from complete. TEFLMike - thanks for working it out.

Next time, I'm sure that the DOS will put in more details and finish his email addre....