Unit 5B

Lesson 6:    Sports

He's playing soccer.

Memorize the verbs.

tennis-swim-play baseball-cycle-jog-play soccer

He's playing baseball.	They're playing tennis.	She's swimming.
They're jogging.	He's cycling.	He's playing soccer.

Lesson 7:    The Article I

She's an English teacher.

The articles a, an and the can be a problem to understand. It is better to try to understand articles one step at a time. There are two types of articles – definite and indefinite. A and an are indefinite. This means they are used with nouns which are not expressed specifically by the speaker. Remember that an is used with vowels (a, e, i, o, u). Let's start with jobs.

She's a nurse.  He's an engineer. I'm a teacher.  They're builders.

When we say She's a nurse we are just describing her profession, but not necessarily who she is specifically. The is definite.

She's the nurse helping the patients.

He's the mechanic working on our car.

In these examples we are talking about the people specifically and their activity at the moment. There is one person doing a task, and that is the person we are talking about in a definite sense. Therefore we use the definite article the. Also we say He is the president, or She is the director because we are talking about one specific person. There is usually only one president or one director. 
This is difficult to understand perhaps at first, but over time 
we will do many more examples.

Exercise 9    Choose the correct article a, an, or the and 
practice speaking.

Lesson 8:    Pronunciation I [g]

My girlfriend Gina is from Greece.

The letter g can be a problem for students because it has a hard sound as in girl or good, and it has a soft sound as in margarine or age. Practice saying the words below.

	girl  good  get  gift  magazine
	age  gym  magic  page  margarine

Often (though not always) the letter g at the beginning
of a word has a hard sound.

grapefruit  go  guitar  guide

Lesson 9:    Adjective Opposites I

My dictionary is small, but yours is big.

Look at the adjectives below and memorize them.

Exercise 10    Use the adjectives above in the gaps below. Notice how the conjunction but is used to contrast information.

Lesson 10:    At the Office

My briefcase is at the office.

Exercise 11    Match the words below with the numbers 
in the picture.