homework makes english

Does Homework Really Help Students Learn?

A conversation with a Wheelock researcher, a BU student, and a fourth-grade teacher

“Quality homework is engaging and relevant to kids’ lives,” says Wheelock’s Janine Bempechat. “It gives them autonomy and engages them in the community and with their families. In some subjects, like math, worksheets can be very helpful. It has to do with the value of practicing over and over.” Photo by iStock/Glenn Cook Photography

Do your homework.

If only it were that simple.

Educators have debated the merits of homework since the late 19th century. In recent years, amid concerns of some parents and teachers that children are being stressed out by too much homework, things have only gotten more fraught.

“Homework is complicated,” says developmental psychologist Janine Bempechat, a Wheelock College of Education & Human Development clinical professor. The author of the essay “ The Case for (Quality) Homework—Why It Improves Learning and How Parents Can Help ” in the winter 2019 issue of Education Next , Bempechat has studied how the debate about homework is influencing teacher preparation, parent and student beliefs about learning, and school policies.

She worries especially about socioeconomically disadvantaged students from low-performing schools who, according to research by Bempechat and others, get little or no homework.

BU Today  sat down with Bempechat and Erin Bruce (Wheelock’17,’18), a new fourth-grade teacher at a suburban Boston school, and future teacher freshman Emma Ardizzone (Wheelock) to talk about what quality homework looks like, how it can help children learn, and how schools can equip teachers to design it, evaluate it, and facilitate parents’ role in it.

BU Today: Parents and educators who are against homework in elementary school say there is no research definitively linking it to academic performance for kids in the early grades. You’ve said that they’re missing the point.

Bempechat : I think teachers assign homework in elementary school as a way to help kids develop skills they’ll need when they’re older—to begin to instill a sense of responsibility and to learn planning and organizational skills. That’s what I think is the greatest value of homework—in cultivating beliefs about learning and skills associated with academic success. If we greatly reduce or eliminate homework in elementary school, we deprive kids and parents of opportunities to instill these important learning habits and skills.

We do know that beginning in late middle school, and continuing through high school, there is a strong and positive correlation between homework completion and academic success.

That’s what I think is the greatest value of homework—in cultivating beliefs about learning and skills associated with academic success.

You talk about the importance of quality homework. What is that?

Quality homework is engaging and relevant to kids’ lives. It gives them autonomy and engages them in the community and with their families. In some subjects, like math, worksheets can be very helpful. It has to do with the value of practicing over and over.

What are your concerns about homework and low-income children?

The argument that some people make—that homework “punishes the poor” because lower-income parents may not be as well-equipped as affluent parents to help their children with homework—is very troubling to me. There are no parents who don’t care about their children’s learning. Parents don’t actually have to help with homework completion in order for kids to do well. They can help in other ways—by helping children organize a study space, providing snacks, being there as a support, helping children work in groups with siblings or friends.

Isn’t the discussion about getting rid of homework happening mostly in affluent communities?

Yes, and the stories we hear of kids being stressed out from too much homework—four or five hours of homework a night—are real. That’s problematic for physical and mental health and overall well-being. But the research shows that higher-income students get a lot more homework than lower-income kids.

Teachers may not have as high expectations for lower-income children. Schools should bear responsibility for providing supports for kids to be able to get their homework done—after-school clubs, community support, peer group support. It does kids a disservice when our expectations are lower for them.

The conversation around homework is to some extent a social class and social justice issue. If we eliminate homework for all children because affluent children have too much, we’re really doing a disservice to low-income children. They need the challenge, and every student can rise to the challenge with enough supports in place.

What did you learn by studying how education schools are preparing future teachers to handle homework?

My colleague, Margarita Jimenez-Silva, at the University of California, Davis, School of Education, and I interviewed faculty members at education schools, as well as supervising teachers, to find out how students are being prepared. And it seemed that they weren’t. There didn’t seem to be any readings on the research, or conversations on what high-quality homework is and how to design it.

Erin, what kind of training did you get in handling homework?

Bruce : I had phenomenal professors at Wheelock, but homework just didn’t come up. I did lots of student teaching. I’ve been in classrooms where the teachers didn’t assign any homework, and I’ve been in rooms where they assigned hours of homework a night. But I never even considered homework as something that was my decision. I just thought it was something I’d pull out of a book and it’d be done.

I started giving homework on the first night of school this year. My first assignment was to go home and draw a picture of the room where you do your homework. I want to know if it’s at a table and if there are chairs around it and if mom’s cooking dinner while you’re doing homework.

The second night I asked them to talk to a grown-up about how are you going to be able to get your homework done during the week. The kids really enjoyed it. There’s a running joke that I’m teaching life skills.

Friday nights, I read all my kids’ responses to me on their homework from the week and it’s wonderful. They pour their hearts out. It’s like we’re having a conversation on my couch Friday night.

It matters to know that the teacher cares about you and that what you think matters to the teacher. Homework is a vehicle to connect home and school…for parents to know teachers are welcoming to them and their families.

Bempechat : I can’t imagine that most new teachers would have the intuition Erin had in designing homework the way she did.

Ardizzone : Conversations with kids about homework, feeling you’re being listened to—that’s such a big part of wanting to do homework….I grew up in Westchester County. It was a pretty demanding school district. My junior year English teacher—I loved her—she would give us feedback, have meetings with all of us. She’d say, “If you have any questions, if you have anything you want to talk about, you can talk to me, here are my office hours.” It felt like she actually cared.

Bempechat : It matters to know that the teacher cares about you and that what you think matters to the teacher. Homework is a vehicle to connect home and school…for parents to know teachers are welcoming to them and their families.

Ardizzone : But can’t it lead to parents being overbearing and too involved in their children’s lives as students?

Bempechat : There’s good help and there’s bad help. The bad help is what you’re describing—when parents hover inappropriately, when they micromanage, when they see their children confused and struggling and tell them what to do.

Good help is when parents recognize there’s a struggle going on and instead ask informative questions: “Where do you think you went wrong?” They give hints, or pointers, rather than saying, “You missed this,” or “You didn’t read that.”

Bruce : I hope something comes of this. I hope BU or Wheelock can think of some way to make this a more pressing issue. As a first-year teacher, it was not something I even thought about on the first day of school—until a kid raised his hand and said, “Do we have homework?” It would have been wonderful if I’d had a plan from day one.

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Senior Contributing Editor

Sara Rimer A journalist for more than three decades, Sara Rimer worked at the Miami Herald , Washington Post and, for 26 years, the New York Times , where she was the New England bureau chief, and a national reporter covering education, aging, immigration, and other social justice issues. Her stories on the death penalty’s inequities were nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and cited in the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision outlawing the execution of people with intellectual disabilities. Her journalism honors include Columbia University’s Meyer Berger award for in-depth human interest reporting. She holds a BA degree in American Studies from the University of Michigan. Profile

She can be reached at [email protected] .

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There are 81 comments on Does Homework Really Help Students Learn?

Insightful! The values about homework in elementary schools are well aligned with my intuition as a parent.

when i finish my work i do my homework and i sometimes forget what to do because i did not get enough sleep

same omg it does not help me it is stressful and if I have it in more than one class I hate it.

Same I think my parent wants to help me but, she doesn’t care if I get bad grades so I just try my best and my grades are great.

I think that last question about Good help from parents is not know to all parents, we do as our parents did or how we best think it can be done, so maybe coaching parents or giving them resources on how to help with homework would be very beneficial for the parent on how to help and for the teacher to have consistency and improve homework results, and of course for the child. I do see how homework helps reaffirm the knowledge obtained in the classroom, I also have the ability to see progress and it is a time I share with my kids

The answer to the headline question is a no-brainer – a more pressing problem is why there is a difference in how students from different cultures succeed. Perfect example is the student population at BU – why is there a majority population of Asian students and only about 3% black students at BU? In fact at some universities there are law suits by Asians to stop discrimination and quotas against admitting Asian students because the real truth is that as a group they are demonstrating better qualifications for admittance, while at the same time there are quotas and reduced requirements for black students to boost their portion of the student population because as a group they do more poorly in meeting admissions standards – and it is not about the Benjamins. The real problem is that in our PC society no one has the gazuntas to explore this issue as it may reveal that all people are not created equal after all. Or is it just environmental cultural differences??????

I get you have a concern about the issue but that is not even what the point of this article is about. If you have an issue please take this to the site we have and only post your opinion about the actual topic

This is not at all what the article is talking about.

This literally has nothing to do with the article brought up. You should really take your opinions somewhere else before you speak about something that doesn’t make sense.

we have the same name

so they have the same name what of it?

lol you tell her

totally agree

What does that have to do with homework, that is not what the article talks about AT ALL.

Yes, I think homework plays an important role in the development of student life. Through homework, students have to face challenges on a daily basis and they try to solve them quickly.I am an intense online tutor at 24x7homeworkhelp and I give homework to my students at that level in which they handle it easily.

More than two-thirds of students said they used alcohol and drugs, primarily marijuana, to cope with stress.

You know what’s funny? I got this assignment to write an argument for homework about homework and this article was really helpful and understandable, and I also agree with this article’s point of view.

I also got the same task as you! I was looking for some good resources and I found this! I really found this article useful and easy to understand, just like you! ^^

i think that homework is the best thing that a child can have on the school because it help them with their thinking and memory.

I am a child myself and i think homework is a terrific pass time because i can’t play video games during the week. It also helps me set goals.

Homework is not harmful ,but it will if there is too much

I feel like, from a minors point of view that we shouldn’t get homework. Not only is the homework stressful, but it takes us away from relaxing and being social. For example, me and my friends was supposed to hang at the mall last week but we had to postpone it since we all had some sort of work to do. Our minds shouldn’t be focused on finishing an assignment that in realty, doesn’t matter. I completely understand that we should have homework. I have to write a paper on the unimportance of homework so thanks.

homework isn’t that bad

Are you a student? if not then i don’t really think you know how much and how severe todays homework really is

i am a student and i do not enjoy homework because i practice my sport 4 out of the five days we have school for 4 hours and that’s not even counting the commute time or the fact i still have to shower and eat dinner when i get home. its draining!

i totally agree with you. these people are such boomers

why just why

they do make a really good point, i think that there should be a limit though. hours and hours of homework can be really stressful, and the extra work isn’t making a difference to our learning, but i do believe homework should be optional and extra credit. that would make it for students to not have the leaning stress of a assignment and if you have a low grade you you can catch up.

Studies show that homework improves student achievement in terms of improved grades, test results, and the likelihood to attend college. Research published in the High School Journal indicates that students who spent between 31 and 90 minutes each day on homework “scored about 40 points higher on the SAT-Mathematics subtest than their peers, who reported spending no time on homework each day, on average.” On both standardized tests and grades, students in classes that were assigned homework outperformed 69% of students who didn’t have homework. A majority of studies on homework’s impact – 64% in one meta-study and 72% in another – showed that take home assignments were effective at improving academic achievement. Research by the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) concluded that increased homework led to better GPAs and higher probability of college attendance for high school boys. In fact, boys who attended college did more than three hours of additional homework per week in high school.

So how are your measuring student achievement? That’s the real question. The argument that doing homework is simply a tool for teaching responsibility isn’t enough for me. We can teach responsibility in a number of ways. Also the poor argument that parents don’t need to help with homework, and that students can do it on their own, is wishful thinking at best. It completely ignores neurodiverse students. Students in poverty aren’t magically going to find a space to do homework, a friend’s or siblings to help them do it, and snacks to eat. I feel like the author of this piece has never set foot in a classroom of students.

THIS. This article is pathetic coming from a university. So intellectually dishonest, refusing to address the havoc of capitalism and poverty plays on academic success in life. How can they in one sentence use poor kids in an argument and never once address that poor children have access to damn near 0 of the resources affluent kids have? Draw me a picture and let’s talk about feelings lmao what a joke is that gonna put food in their belly so they can have the calories to burn in order to use their brain to study? What about quiet their 7 other siblings that they share a single bedroom with for hours? Is it gonna force the single mom to magically be at home and at work at the same time to cook food while you study and be there to throw an encouraging word?

Also the “parents don’t need to be a parent and be able to guide their kid at all academically they just need to exist in the next room” is wild. Its one thing if a parent straight up is not equipped but to say kids can just figured it out is…. wow coming from an educator What’s next the teacher doesn’t need to teach cause the kid can just follow the packet and figure it out?

Well then get a tutor right? Oh wait you are poor only affluent kids can afford a tutor for their hours of homework a day were they on average have none of the worries a poor child does. Does this address that poor children are more likely to also suffer abuse and mental illness? Like mentioned what about kids that can’t learn or comprehend the forced standardized way? Just let em fail? These children regularly are not in “special education”(some of those are a joke in their own and full of neglect and abuse) programs cause most aren’t even acknowledged as having disabilities or disorders.

But yes all and all those pesky poor kids just aren’t being worked hard enough lol pretty sure poor children’s existence just in childhood is more work, stress, and responsibility alone than an affluent child’s entire life cycle. Love they never once talked about the quality of education in the classroom being so bad between the poor and affluent it can qualify as segregation, just basically blamed poor people for being lazy, good job capitalism for failing us once again!

why the hell?

you should feel bad for saying this, this article can be helpful for people who has to write a essay about it

This is more of a political rant than it is about homework

I know a teacher who has told his students their homework is to find something they are interested in, pursue it and then come share what they learn. The student responses are quite compelling. One girl taught herself German so she could talk to her grandfather. One boy did a research project on Nelson Mandela because the teacher had mentioned him in class. Another boy, a both on the autism spectrum, fixed his family’s computer. The list goes on. This is fourth grade. I think students are highly motivated to learn, when we step aside and encourage them.

The whole point of homework is to give the students a chance to use the material that they have been presented with in class. If they never have the opportunity to use that information, and discover that it is actually useful, it will be in one ear and out the other. As a science teacher, it is critical that the students are challenged to use the material they have been presented with, which gives them the opportunity to actually think about it rather than regurgitate “facts”. Well designed homework forces the student to think conceptually, as opposed to regurgitation, which is never a pretty sight

Wonderful discussion. and yes, homework helps in learning and building skills in students.

not true it just causes kids to stress

Homework can be both beneficial and unuseful, if you will. There are students who are gifted in all subjects in school and ones with disabilities. Why should the students who are gifted get the lucky break, whereas the people who have disabilities suffer? The people who were born with this “gift” go through school with ease whereas people with disabilities struggle with the work given to them. I speak from experience because I am one of those students: the ones with disabilities. Homework doesn’t benefit “us”, it only tears us down and put us in an abyss of confusion and stress and hopelessness because we can’t learn as fast as others. Or we can’t handle the amount of work given whereas the gifted students go through it with ease. It just brings us down and makes us feel lost; because no mater what, it feels like we are destined to fail. It feels like we weren’t “cut out” for success.

homework does help

here is the thing though, if a child is shoved in the face with a whole ton of homework that isn’t really even considered homework it is assignments, it’s not helpful. the teacher should make homework more of a fun learning experience rather than something that is dreaded

This article was wonderful, I am going to ask my teachers about extra, or at all giving homework.

I agree. Especially when you have homework before an exam. Which is distasteful as you’ll need that time to study. It doesn’t make any sense, nor does us doing homework really matters as It’s just facts thrown at us.

Homework is too severe and is just too much for students, schools need to decrease the amount of homework. When teachers assign homework they forget that the students have other classes that give them the same amount of homework each day. Students need to work on social skills and life skills.

I disagree.

Beyond achievement, proponents of homework argue that it can have many other beneficial effects. They claim it can help students develop good study habits so they are ready to grow as their cognitive capacities mature. It can help students recognize that learning can occur at home as well as at school. Homework can foster independent learning and responsible character traits. And it can give parents an opportunity to see what’s going on at school and let them express positive attitudes toward achievement.

Homework is helpful because homework helps us by teaching us how to learn a specific topic.

As a student myself, I can say that I have almost never gotten the full 9 hours of recommended sleep time, because of homework. (Now I’m writing an essay on it in the middle of the night D=)

I am a 10 year old kid doing a report about “Is homework good or bad” for homework before i was going to do homework is bad but the sources from this site changed my mind!

Homeowkr is god for stusenrs

I agree with hunter because homework can be so stressful especially with this whole covid thing no one has time for homework and every one just wants to get back to there normal lives it is especially stressful when you go on a 2 week vaca 3 weeks into the new school year and and then less then a week after you come back from the vaca you are out for over a month because of covid and you have no way to get the assignment done and turned in

As great as homework is said to be in the is article, I feel like the viewpoint of the students was left out. Every where I go on the internet researching about this topic it almost always has interviews from teachers, professors, and the like. However isn’t that a little biased? Of course teachers are going to be for homework, they’re not the ones that have to stay up past midnight completing the homework from not just one class, but all of them. I just feel like this site is one-sided and you should include what the students of today think of spending four hours every night completing 6-8 classes worth of work.

Are we talking about homework or practice? Those are two very different things and can result in different outcomes.

Homework is a graded assignment. I do not know of research showing the benefits of graded assignments going home.

Practice; however, can be extremely beneficial, especially if there is some sort of feedback (not a grade but feedback). That feedback can come from the teacher, another student or even an automated grading program.

As a former band director, I assigned daily practice. I never once thought it would be appropriate for me to require the students to turn in a recording of their practice for me to grade. Instead, I had in-class assignments/assessments that were graded and directly related to the practice assigned.

I would really like to read articles on “homework” that truly distinguish between the two.

oof i feel bad good luck!

thank you guys for the artical because I have to finish an assingment. yes i did cite it but just thanks

thx for the article guys.

Homework is good

I think homework is helpful AND harmful. Sometimes u can’t get sleep bc of homework but it helps u practice for school too so idk.

I agree with this Article. And does anyone know when this was published. I would like to know.

It was published FEb 19, 2019.

Studies have shown that homework improved student achievement in terms of improved grades, test results, and the likelihood to attend college.

i think homework can help kids but at the same time not help kids

This article is so out of touch with majority of homes it would be laughable if it wasn’t so incredibly sad.

There is no value to homework all it does is add stress to already stressed homes. Parents or adults magically having the time or energy to shepherd kids through homework is dome sort of 1950’s fantasy.

What lala land do these teachers live in?

Homework gives noting to the kid

Homework is Bad

homework is bad.

why do kids even have homework?

Comments are closed.

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Top 7 English Homework Tips for Teachers, Students and Parents

7 ways to create meaningful English homework. Tips for teachers, parents and students

Homework. The bane of student life everywhere. And teachers too! Won’t someone please think of the teachers?

It has been one of the hottest debates among progressives and traditionalists in education circles for many years now; is homework help or a hindrance?

Millions of student hours per year are wasted on busy work, which adds little to student learning. But that doesn’t mean that the judicious use of homework can’t add greatly to student learning, particularly in an area as complex as literacy.

Regarding reading and writing homework, there are good points to be made on both sides. But, as with many hot-button issues, the truth likely lies somewhere in the middle.

In this article, we will look at what we need to consider when we set homework to ensure it provides value to our students’ learning. We will look at what to do, what not to do, and just how much of it to do.

ENGLISH HOMEWORK TIP 1: Bin the Busy Work!

Ask your average student what their pet peeve is regarding their current station in life, and more often than not, homework will be mentioned in the reply. It is just as much a fixture in the life of a student as an oven is in the life of a baker. Unfortunately, as many students robotically complete their homework as teachers that robotically set the tasks. And here lies our first problem – busy work!

Homework should ALWAYS be focused. It should be carefully designed and purposeful. Without clear objectives built-in, the homework serves little to no pedagogical purpose. It is more likely to be a waste of the student’s time and the time of the teacher who is doomed to mark it.

The first rule of Homework Club is Bin the Busy Work!

ENGLISH HOMEWORK TIP 2: Make The Homework Fit for Purpose

It may seem obvious, but homework must be suited to the ability of the student. How often have diligent students pulled their hair out struggling over a problem all night, press-ganging parents into the effort, only to be soundly trounced by a problem Einstein himself would need his morning coffee before attempting.

Avoid setting homework that will stretch the student to the elastic limits of their abilities. We don’t want anyone ‘snapping’ here. The material chosen for reading or writing homework should, however, challenge the student to some degree. Just as with strength training, some resistance is required to build ‘muscle’ here.

As in Rule #1 above, homework should be carefully designed to achieve a certain objective. But, one size most certainly doesn’t fit all. Be sure to differentiate homework appropriately for the different abilities of different students. Often, you won’t need to set different tasks, a slight tweak in the instructions given will be enough to make it suitable for the various ability levels.

YEAR LONG DIGITAL READING LOG / DIARY

Leap into the CLASSROOM OF THE FUTURE and ditch your paper-based reading logs or journals FOREVER. This dynamic BUNDLE OF RESOURCES allows you to track and assess your students reading with far more efficiency and effectiveness than ever before. INCLUDING: ✔ A dynamic DIGITAL READING SURVEY which AUTOMATICALLY ADAPTS based upon the genre of book your students are reading and what point of the text they are up to ✔ A pre-written LETTER FOR PARENTS AND STUDENTS explaining how it all works and the clear benefits it offers teachers, students and parents. ✔ A set of POSTERS AND BOOKMARKS matched to your class reading log so you kids can access this ANYTIME, ANYWHERE on ANY DEVICE ✔ A VIDEO TUTORIAL explaining how to edit, customize and deliver this to parents and students with ease, as well as how to sort, filter and manage your student data

ENGLISH HOMEWORK TIP 3: Set Time Limits

We all have both good days and bad days, and all sorts of days in between. Regardless of what sort of day you had, one thing is for sure, there were 24 hours in it. One of the more difficult things as a teacher, especially in a school with a vague homework policy, is just how much homework to set. The answer is, of course, it depends , and while time is certainly an imperfect means of gauging this, it at least provides some guidelines.

Just how much time depends on quite a few things. The time of year, for example. If exams are ongoing, you may want to avoid heaping extra pressure on your students. Perhaps too, your school has a very prescriptive homework policy that restricts your flexibility in terms of how much time you can set for homework tasks.

All that aside, the general wisdom on setting homework is that it should start at around 10 minutes for grade 1 and gradually increase by around ten minutes per grade, up to a maximum of 2 hours per day for the oldest students.

Like most things in teaching, however, this is more of an art than a cold, hard science. Pay attention to your students and how they are bearing up under the workload. Your priority here should always be to maximize the learning done in the classroom, so don’t overdo it.

ENGLISH HOMEWORK TIP 4: Give Timely Feedback

For feedback to be useful, it must be timely. If a student has spent hours composing an essay; researching their material, drafting an outline, organising their structure, writing and rewriting to submit their finished piece only to be told 4 weeks later that the third paragraph lacks purpose, the third paragraph will not be the only thing that lacks purpose.

If feedback is to be of any value, you must strike while the mental forge is still hot. Our students’ lives are most likely busy and interesting. Often their focus will be transient, if not downright fickle. If you want your feedback to stick – it must be delivered while the smoke still hangs in the air.

ENGLISH HOMEWORK TIP 5: Get Creative with the Tasks

Many of our students hate homework. Perhaps ‘despise’ would be a better word. And is it any wonder? Especially when it comes to reading and writing. Learning to read and write well requires lots of practice, and a certain amount of repetition is inescapable. But, I would argue, there should be no reason for homework to be boring. There isn’t a more wondrous subject in the world than literacy, after all!

Reading and writing are very broad areas of learning. Ample opportunities are afforded to allow you to come up with engaging and creative ways for your students to reinforce their learning. You just need to begin with your learning objective and reverse engineer unique ways to get there.

Let’s take instruction writing as an example. Say you have already taught the key criteria of instruction writing: a title, a resource list, some diagrams with captions, bullet or numbered points, use of transition words and imperatives etc. You now want the students to consolidate their understanding of the genre by writing their own set of instructions at home, but how to do it in an interesting fashion?

Well, let’s brainstorm and see if we can’t make things a little more interesting for our students. Recipes are a type of instruction writing. You could set them the task of writing a recipe for their favorite sandwich, but that’s kind of, well, lame!

How about writing a recipe for the most disgusting sandwich in the world? Yes, now that’s much better. Maybe they could word process it too and include Creative Commons images to support the text, Or, they could even make a script and record a video instructional, sharpening up their video-editing skills along the way.

Regardless of which of these methods you choose, your students would still be fulfilling the original objective of reinforcing their understanding of the criteria of the genre.

Bear in mind, however, you should not set homework that requires students to use resources that they don’t have access to, so be sure to give this due consideration when getting creative with your homework tasks.

ENGLISH HOMEWORK TIP 6: Leverage Interest

“ You can bring a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink ”, as the old saying goes – and it certainly applies to homework.

This rule relies heavily on the relationship you build with your students over time. Allied to the point above, there are a million different ways to teach an objective, but try to engineer activities that leverage the specific interests of your students.

If you are setting a homework task to reinforce reading comprehension skills, for example, are there opportunities for you to select, or allow your students to select, material that they are interested in?

The same applies when selecting topics for writing. Where student interest is engaged, learning often becomes effortless.

ENGLISH HOMEWORK TIP 7: Give Homework At The Start of the Lesson

It is general practice to give homework at the end of the lesson. By then, you will have introduced a lesson objective, worked through some examples during class, and now you can set homework for the students to further consolidate their understanding at home.

It makes sense, right? Well, yes, but there is another option.

Sharing the homework task with your students at the start of class may, at times, be preferable. There are several benefits to this. Often, at the end of class, our students are worn out. They are like greyhounds at the starting gate, raring to go home, to the next class, or for lunch. The last place their attention is is on more of the topic they have just been working on. Setting homework at the start of the class avoids the feeling like you are trying to herd cats at the end of class.

Another strong benefit to setting the homework at the start of the class is that it focuses the students on specific learning goals for the lesson to come. Students will be motivated to engage more with their learning as it will make their homework much easier to do that evening. Give it a go with your class and see!

The Takeaways

Homework should be used as a means of consolidating learning done in the classroom. Tasks should be focused and offer opportunities for students to improve their understanding of important concepts or develop specific skills.

Homework should be designed in such a way that it is manageable by students. It should not be beyond the limits of their abilities and time limits should be set to prevent student frustration from boiling over if they struggle to complete it.

Feedback needs to be given in a timely fashion for it to serve any useful purpose. This means that consideration must be given to your workload when assigning homework. Will you have enough time to mark the students’ work and provide the necessary feedback in a timely manner?

If not, reconsider the tasks you are setting. Remember, you may also find value in peer assessment activities too.

Also, try setting homework at the start of class to motivate student participation in the lesson to come. And, you’ll avoid that tussle at lesson’s end as the students rush for the door!

Literacy is such a fascinating subject area that there will always be room to create interesting homework tasks. You just require a little space to allow your imagination to run freely. The personal interests of your students can provide a great starting point for the creation of engaging and fun homework tasks.

Remember too, there’s an upper limit to how much homework you should set, and it may not always be necessary to set homework. When you do set homework, set it judiciously, and you will undoubtedly add to the learning experience of your students.

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How to Create Effective Homework

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Based on a recent spate of articles on homework, it’s clear that the homework wars -- how much? how often? -- are still topic of big interest to both parents and teachers. Some teachers hate to give homework; others see it as a vital necessity. But according to some research presented by Annie Murphy Paul, the question isn’t how much, but whether the homework teachers do give actually advances learning.

“A recent study, published in the Economics of Education Review,” Paul wrote in “How Can We Make Homework Worthwhile?” , “reports that homework in science, English and history has ‘little to no impact’ on student test scores. (The authors did note a positive effect for math homework.) Enriching children’s classroom learning requires making homework not shorter or longer, but smarter.” Paul goes on to describe specific practices, like spaced repetition (in which information is presented and repeated spaced out over time), retrieval practice (testing or quizzing not for assessment, but to reinforce material learned), and cognitive disfluency (“desirable difficulties” used to make learning stick) -- all memory/retrieval techniques that may help homework move beyond busy work and advance real learning.

But to get those elements to work, said Fires in the Mind author and speaker Kathleen Cushman, students must be motivated to do their homework in the first place. One example Cushman gave was creating a project so interesting and involved, students naturally wanted to keep working on it after the bell rang. She pointed to a chapter in the book where she describes a particular motivation for some high school students she interviewed, under the heading “Homework We Actually Want to Do”:

“Christina and Nicholas both remembered a global studies unit on the French Revolution in which students acted out a courtroom trial of the king and queen. The project brought even routine homework assignments to life, they said.

“I was the queen. So of course I wanted to do my homework all the time, so I could know the facts of what happened and what didn’t happen, know what I wanted to say when someone tried to say I did this or that thing. I could say, ‘Oh no, I didn’t!’ - because I’d read my homework,” said Christina.

Christina was using a form of retrieval practice -- but because it was so much fun to be the queen, she only knew she wanted to stay in character. The queen had to study the information to get it right.

Another way teachers can take a good, hard look at homework practices, said Cushman, is to ask themselves a few vital questions: “Does this homework ask each student to practice something that the student hasn’t yet mastered? Does the student clearly see its purpose? When students are asked to repeat or rehearse something, does it require them to focus? Or can they do it without really paying attention?” If the homework meets these criteria, she said, then it falls into the desirable realm of “deliberate practice .”

Dan Bisaccio, former high school science teacher and now Director of Science Education at Brown University, said that after years of experience giving homework to high school students, he now “preaches” to his future teachers: “Homework should be practice and extensions of what happens in class and should not be ‘new learning,’” he said. “That is, students [shouldn’t be] having to teach themselves new content or skills.”

He said he agreed with Cushman that motivation is key, and tried to design homework that kept students interested. “Teachers need to clue into what motivates their students, giving them something that they really want to complete, and complete well.” One assignment Bisaccio used, called an “Experience Map,” asked students to create a map of their experiences after a field study or other important project - a technique employing both retrieval practice and the somewhat trickier interleaving, a “desirable difficulty” in which problems of different types are presented in one assignment, making students think harder to come up with solutions and answers.

“We ‘map’ mentally and physically each day. It helps to keep us orientated through our frenzied sun-up to sun-down daily experiences,” reads the assignment. Directions are to draw a field experience map, including -- with regard to the class -- where students have been, what they have done, new challenges, and insights. Special suggestions for drawing include “a place of danger, a favorite place, a place of power, a place with a secret.” Students are also called upon to map the places where they learned the most, where they were challenged the most, and where the funniest experience happened.

In addition, Bisaccio asked students to write what had challenged them most as a learner, what had stretched their limits most -- meant to be reflections just for students themselves, and asked to be kept on the back of the map. “What they wrote on the back was not shared with others,” he said. Once the assignment was completed, maps were posted to form a class atlas of what they had learned.

All the examples included here, however, are examples of homework in a traditional classroom. What about homework in a flipped classroom , where the lectures, usually videos, are the homework? A recent New York Times article on flipped classrooms may provide insight into flipping homework on its head, too: it quoted high school senior Luwayne Harris, saying, “Whenever I had a problem on the homework, I couldn’t do anything about it at home. Now if I have a problem with a video, I can just rewind and watch it over and over again.”

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Homework is fundamental for learners to make effective progress. Learning a language takes time and time is something we don’t always have in the classroom.

Below we look at some of the benefits of giving your children homework and we try to answer some homework related questions. In general primary children enjoy doing homework so it’s important to exploit this to their advantage. Why set homework

•   Time is an issue mentioned above. By setting homework you are effectively extending the children’s study time.
• It provides an invaluable link between you, the teacher, and the parents. Through the homework you set the parents can see what their children are learning and can hopefully guide them in the learning process.
• It’s important for children to see the relevance of what they do in class and to have some sort of continuity to the lessons they have with you.
• It is also an excellent way for young children to develop their autonomy and start taking responsibility for their own learning.

How do I set homework?

The key is to fully explain what you what them to do through demonstration. Keep it simple and short. With very young children write a simple sentence which explains the homework like ‘Draw a picture of the story’. Photocopy this sentence prior to the class and help them to stick it into their books. Where exactly you they stick it will depend on what system you have going with the work you give them. They may have a general book for homework but with the smaller ones this is unlikely. The sentence should be simple and clear as they will need lots of guidance from their parents who don’t necessarily speak English. With older children you can write the homework onto the board for them to copy. Again you should prepare the wording to make it clear and short so you don’t waste too much time writing down homework. How much homework should I set?

• There are already many demands on young children so you shouldn’t expect them to spend hours on a homework task. Not only would they be discouraged, they would be very unlikely to complete the task effectively. Check with the teacher first to get an idea of how much time is reasonable.
• Don’t forget either that you don’t have much time with them in class. Giving homework also implies marking homework or at least going through it in class. This is not about creating more work for you but making the work you do easier. Homework provides continuity to your lessons and gives you and the children a sense of direction. Keep it short and make sure it fits logically into what you’re doing. Don’t just give homework for the sake of giving it.

What different types of homework are there?

• Collecting things With very young learners you can base your class work around topics like food, toys and clothes. These topics lend themselves particularly well to collecting objects at home to bring into class. If you’re doing a lesson on food get the children to collect food labels to make a class poster in the next lesson. If you’re doing clothes and/or colours they can look in magazines and collect different types of clothes again for making a class poster next lesson.
• Re-telling the story If your class was based on a story you can ask the children to tell someone at home about the story. This will encourage them to think again about what you did in class. If they can’t remember it all or tell it differently it isn’t important. The objective is for them to simply evoke the lesson at home.
• Pictures Again if you’ve been working on a story they can draw a picture of their favourite character or scene. Or you can ask them to draw a picture ‘from the story’. This leaves it open for them to interpret what they’ve heard and use their imagination. Make sure you ask them to tell you about their pictures the next time.
• Writing With slightly older children you can take the previous story-based idea and extend it. They could write a summary of the story in three sentences. They could draw a picture and label it with as many words as they can remember from the story. 
• Exercises They could also do more traditional exercises based on grammar points you’ve looked at in class. Lots of workbooks provide ready-made exercises you can use or adapt for your students. It’s certainly not as fun as other types of homework but, taking into account different types of learners, you can use this approach from time to time to help them learn more effectively.

When do I mark the homework?

  It’s vital that you go through their work in the following class. Primary children will have spent a lot of time and effort on the task you set them and it would be unfair not to give it the feedback and attention it deserves.

• You can create a routine which encompasses going through homework at the beginning of every class.
• If you have very short classes then the tasks you set should be of an appropriate length so as not to take up the next class marking their homework.
• With small classes you can ask everyone to open their books at the page of their homework. Show the younger ones an example at the same time so they quickly find the page you need to check. Then move round the class marking their work. The advantage here is that you are sure to see everyone’s books. The problem is with large classes the children will get bored while you move around the class. To solve this problem either have a first activity that the class can get on with without needing your help or simply limit this approach to your small classes.
• Alternatively during the lesson make sure you see everyone’s books and make you comments as and when you see a child. The only inconvenience here could be that you leave a child out and forget to mark their homework. To solve this problem leave a couple of minutes at the end of the class and ask if there is anybody whose work you haven’t marked.

How do I mark the homework?

• With very young learners I find drawing a happy face next to their work when they’ve obviously put a lot of effort into it is always well received and encourages them to take pride in their work.
• I use some standard expressions such as ‘excellent work’ ‘well done’ ‘great drawing’ ‘very good work’ and I use their names as much as possible.
• Be positive whenever you can.
• However, there’s no point in saying that something is excellent if the child has clearly demolished his book and has forgotten to actually do the homework! Be realistic as well. You could simply draw a sad face next to the offending scribbles or scissor cuts to show you’re not happy.
• Don’t be too hard on children who don’t do their homework. It may not be their fault and it’s not as if they’re studying for their finals. Speak to the teacher about individual children. They may be able to tell you if they are always unlikely to do a task you set and ask what approach he or she takes where homework is concerned and the child in question.

Internet links

This site has loads of photocopiable homework worksheets that you can get ideas from on lots of different primary topics. http://www.primaryresources.co.uk/english/englishhome.htm

Have a look at publishers websites for free resources you can use for homework. Here’s the link to Longman ELT. http://www.longman.com/young_learners/teachers/resources.html

Here is an example of a downloadable worksheet for the Longman site. http://www.longman.com/young_learners/pdfs/FoodnDrink.pdf This site is provided by Macmillan Heinemann ELT. Some great free resources. http://www.the-bus-stop.net/free.html

The British Council's LearnEnglish Kids site has lots of fun online activities which could be set for homework. http://www.learnenglish.org.uk/kids/

By Jo Bertrand

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Find tips for conducting an ELT workshop, starting a community-based English club, and making sense of English homework.

Table of Contents

This article serves to give readers a framework for planning, preparing, and delivering a successful workshop, including strategies to keep on pace and anticipate and overcome obstacles.

This article defines and provides a rationale for the creation of community-based English clubs. We offer strategies that individuals can use to create and sustain English clubs, and we suggest meeting activities that will engage members in conversations and potential community action on a range of topics such as democracy, gender equality, and environmental protection. 

The purpose of this article is to persuade English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers and teacher trainers that homework is indeed beneficial by presenting multiple examples of high-quality homework assignments, as Dettmers et al. (2010) found in mathematics 

This guide is designed to enrich your reading of the articles in this issue. You may choose to read them on your own, taking notes or jotting down answers to the discussion questions below. Or you may use the guide to explore the articles with colleagues.

This article explores a technique that can be used for almost any kind of classroom listening practice and with all kinds of classes. It seems to work well both in exam preparation and in regular textbook listening exercises. 

Yulia Bulatkulova discovered her passion for English language teaching at a young age as a result of the example set by an esteemed childhood English teacher, Elvira Kuyanova. “I liked the way she spoke, always in English, and I thought to myself, I want to be like her,” Ms. Bulatkulova recalled. She explained that it was her teacher’s command over a language different from the one they shared that captivated her interest.

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Using news in the classroom keeps students aware of events happening in local, national, and international communities, and it promotes critical thinking. This activity helps students become more aware of issues and events in the news to motivate them to have further discussions with classmates, family, or members of the community. 

This fill-in the blank worksheet list activities that might be part of an English Club meeting.

Do you like puzzles? Try this bonus puzzle, “English Club Email.” Available only online! 

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DO & MAKE – How to talk about housework in English

Test your understanding of this English lesson

427 comments.

THANKS a LOT

Thank you ma’am Ronnie :),. May I asked you to give us explanations about when to use “have been” and “had been” on a sentence?

Thanks alot

Hi Ronnie, Thank you for all the lessons. I have an important question: What’s the Difference Between “Like” and “Such As”? Thank you

Such as we usually use to give and example – it is more formal than like. EX… My hobbies are playing sports, such as hockey, football, baseball. You can also say My hobbies are playing sports, like hockey, football, baseball Like is more casual and we use it more often!!!!!!

Hi Ronnie.First of all you’re the great teacher.You’re my best teacher.But i have a problem.I want to ask one thing.I’m really confuse about idioms and phrase.So please help me.And tell me what do i do?And if you know about any book or website which of my English would be good so please tell me.I’m waiting your reply…………………………..

The best way to learn idioms is to go to a country where they speak English OR you can watch movies!!!!!!! The problem with books is that there are MILLIONS of idioms that we never use!

Oh, What a nice surprise!

hi ronnie you are so talented woman, thank u so much

Thanks for your input you make it incredibly easy to understand … successes Ronnie

hi Ronnie thank yoooooooooooooooo alot

5 out of 5…yey!!!

Ronnie, You are a very nice person and a excellent teacher. Ilike you a lot. Please, tell me what should I do to improve my listening in English??

Listen to English music, tv shows, movies and people if you can!!!!

Ronnie, You are a very nice person and a excellent teacher. Ilike you a lot.

Excellent !!!!!

Dearest Ronnie, its an excellent way to teach. i m not good in English but amazingly i understood each and every world i listened.hope you will teach me more lesson like this but with different verbs. God bless you.

Ronnie, But we can use make for unmaterial things, like mistake, wish or something like that. Could you explain us how we can use DO or MAKE for these cases? Are there some secret or trick for it?

Hugs to you.

Hi Marcio, I believe we use ‘do’ for repetitive actions such as doin’ someone a favour , do an exam e.t.c while ‘make represents originality when you make coffee, it doesn’t always taste the same or when you make a mistake there is originality in it . We make cake,decision, wish ,noise e.t.c … but we can do the sound of a bird ( repeating what’s already in existence) ..

Look at the RESOURCES section on the site – there is a list off ALL the uses!!!!!!!!!!!!

it tooks me a while to understand about ‘do n’ make’ too. now is easier 4 me. see u Ronnie, I have to make my messy bed. make love instead war. that’s what I’m think.

Hi Ronnie. Good lesson! thx for all

I loved this Video Classes.I have many years triying to learn English.I hope this classes goin to help me a lot.Thanks very much for this webside.I will be conected with you.Thanks Again.

thank Ronnie. my question is this lesson or this course American accent or British. thanks again..

this is American Accent

really very helpful topic, my idea wasn’t strongly clear but now i can say after listen this listen i gave test this lesson too in order to i took in this 5 out of 5 , thanks Thanks Teacher

Hi !! Ronnie its me Taimoor Alvi ned to know about how to speak English like native speakers and what about the slang in English language ?

thanks Ronnie

I really want to study English on internet. so please everyone tell me, about studying on internet

Thanks ronnie ju are exelent teacher …I like your lessons..

Hi Ronnie , i have one question for u,ok? when do we use For and Since? thinks

For with a number. I’ve lived her for 3 years. Since with a date. (day/month/year) I’ve lived here since January.

Hi Ronnei, I learn a lot from your lessons. Thank you, you are a wonderful teacher.

thanks it is so useful for us

Hi Ronnie, Is there a specific verb to cleaning furniture?

NO! You can just say I cleaned the _______ (furniture name)

you can also “dust the furniture”

Thanks a lot for both answers: Ronnie and Engvid!

great teacher may you explain if conditional cause im confused between second and third case¿

\i have made a video on conditionals = it will be on the site soon!

Ronnie you are the best teacher. Thank you for this lesson! What a pity that you don’t teach English in my school!

mam your teching method is fantastic

hi ronnie how r u i dont speak very well english and can’t write aslo but you u r very good teacher never saw in life.yours teaching way i like very much if get a change i want to meet u one day i learn form u very well thanks

i’m learning a lot in this page…and i have to do all my homework tomorrow..

Hi my teacher Sorry for my weak language because I am new student, I admired you when I saw you the first time in our class “in school”, Please accept me as student at you. sorry again for errors in my language, thank you teacher I will wait your advice to improve my language

hi,ronni can i ask you a question do you know where the action is in this town? what does the expression means !

It means where is the party or good place in town!

thanks alot ronni

thanks alot for ur explanion i’d like to ask u a question my mananger speaks english fastly, and don’t repeat any word and that make a problem for me

Tell your manager to speak more slowly!

Hi I would like to tell you,I have problem with listen.When I listen a lesson as quick I forget.I need your advice to going be better.Many Thanks Heman

The best way to remember something is to see or listen to it many, many times!

Thanks alot for the piece of information you gave to us And also the way you presented it was great.

hi.plz slove my problum this word in garmmer.;bear; ;back; ;blow; ;beat; plz arranged the lesson

thanks very much

well, you are extraordinary! I love your style, your lessons are very enjoyable, don`t stop :)

thank you…you are a great teacher…I hope I can be a good teacheras you are 5 years later…

Thanks a lot Ronnie . i love your style of teaching and also lessons .

You scored 4 out of 5.

Thanks a lot Ronnie. You’re great. I really enjoy your lessons. Greetings from Brazil.

Thank you so much.

I love your teaching so much , many thanks Appreciated

My compliment!

Hi Ronnie. I have problem between idioms and phrasal verbs.So please tell me what do i??Because I’m really confused that where can we use the normal verbs and phrasal verbs and idioms.so please tell me i’m really confused.So please help me and give me your some advise. And one more question that where can we use the having word and hell.. Example is…. What the hell and you having us etc………… i hope you would understand what i want to say you…………….

Thank you. You’re really cute :D

Everything is very clear Ronnie, Thanks Jayathilake Sri Lanka

really it’s a very usful video for veiwers ….. really today i learn do & make … i understood thx a lot

Wow, i fell luck i found this website ! Thanks a lot to you all teachers ! I’m from Rio de Janeiro – Brazil and you can bet that i’ll come everyday !

My score was 4/5 !

Thanks you!! a lot

That’s it! I made five points. Teacher, i have some questions and i guess you’re the one to solve them. I always make mistakes with “IN”, “AT” and “ON”. Is there a way to know when we have to use each of them ?

Thanks a lot Ronnie!

hey Ronnie ! thanks for the lesson :) i like your way of teaching it’s so exinting !

Thank you Ronnie to your advice , I will try it in the future .

Thank you for providing the correct usage of do and make.I really appriciate your help.

Hi Ronnie… Thanks alot for your Lessons…..

Hi, Ronnie. Your lessons are really amazing. They are designed so fantastically that we can bring them into practical use soon after listening to them.

Hi Ronnie. I have problem between idioms and phrasal verbs.So please tell me what do i??Because I’m really confused that where can we use the normal verbs and phrasal verbs and idioms.so please tell me i’m really confused.So please help me and give me your some advise. And one more question that where can we use the having word and hell.. Example is…. What the hell and you having us etc………… i hope you would understand what i want to say you…………….

It’s a very useful lesson! And yes, They are kinda confusing.

thanks alot teacher

many many thanks Ronnei,

Mrs. Ronmie, thank you very much for your clear explanation, but I want to ask about something! when you were explaining, at once you said the word ( creating ), and you also said the same word but in a different order, which is ( creation ). I believe both of them were used as nouns, could you please tell us the difference between both. I have had this question for a long time, but I hope it’s going to be clear enough to me by your answer. The same thing with the word ( communicating ), and the word ( communication. I also know when we add the ING to a verb, it changes to a noun, so I have an idea about how the gerund goes, but knowing the differences between ( creating, and creation ) is not clear enough to me. Thank you.

Creating = present continuous. “I am creating a necklace.” Creation = noun. “My creation is a necklace.”

Thank you very much Mrs. Ronnie,,

thank you for the lessons teacher Ronnie :) 5 out 5 yes!

Ronnie, I desperately need help about pronunciation. Just tell me how am I supposed to pronounce endings of specific words such se PRONUNCIATION, CALCULATION, AVIATION? I used to pronounce it, for example /pr-nan-si-ei-sn/, but after I’ve watched your lesson where you said we should pronounce /pr-nan-si-ei-sin/. I mixed all those words in my head, and everything I used to know, now I don’t. Please tell me hoe to pronounce them :(

They all end in “shin”. Cal-ku-lay-shin. A-v-a-shin

Hi Ronnie, many confuses to pronoun vocabulary in English at first word: Ex: aviation from you A-v-a-shin but someone read ei-vi-ei-shion or idea read ai-dia but Indian not read ai…..ete. could you show me how to indicate reading the words. thanks

Hello Sir, i am very glade form youer teaching but i have a one quishion. can we use short form in english like u r (youer) and 2 buzy (to buzy )

nice job Ronnie, tell me is their difference in American English and Canadian and Australian

Awesome video’s… Thank you…..

Awesome video’s…:-) Thank you….

your great person and we never meet but i think your the best thanx

Thanks Madam Ronnie you are great that you are providing good communication skills .You delivered lecture DO ,Make . I want to ask you Is this correct use of DO, Make ?

Do the dishes . I am doing dishes . Did you not do dishes ?

Great work! But you need to say “the dishes” in all the sentences!

I made it.thanks Ronnie to give me full marks

Hi Ronnie.First of all you’re the great teacher.You’re my best teacher.But i have a problem.I’m facing IELTS exam end of this year please give me some advices for decrease my tension,I’m waiting for your advice……….

Don’t worry about it – just try your best and you will do well!

Hi Ronnie, you’re a great teacher.I realy like you lessons

hi ronnie, ur good at ur teaching can u make a video on if clause and unless I am bit confused with that…………….. waiting for ur replay……. Harin

OK I will try to make a video for you!

Thank you very much Ronnie

Hi, Ronnie! I hope you’re doing great. Sorry to bother you by my irrelevant questions but I really don’t know anyone who can help me more than you! I’ve 3 questions concerning syntax. 1) What is the present third-person singular (s 3d) of “have” and “be”? 2)If I asked you to fill out the noun paradigms of: fish, clothes, physics and measles, what would you write in the “-s plural” column for each one? 3) When filling out the comparable paradigms, I fail to know which adjectives take the -ER cp and -SP cp (like healthy, healthier, healthiest), and which adjectives don’t but rather be proceeded by more and most (like honest, more honest, most honest). Could you tell me a rule or a solution for this problem, please? Thanks in advance and I really hope that I don’t annoy you!

1) They 2) fish -fish (OR fishes if you are talking about different species of fish). clothes-clothes, measles-measles. 3) If the adjective has 1-2 syllables, you use – er -est. If the adjective has 2 or more syllables, add more/the most. The problem is that these rules overlap (2 syllables) Two-syllable adjectives ending in –er, -le, or –ow – ous -ed -est ……add –er and –est to form the comparative and superlative forms. Some 2-syllable adjectives can use BOTH !!!!!!!! clever gentle friendly quiet simple

Thanks, Ronnie, very useful lesson

Hi Ronnie, I watched your video on q&a in job interview. I went for a job interview last week, I didn’t get the job however that was the best interview I have had in a long time, many thanks! Alison

Hi! Miss Ronnie p;z solve my problem for the words glisten, glitter, shine, gleam, glow, sparkle, shimmer, bright plz make a lesson for these words Thank you

Ok I will try!

Hi Ronnie. Congratulations. You’re a great teacher. I liked your lesson so much. Watching you to teach, the English language seems very easy. Thank you for help me learn English.

Ronnie, really my back ground to be rural but really enjoyed and understood ur session…!if it possible can u send any English material to my mail Id.

great lesson,but my question is what is the difference between close and near?

They are the same. Except we have to say close + to and near we NEVER use a preposition!! I live near the river. I live close to the river!

Hellow There will iam junaid alam i have been following your lessons closely and i am of the view that you that are the best teacher believe me . Maam i am going to take toefl test this january and i am having difficulty dealing with expression like that is and oh yes and many others Can you help me out in this regard i will be really thank ful i really need your help.

Thanks ronnie for giving us good topics to learn. i really appreciate on how you deliver your teaching.

Hi teacher I Arabian, I would speak English can you my friend via messenger please ^_^

I am an Arab sorry ^_^

great Ronnie Gianfranco

I’ve done 5 of 5!!! Very useful lesson. Thank You!!!

Hello my dearest teacher Ronnie,your style of teaching is very well.I am from India and want to work in USA.So help me to improve my English.Thanks a lot.

thanks a lot. this’s realy great!

hello rannie I just wanted 2say THANK YOU ( you r the best )

Tks Ronnie. You’re so kind. Lily from Brazil

Hi Ronnie thank you thank you thank you :) You have a beutiful way to teach us and i love it I saw your leasons in youtybe then I enthusiastic to learn more , Then I SignUp in this site:) “sorry for spelling ;)”

I like the way you teach RRRonnie THANK YOU…….. I used to live in the USA but now I live in Mexico city and Im a teacher and I have alot of problems in teaching.I DONT wanna bother you, I JUST WANNA have a friend like you…right now were in vacatios 10 days..do you vave some tips to teach adjectives and adverbs.than you again talk to later

Search the site for adjective and adverb – there is a video for it! Good luck!

Do you do this about yourself. your a hart worker,you are a good person. I wish i can be like you.Merry Christmas and a happy new year

hi miss ronnie thank for all your lessons … i really like it .. but im new in thes web & i dont know from where to start on .so if you can help me and tell me from where to start

Ronnie, how i can play your lesson continue?

sooooooooooooooooooooooooooo gooooooooooooooood

hi that,s great lesson

hi Ronnie I want to ask about If someone didn’t understand me I can say don’t get me wrong . Is that correct ? please correct me If I’m not mistaken thanks….

No – we use don;t get me wrong when we are justifying our opinion. Ex… I hate Christmas. Don’t get me wrong I like the food, just not the shopping.

Ronnie you are the best teacher. Thank you for this lesson!

Ronnie, you are just hilarious teacher! That vacuum looked like a armchair with a sucking dust bottom! that is an idea for a new generation vacuums! :)

thank you so much ronnie , you are great because your lessons are very clear and funny ,thank you and merry christmas

Hi Ronnie can you help me.(when Iam writing Ihave some mastek) Ex v-f-ph

Hi Ronie the lesson it’s very helpfull and very clearly thanks a lot happy new year.

Hi Ronnie i would like to say tanks-for helping me to improve English .and i always looked your videos keep it up . but one thing i want to ask you .there is a problem in me when every thing i understand but i can’t remember it so can you give me some ways to recognize my lesson ? OK I am waiting for you to answer my questons

THe only way to remember anything is to repeat and review it!

dear ronnine,you have an excellent teaching method. I love it.keep it up

hi Ronnie, you are nice teacher. thank you for this exercise.

Thank you But if it is possible to let the quota be a good interpreter Thanks once again (in other words what you are saying is written on screen)

HI Ronnie, You are a very nice person and a good teacher. I like you a lot. thanks for you

hi Ronnie, thanks for lesson

Hi Ronnie teacher. I want to speak in english plz help me.

Ronnie, thank U so much. I understood everything that you said, I hope with your lessons I will improve my English. Thank U.

Madam Ronnie You are a good tutor, and describing things very clearly thanks a lot

that a great lesson, thank you Ronnie

Good evening my teacher , realy you are very exclent teacher . Thank you

Madam Ronnie you are the best teacher . thank u so much .i understanding everything you said but i have writing and pronunciation problem so what you advise me to do madam

As far as pronunciation = listen and repeat English phrases! Writing = write a diary everyday.

hey! Ronnie its a great lesson love ya

thx very much,so interesting

awww i got 3 out 5…mam how i can improve my english…?? what shuld i do…? plz tel me…i luv to speak englsh bt i can’t…help me mam…:(

If you are having trouble in grammar, you just need to review and practice the rule you are learning. Make example sentences to help you! If you love to speak that you CAN do it!!! Just don’t worry about making a mistake!

Thanks for leassons. You are very good teacher. From Azerbaijan

thank u am proud 2b 1 of your students

Thanks Ronnie,The first time I heard that’s word (Chores).Now ,I know that mean is housework .God bless you,you’re the best.

hello ronnie.ı trouble with preposoitions in english.in addition being used at sentences as location,date,adress,we need methods which is used long sentences.could you help me.thanks

http://www.engvid.com/prepositions-how-to-use-in-at-and-on-in-english/ http://www.engvid.com/prepositions-of-place-at-on-in-grammar/ http://www.engvid.com/how-to-give-directions-in-english/ Check out these lessons!

Ronnie,Many thanks for lesson. Could you please explain me the correct option of this sentence which is ” his car is not so good because its break does’nt work properly Or his car is not so good beacuse its break not works properly Or his car is not so good because its break not working properly”?

hello ronnie, thank you so much for your lesson , you are the best =), but please help me, I have a big problem with vocabulary and ” writing” I don’t know how to express or how to write correctly my text, and I’am worried about that, because I have the final baccalauriat exam in english this year, and I don’t know what to do, What do you advice me ? Thank you so much!!!!

Write a diary in English about your life! Write a sentence everyday, the try 2 sentences, then 3!! Just write about what you did that day or how you feel or any exciting/bad news!

Ronnie, you are the best! Thanks a lot for your funny but important lessons.

Thank you, you are the best teacher, it is very accessibly and available

Thanks for your great job. :)

hii Ronni thanks a lot for this lession .Ronni really you are a good teacher .you teach english in a better way but iam so confused in writing an essay ,tell me how to write an essay in english.If you can provide an english video lecture then please…….. Thenkew very much

Google “how to write an essay” – then you can have written examples! Good luck!

Hi Ronnie, Thank you so much for the lesson. I really like the way you’re teaching…

i got 4 of 5 corretly…

i got 4 out of 5.. why “I make my homework every day after school” is wrong?

You don’t make/create the homework – the teacher does!

HI, thank you for the lesson… i have a question, what does mean “to make do”.. i read that in the list of verbs… thank you very much!

To make do = to use what little supplies you have!

I LOVE YOUR EXPLANATION, THANK YOU

Ronnie,thank you! You are a very talented teacher. I love all your lessons.I have a question. You wrote “You don’t make/create the homework – the teacher does!”, but do=wash

hi first of all thank you so much for this lesson really it’s good lesson. i would like to speak with teacher Ronnie in Skype if possible please because reality she’s best teacher for me. so i can’t know how i thank you hope to see you soon

s0 interesting….

you are a good teacher tnx a lot i learn something in this lessen

Hi Ronnie!! This is an interesting video!!! Thank you!!!

Ronnie,Many thanks for lesson. Could you please explain me the differences among the verbs “take place, occur n happen?

They are all the same! However, in Canada/US we say happen more than occur/take place!

salam thnks ronnie ma’am u teach vry well.will u help us about all use of tenses.thnks

Hi Ronnie, once again a wonderful lesson! i just wanna know how do we pronounce ‘Chores’ in American English?? as i have been pronouncing it ‘kores’ n i heard it as ‘Chores’ from ur mouth…plz guide on the correct pronunciation of this word. Apart i have been taught british english since childhood so often there is little confusion in the pronunciation of words correctly and now i m keen on learning american english n wanna get fluency in the same as now i am staying in the US from past 6months,,, so plz suggest me ways to enhance my american ascent n fluency…(like sounds of R & T) Thanks in advance

It is not “k” it is CH like choo choo!

Thanks Ronnie. I’d like to see some examples with the phrase “to make do”. Thank you in advanced.

thanks alot teacher Ronnie.I wanna to ask you how to learn english fast what is the method Iam awaiting for reply.thenks second you are deadly

Thanks….They you are teaching is just amaizing…

Mam i would like to thank 4r a best teaching u know we Asian are so weak in english .

What can I say you’re terrific. Loves from Izmir,TURKEY

Hi Ronnie,could you please send me 02 examples for ‘mess’.

5 out of 5…yey!!! thanks ronnie Mam..

thx u r the best one i love u sooooo much thx thx

Hi! Excellent substitution do-wash Great lesson, thanks a lot

hi ronnie thanks for lesson

I’m Iraqi English teacher, but I’m interested in your lessons. You are mild and likeable, every one like to watch your Video lessons. Please can I get your new lessons on my email? your prompt action will be highly appreciated. profound regards

Sorry, I don’t know how to do that!

Hi there!!! Thanks a lot for your lessons. When you have enough time, I would you like to see a class concerning an unique word: “to figure out”. I hear it millions of times everyday, but sometimes I don´t know what it is meaning exactly. Ta-ta for now.

To figure out means to understand/comprehend something that may have taken a long time. Ex. I finally figured out what the problem was with my computer!

Ronnie I m a student in a high school and I love you a lot and I really wish u were my aunt.(I would spend all my time with u):) I watch your videos every week. u are really funny.If u come to Turkey I really wanna meet u.

i would like to say you are excellent teacher really i learn alot from you and your childhood trick awesome … tell me how can i over come my spelling mistakes and how can i improve writing like office emails and proposals ect..

As far as spelling mistakes, you should install spell check so that the computer corrects the spelling mistakes for you!

Ronnie thank youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

hello >>> ronnie i really thanks you so i have questions?

1_ what is the difference between this two sentences :

who did eat the chicken ?

who ate the chicken?

and when we use each one please explain

2_ i heard a singer said :

she dont sleep

but why he used dont i should be doesnt

and i also heard one said:

she lookin at me

why he did not put” is ” please explain >>>>>>>>>>>finally thanks

who ate the chicken? = correct. who did eat the chicken? = wrong = you can only have 1 verb in this sentence. Singers NEVER use correct grammar!

thank you Ronnie your way is very fantastic

thanks for this explanation. I’ve learned by heart DO and MAKE before I visit this www. but made a mistake sometimes. You did a great job for me: Do = wash, make = creation. Bravo

Hello, would you like to lern English together protanya?

Thanks a lot teacher Ronnie i love the way you’re teaching. well, i got some difficulties with ” active voice/passive voice” and ” direct speech/indirect speech in english i don’t know if you’re already made some videos lessons on them, if yes i’d like to have the link. Thank you so much. Jude from Haiti.

The direct/indirect speech video will be up soon! Go to the site search for “passive”, there is a lesson for you!

hello madame, i faced problem of different between Do and MAKE , know i am very clear about it. i am confused about ON and IN (on leave , in leave) please help me on this chores

Search for “prepositions” on the site – there are many lessons to help you! Leave on = keep on top of something. Leave in = keep inside of something!

Thanks a lot Ronnie. I dont understand “I have to vacuum” it means “I do the vacuuming” or “I need to vacuum”? pls help

“I need to vacuum”

Hello Ronnie again i wanna dustareb you that several i tolled you a bout tag question but didn’t answer me why if you thought a bout that plz sand me the link to find it out okay wish you don;t mind that love you all by

http://www.engvid.com/english-grammar-tag-questions/

thanks ronnie i learnt a lot from tag question what ever you thought us again thanks from the core of may heart love you all

Hai Ronnie ! Could you answer me these questions:

1. The phrases ‘ me too’ or ‘ mine too’. Which is the correct? Why?

2. Which the sentences is correct? ‘ Do you done your homework’ or ‘ Do you finished your homework?

3. If we are in university, the lecturer give me some exercise. Can we say that exercises is treated as ‘ homework’ or ‘ assessment’ or ‘ exercise’ other? Why?

I hope to hear back from you soon. Thank you kindly!

With regards, Fong

thnks for the lesson .

thanks good lesson

i love your teaching way…:)

Hi Ronnie, you have a funny way to teach, I love it! I want to ask you, when should I to use the progressive form?, for example: “I like working”, “what do you like doing?” (I have seen these sentences in a handbook) sincerely I would write them: “I like to work”, “what do you like to do?” Thanks for your help, Ronnie. Best wishes.

Check out this lesson to help you! http://www.engvid.com/gerund-or-infinitive/

i am dalmar i want to learn engilsh how can i learn in english plz

my name is nuune i want to learn enlish plz help me from nuune cadde

Hi Ronnie i love your lessons you too much good. After i learn your teaching now i am able to write you some thing. thank you so much and God give you a better life. bye take care your self.

Hi Ronnie, very good lessons could you recommend me a good and easy book for speaking, grammar and with a lot of exercises. Thanks

Sorry, I do not know any good textbooks to help you!

The way you deliver your lessons is quite interesting and amusing. Thanks.

hello ronnie,

you’re a good english teacher and all of your lesson’s are very excellent!.but i suggest one thing,could you add “subtitles” in your video so we can understand you well,

I don’t know how to do that…sorry!

Thanks for answering my comment, I want you recommend me an good english workbooks for grammar and for speaking

Sorry, I really don’t know any good workbooks…I think they are all pretty much the same. If you want to learn slang….you can get a series of books called “Slangman”. http://www.slangmanpub.com/

hey ronnie! correct me… i’m busy in house chores. i’m busy with house chores.

I’m busy with house chores.

I have so many chores .soI dnt get more time to watch engvid lessons.but I make my bed anddo the launtry.Im fromKERALAinINDIA..I want to get a penfriend to improve my english.KERALA is aGODs on country.Ialso invite all of you kerala.

Ronnie this video is very useful, thanks a lot

I’m back…Thank you Ronnie.

hi guys! im doing private lessons to a girl about thirty years old and we ware friends and its the first time i do this job. what are the very first lessons to do for the level of beginner?

Teacher, making a mess means we tidy something, isn’t it?

No! Making a mess is the opposite of tidy. Make a mess = dirty!

I was born in C anada too!

Many thanks Ronnie

Ronnie I’m very confused among thse words : washroom ,bathroom toilet,lavatory ,prissy ,Latrine. can you explain them to me please and may allah reward you highest paradise

Thank very much Ronnie it has been so good!

Thank you so much Madam, you’re the best.

thanks alot

Thanks a lot ,,,,

I love this website!

hello dear Ronnel i am sayed naqib sahar i one request u that when u make u r new video plz sand it to may Emil address okay love u all

Sorry, I cannot send videos to your email!

Excellent lesson Ronnie!!!

Hi, can i say: i´ll make the dishes, or i´ll make laundry, or i´ll do the bed, or i´ll do my lunch. is taht correct?.

NO. Watch the lesson again.

Hi Ronnie! Thanks for God we have teacher like you. You are great!! I´ve been watching you classes few days ago and I really appreciated them. You are a very special teacher. Bye!

Ronnie, You are a very nice person and a excellent teacher.

thanks ronnie. i got 5 out of 5 ,

thanks i benefit your lesson

i got 5 out of 5 thank u for teaching us.

hi ronnie thank u from morocco nice teacher love u we invite u to morocco

Teacher You’re a so great, You got a felling, thanks for the way You teach

Thank you very much ronnie, you are nice teacher as always

Ronnie I don’t understood you said that “do”is when been wash like the floor and etc… but “Do the homework” was strange because you don’t wash the homework (kkk)For me understand better can you explain for me ? THANKS SO MUCH YOU’RE THE BEST !!

I’m waiting for answers!! kisses

Thank you very much!! I’m Mongolian.. And do you know Mongolia?

Thanks a bundle.

thankz a lot. you are a good teacher.

Let me tell you, you’re the best teacher. I love the way you teach people.

Vacume or Vacuume ?

i now notice that – vacuum not vacuume :)

Many thanks i really leaned.and wish you all the best

hi can i participate in your chat?i want to improve my English language

Dearest Ronnie, I would like to say that your lessons are fantastic! Every night i access the Internet to watch your videos. Thanks for all!

hi Ronnie, do you have any video such as (any,some,much)

Thank you teacher.

Ronnie your each and every lecture is extremely useful for me.

Teacher Ronnie thank you so much, this lesson reminds me of my childhood friend that normally visits me. he was a good boy that does his housework before going out to play, we used to play together before heading either his house or mine to have a lunch. Thank you Ronnie and all the entire staffs of envid , you people are wonderful. kudos

Thank you so much for your lessons its so useful for us.

thank you Ronni. It is so useful for me.

u r awesome dear but onething u mentioned here about some interview questions and answers about that plzzzzzzzzz its a kind request thank u…bye

5/5 Thanks a looooot Ronni ^^

how can i use if ,were,would,and will the proper way tell me about all way

your lesson as sweet as you are ^^

Thank you very much for all the efforts .. Grateful to you ……

Hello Ronnie, I would like to say that your lessons are fantastic! Thank you so much…

you are awsomen! you make english so funny…thanks

thank you so much Ronnie. its the best lesson i found it in internet and you are the best Teacher. i liked your lesson so much Jamal. from. Libya

I LOVE this lesson! It’s so good! It helped me a lot in my grammar! Waiting for more lessons!

I REALLY like this lesson!!

Hi my best teacher just i want say thank youuuuuu……….

dear ronnie : good afternoon you great teacher and good style lesson thanks

Thank you very much teacher Teacher can you help me ? Can you explane the phreasl verb do & make

Thanks Ms Ronnie. I loved your tips. Could you explain me about some slangs?. when you can speak or not. Thanks

Thanks I got 8

OK I got 10 Thanks dear Ronnie

yap i will got 5 out of 5 continue 4 times….

thanks for u r great job. i like u r site. i will improve my english help of u r site…. really thanks a lot..

Hi, Ronnie, I hope you are doing great. I do like your way when you are teaching. Thank you and of all of you

Ronnie, hi! Could you please clear this up for me? Is it correct that making the bed means both making in look nice and tidy in the morning and prepare it before sleeping in the night? Thank you very much!

Thanks teacher Ronnie you are unique person I know

Excuse me teacher Ronnie can you help me I want to learn English quickly what way I have to do I hope you help me

I’ve been watching some video of yours. You have a very good sense of humour I think. I like the way you talk and your facial expression. Everytime I watch your video, it makes smile. And thnks for your lesson.

Tanks for the lesson Ronnie. I´m improving day after day.

Hey Ronnie, what are you up to? I really like your classes and I was wondering if you could teach us the most common phrasal verbs and idioms used in everyday conversation. Congrats, you’re an amazing teacher

Dear Ronnie!thank you very much for ur english, ur explanations. U are a great specialist!

Dear Ronnie You are lovely teacher and I am understanding your lesson. You are a great specialist

Thank you very much.

Peculiar “attention-catching” teacher!

Claudio. (Italy)

Tks. You’re a very good teacher!Congratulations!

When I make my bed I create an art piece, awesome, I will never forget this. Kind regards

You have to sleep more and don’t do chores at all. :)

You are cool!

You made splendid explanation! Many thanks, Ronnie!!! :)

Hi Ronnie I’m Redha and I’m from Algeria my English is not very strong but I understood every word you said in your videos. So thank you very much you are doing a great job here. Please I have a question : Is there an exception in the * DO&MAKE* lesson ?

thanks ronnie !!

I understand from your lesson that I can say : I make a comment instead of : I do a comment.

Hi! Ronnie I have a question! What’s the Difference Between “prepare” and “cook”? I always confuse these words!!!! … Thank You!!!! =)

I got 100% , seems like I do my housework perfectly. Thanks Ronnie you are always genuine.

Oh oh I got perfect score again,I am feeling happy and excited to learn more

how we use “used to”

when we use “ever” and “forever”..?

After almost 2 months vacations I get 100 % in this lesson. Thanks.

really you are great .. thank you

this is the best site for learning english. thanks a lot!

hi,ronnie. you are great..all the video i’ve seen,it helps me a lot…thank you very much and sorry for my grammar i dont know if its correct… can i have a request please? can you make a video or explain to me the proper usage of “WITH” ? i am confused when will i use it …. THANKS IN ADVANCE :) .. waiting for your reply..

ohhh no, I got 3 from 5…..so bed.

Hi Ronnie,thank you for this video:-) You are the best.After this I dont have mess in my head , in my room only :-D

hi,that was great.

hi teacher : hope u r doing well to make means to create : why we use ( to do the homework ) thank u

Hi Ronnie, you’re the best teacher, cause I understand almost everything you say…haha,but really, it’s truth. There are others teachers that speak too much fast and it’s like a mission impossible to understand what they’re saying. Hugs!!

Hello Ronnie, Have you ever listen to I gotta feeling by black eyes pear? they sang “let’s do it, let’s do it, let’s do it” I think the song is a bout creative…. so why they said that still? it’s slang? it’s wrong? or i am wrong?

I have a ?4U LOL

you are my best teacher thank you a lot for all the information

can you give me some information ? because i love english but i’m not good in it

interesting lesson

i wish I had watched this video two days ago. Because I needed a hoover and I didnt know how i would want it form dormitory personals. thanks , Ronnie this lesson is very usefull

Thanks got 60%.

Chores are:

*fun things we love to do

Hahaha.. I love your sense of humour, Ronnie :)

Thank you Ronnie.I liked your lessons.

thanks ronnie this video was really helpful, you are an excellent, after watching this video I solved my doubt.

thanks ronnie this video was really helpful, you are an excellent teacher, after watching this video I solved my doubt.

you are so excellent teacher , ronnie . Thanks a lot :-)

Thank you Ronnie, you are excellent and funny teacher. I ever learn using your videos.

Thank You :)

Interesting lesson. Thanks teacher Ronnie

Hi Ronnie, I found your website on youtube and this is really a big help for me because I want to learn more about English. ;-)

Thank you Ronnie

Excellent job easy explanation but I still confuse when I talk to some body but I do thank you very much

i like it here. Just got a little confuse about that “homework” thing. we never wash our homework right? so i put ” make my homework”, where in a sense i know from the start that it should be ” do my homework”. har..har..har..

thanks. You are my best teacher, Ronie. But I feel very boring because I don’t become better after longtime.

thank Ronnie, I love your english class……..

Thanks So mach Ronnie :)

I like you and your lessons too, Ronnie. Thank ou very much!

Hi Ronnie…. You are great. The way of teaching is excellent. Bravo babes

thank you:)

wow 5/5 Hello thank you mis ronnie i wake up and i did the best today .i made my bed , made my breakfast and finally i did my dishes.

Thanks a lot :-)

Not too bad, thanks.

Thanks, you are lovely.

Hey Ronnie, I’m Brzilian and you are helping a lot. Thanks so much!

Thank you very much, Ronnie! Great class, teacher! And I really liked the drawing of the vacuum, :D See you later.

Thanks a million Ronnie!!! You are my star :)

Hi, Ronnie ! Thank you for the lesson. It was fun when you teach that’s make learning quick. Can you help me understanding the usage of Think, Feel, Sound and Believe. When and Where to use them? ?

* Also “Seems” i forgot to mention it in earlier post.

*Also “Seems” i forgot to mention it in earlier post.

what a mess I did

or what a mess I made?

Thanks a lot ma’am Ronnie. I really had a problem with expressing myself when it comes to chores. As a result my performance on this quiz dropped by 20%, I used to get 100% in the previous Quizzes I took.

#Anyone feel free to correct me if I made any mistake on the statements above, either grammar, spelling or punctuation.

EngVid is the Best!! :)

Thank you so much!

very useful Thanks a lot Ronnie!

Hi dearv ronnie, can I say I made my dinner?

Thanks Ronnie :)

Thanks from POLAND ??????

good lissen mam

That’s a great lesson! I wish to understand the differences between do and make in housework!

Thanks!! You are the best teacher!!

thank’s

Tanks a LOT

Thanks Ronnie

Hey Ronnie!!!!

Thanks a lot for help with expression, because I had very mistake with them. ^^

obs: sorry, for grammaticals wrongs or wrongs words

Thank you, Ronnie.Your teaching is interesting for me.

Many thanks .

Hi Ronnie :) can you tell me about what’s the different between (make time) & (do time) ?

how are you ronnie my namis eba im mongolia im mining engineer i working for centerra gold gold mine that company is canada.so i want very very improve skill english.help me please

Hello Mam !you teach very well and in simple way.I learn alot from your all lessons.Thank you mam.

I’ve got through this lesson the right way of using MAKE or DO, often confused. I’m very happy. Thank you Ronnie.

Hi Ronnie, very useful lesson again and very well done, thank you very much ;) By the way, i come back from Toronto,they speak very quickly, it was difficult for me to understand them but i had a great stay with my friends who live in there.

Thanks big hug from Colombia Ronnie

I love it Ronnie lessons, thanks for creatives and good actitud always ?

Hello Ronnie, Love you so much. Thank you for all lesson if I want to speak English very well. How Do I do? Ronnie

Thanks Ronnie. please could you please show me the different between “to make a time ” and to do a time “

Hi Ronnie, you are my favorite teacher, thanks for your explanations. God bless you

I got all the questions right. Thanks, Ronnie, you’re the best!!!!

Hello, Ronnie, thanks a lot for these lesson. However,I have a question about “do my homework”, but not “make my homework”. you said–“do means wash, make means create”; they are different words but same meaning. Can I say “make my homework”? Please explain this rule for me, thank you very much.

Hi Ronie i am writen from Djibouti…. i am a trainee english teacher in secondary school here…in Djibouti of course and specialy grade 10…okkk… first of all thank you for all of your lessons…but i have question concerning the passive voice…as i remember you made an exampl like an active voice …I eat the lunch and you made the passive voice the lunch was eaten…why??? Why not the lunch is eaten… thanks a lot…

1oo%5 really happy for not making mistakes

I always said for you,”Thank you.”

Just because of your teaching style i can understand very easily and that’s the main reason which gives me 100% result. thanx miss Ronnie.

Thank you! Ronnie many times i get these lessons late, i do not know if there are someone follow them live. please my teacher keep me posted!

You got 5 correct out of 5.

Thank you Ronnie i love you

thanks for the lesson it was great. I gotta go becouse my wife asked me to do the dishes and the loundry and I do not know what to make for lunch.

Thanks Ms. Ronnie.

Hi Ronnie, thank you for your explanation.

5/5! Good! I am lazy to do any housework.

5/5 thanks a lot,Rebecca,hugs (Kazakhstan o6 Dec2o21:)

I’m glad you exist sweet Ronnie and I’m quite grateful for your funny English lessons…greetings from Surco

Thanks Ronnie 5/5

I’m quite grateful dear Ronnie for your entertaining English lessons….. many greetings from Surco

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Outside-the-box ESL homework ideas 

Are your students reluctant to do homework? Do they think that doing it is time-consuming and not worth the effort? If that is the case, it’s not because the idea of homework itself is boring or useless, but because students often spend too much time doing meaningless activities and at some point realize that they prefer to manage their free time differently. Let’s face it: they are probably right. But there are ways to make students like homework again. Why? Because the role of an English teacher is not only to teach English, but also to teach how to learn English , to equip students with the necessary tools to become independent English users. You can tell your students how to use grammar, or explain what words mean, but it’s up to them to actually ‘make language [their] own, … assert [themselves] through it’ , as the linguist Henry Widdowson puts it. 1 So instead of giving your students pages of exercises and getting irritated because they don’t do them, use some of the ESL homework ideas below. They will help your students make English their own. 

Students choose what they need

Start with a question for your students: In what situations do you use English outside the classroom? Then ask them to choose two or three words covered in the lesson which they think will be of use to them. Give them a minute to think what words might come in handy in the everyday situations THEY often find themselves in. The words might be different for a student who uses English at work, or who has friends they chat with in English, or who lives in an English-speaking country, or who doesn’t speak or write in English outside the classroom, but watches American series or reads celebrities’ posts on Instagram. Once they have chosen the words, ask them to use each of them at least once before the next lesson. They can use them in a conversation, an email or a message. They should simply be on the lookout for situations where the words might be used, e.g. while watching a film, they might want to respond to what an actor says using the word ‘hilarious’.

In the following lesson, ask your students to report how the task went: Did they achieve it (partly or fully)? What situations did they use them in? 

Students use and listen for grammar in context

The same goes for grammatical structures. For instance, after introducing and practising Present Perfect Continuous, ask your students to think of out-of-the-classroom situations in which they are likely to use it. Thinking about a new tense for a couple of days might prompt students to say (if only to themselves): ‘I have been cleaning for an hour’, or ‘I’ve been waiting here for too long’. 

If you think this might be too challenging to start with, make the structure more approachable first by asking your students to notice the new language while they hear people talk (at work, in films) or when they read something in English (a post, a blog entry, the news). When they’re back in the lesson, ask them to tell you what they were listening to or reading when they recognized the structure. They could take notes on it before the lesson, but they might also talk about it on the spot. As it doesn’t require much preparation, it is probably the easiest of the ESL homework ideas presented here, so you might choose to try it first. 

Students use functional language

Lower-level students often struggle to start speaking English, first in the classroom, then outside of it. To help them open up and get accustomed to using the language in different situations , their homework could be going to a café and ordering something. They could also ask someone for directions, or have a chat with an English-speaking colleague. Back in the classroom, ask them to report how it went, what they ordered, etc. Give your students a couple of weeks to do the task – some may not get the immediate opportunity to do it, others might need time to pluck up the courage. 

This idea works especially well when students either live in an English-speaking country, or are going on holiday abroad. If the latter is the case, make the task more demanding, as they will probably be forced to speak English anyway. They could ask detailed questions about a menu in a restaurant or haggle over a price.

Students predict and plan 

The flipped classroom approach will give your students plenty of opportunities to ‘own’ English. Tell them what the topic of the next lesson will be (e.g. recycling) and give them the following homework: look up five words that they think will be useful to talk about recycling. They will then have to use them in the next lesson. This task will make students research the topic and plan what they might say, which is a great step on the way to becoming an independent learner.

For this to work, students need to be honest with themselves and choose words that are actually new for them, not just come up with some they are already using. But if they truly want to learn, tasks like this one will provide strong motivation. 

Once the lesson has finished, ask your students what words they had prepared and whether they were able to use them all.

You can also use one of our Flipped Classroom lesson plans and ask students to use the tasks as a guide to get ready for the conversation you are going to have in the lesson. 

Students read, listen and watch to create their own ESL homework ideas

If your students are not used to reading online articles in English or watching authentic videos, you should definitely encourage them to do so. A simple idea to start with would be to ask them to find an article, a video or a podcast (in English) on a topic they are interested in, and report to you what they found out about the topic. You and the rest of the group could then ask some follow-up questions, or it could be the student who prepares some talking points for the group. Nothing motivates a student more than talking about what they like, and not what the course book dictates. 

You could also choose one of our Critical Reading Club lesson plans . Ask your students to read an online article at home and have a discussion about it in the lesson. This will help them become independent readers and will maximise the student speaking time.  If you study a foreign language yourself, try to use some of the ideas first, in order to better understand what they are about and to pick those which your students would benefit from most. And don’t forget to let us know what you think about these outside-the-box ESL homework ideas in the comments below!

1 This idea is nicely exemplified by the author and teacher trainer Scott Thornbury in his blog entry about motivation in language learning .

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Thanks for the great tips!

Thank you. I hope your students find them useful.

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Sat / act prep online guides and tips, the 5 best homework help websites (free and paid).

Other High School , General Education

Listen: we know homework isn’t fun, but it is a good way to reinforce the ideas and concepts you’ve learned in class. But what if you’re really struggling with your homework assignments?

If you’ve looked online for a little extra help with your take-home assignments, you’ve probably stumbled across websites claiming to provide the homework help and answers students need to succeed . But can homework help sites really make a difference? And if so, which are the best homework help websites you can use? 

Below, we answer these questions and more about homework help websites–free and paid. We’ll go over: 

• The basics of homework help websites
• The cost of homework help websites 
• The five best homework websites out there 
• The pros and cons of using these websites for homework help 
• The line between “learning” and “cheating” when using online homework help 
• Tips for getting the most out of a homework help website

So let’s get started! 

The Basics About Homework Help Websites–Free and Paid

Homework help websites are designed to help you complete your homework assignments, plain and simple. 

What Makes a Homework Help Site Worth Using

Most of the best sites allow users to ask questions and then provide an answer (or multiple possible answers) and explanation in seconds. In some instances, you can even send a photo of a particular assignment or problem instead of typing the whole thing out! 

Homework help sites also offer more than just help answering homework questions. Common services provided are Q&A with experts, educational videos, lectures, practice tests and quizzes, learning modules, math solving tools, and proofreading help. Homework help sites can also provide textbook solutions (i.e. answers to problems in tons of different textbooks your school might be using), one-on-one tutoring, and peer-to-peer platforms that allow you to discuss subjects you’re learning about with your fellow students. 

And best of all, nearly all of them offer their services 24/7, including tutoring! 

What You Should Should Look Out For

When it comes to homework help, there are lots–and we mean lots –of scam sites out there willing to prey on desperate students. Before you sign up for any service, make sure you read reviews to ensure you’re working with a legitimate company. 

A word to the wise: the more a company advertises help that veers into the territory of cheating, the more likely it is to be a scam. The best homework help websites are going to help you learn the concepts you’ll need to successfully complete your homework on your own. (We’ll go over the difference between “homework help” and “cheating” a little later!) 

You don't need a golden piggy bank to use homework help websites. Some provide low or no cost help for students like you!

How Expensive Are the Best Homework Help Websites?

First of all, just because a homework help site costs money doesn’t mean it’s a good service. Likewise, just because a homework help website is free doesn’t mean the help isn’t high quality. To find the best websites, you have to take a close look at the quality and types of information they provide! 

When it comes to paid homework help services, the prices vary pretty widely depending on the amount of services you want to subscribe to. Subscriptions can cost anywhere from $2 to $150 dollars per month, with the most expensive services offering several hours of one-on-one tutoring with a subject expert per month.

The 5 Best Homework Help Websites 

So, what is the best homework help website you can use? The answer is that it depends on what you need help with. 

The best homework help websites are the ones that are reliable and help you learn the material. They don’t just provide answers to homework questions–they actually help you learn the material. 

That’s why we’ve broken down our favorite websites into categories based on who they’re best for . For instance, the best website for people struggling with math might not work for someone who needs a little extra help with science, and vice versa. 

Keep reading to find the best homework help website for you! 

Best Free Homework Help Site: Khan Academy

• Price: Free!
• Best for: Practicing tough material 

Not only is Khan Academy free, but it’s full of information and can be personalized to suit your needs. When you set up your account , you choose which courses you need to study, and Khan Academy sets up a personal dashboard of instructional videos, practice exercises, and quizzes –with both correct and incorrect answer explanations–so you can learn at your own pace. 

As an added bonus, it covers more course topics than many other homework help sites, including several AP classes.

Runner Up: Brainly.com offers a free service that allows you to type in questions and get answers and explanations from experts. The downside is that you’re limited to two answers per question and have to watch ads. 

Best Paid Homework Help Site: Chegg

• Price: $14.95 to $19.95 per month
• Best for: 24/7 homework assistance  

This service has three main parts . The first is Chegg Study, which includes textbook solutions, Q&A with subject experts, flashcards, video explanations, a math solver, and writing help. The resources are thorough, and reviewers state that Chegg answers homework questions quickly and accurately no matter when you submit them.  

Chegg also offers textbook rentals for students who need access to textbooks outside of their classroom. Finally, Chegg offers Internship and Career Advice for students who are preparing to graduate and may need a little extra help with the transition out of high school. 

Another great feature Chegg provides is a selection of free articles geared towards helping with general life skills, like coping with stress and saving money. Chegg’s learning modules are comprehensive, and they feature solutions to the problems in tons of different textbooks in a wide variety of subjects. 

Runner Up: Bartleby offers basically the same services as Chegg for $14.99 per month. The reason it didn’t rank as the best is based on customer reviews that say user questions aren’t answered quite as quickly on this site as on Chegg. Otherwise, this is also a solid choice!

Best Site for Math Homework Help: Photomath

• Price: Free (or $59.99 per year for premium services) 
• Best for: Explaining solutions to math problems

This site allows you to t ake a picture of a math problem, and instantly pulls up a step-by-step solution, as well as a detailed explanation of the concept. Photomath also includes animated videos that break down mathematical concepts to help you better understand and remember them. 

The basic service is free, but for an additional fee you can get extra study tools and learn additional strategies for solving common math problems.

Runner Up: KhanAcademy offers in-depth tutorials that cover complex math topics for free, but you won’t get the same tailored help (and answers!) that Photomath offers. 

Best Site for English Homework Help: Princeton Review Academic Tutoring

• Price: $40 to $153 per month, depending on how many hours of tutoring you want 
• Best for: Comprehensive and personalized reading and writing help 

While sites like Grammarly and Sparknotes help you by either proofreading what you write via an algorithm or providing book summaries, Princeton Review’s tutors provide in-depth help with vocabulary, literature, essay writing and development, proofreading, and reading comprehension. And unlike other services, you’ll have the chance to work with a real person to get help. 

The best part is that you can get on-demand English (and ESL) tutoring from experts 24/7. That means you can get help whenever you need it, even if you’re pulling an all-nighter! 

This is by far the most expensive homework site on this list, so you’ll need to really think about what you need out of a homework help website before you commit. One added benefit is that the subscription covers over 80 other subjects, including AP classes, which can make it a good value if you need lots of help!  

Best Site for STEM Homework Help: Studypool

• Best for: Science homework help
• Price: Varies; you’ll pay for each question you submit

When it comes to science homework help, there aren’t a ton of great resources out there. The best of the bunch is Studypool, and while it has great reviews, there are some downsides as well. 

Let’s start with the good stuff. Studypool offers an interesting twist on the homework help formula. After you create a free account, you can submit your homework help questions, and tutors will submit bids to answer your questions. You’ll be able to select the tutor–and price point–that works for you, then you’ll pay to have your homework question answered. You can also pay a small fee to access notes, lectures, and other documents that top tutors have uploaded. 

The downside to Studypool is that the pricing is not transparent . There’s no way to plan for how much your homework help will cost, especially if you have lots of questions! Additionally, it’s not clear how tutors are selected, so you’ll need to be cautious when you choose who you’d like to answer your homework questions.  

What Are the Pros and Cons of Using Homework Help Sites?

Homework help websites can be a great resource if you’re struggling in a subject, or even if you just want to make sure that you’re really learning and understanding topics and ideas that you’re interested in. But, there are some possible drawbacks if you don’t use these sites responsibly. 

We’ll go over the good–and the not-so-good–aspects of getting online homework help below. 

3 Pros of Using Homework Help Websites 

First, let’s take a look at the benefits. 

#1: Better Grades Beyond Homework

This is a big one! Getting outside help with your studies can improve your understanding of concepts that you’re learning, which translates into better grades when you take tests or write essays. 

Remember: homework is designed to help reinforce the concepts you learned in class. If you just get easy answers without learning the material behind the problems, you may not have the tools you need to be successful on your class exams…or even standardized tests you’ll need to take for college. 

#2: Convenience

One of the main reasons that online homework help is appealing is because it’s flexible and convenient. You don’t have to go to a specific tutoring center while they’re open or stay after school to speak with your teacher. Instead, you can access helpful resources wherever you can access the internet, whenever you need them.

This is especially true if you tend to study at off hours because of your extracurriculars, work schedule, or family obligations. Sites that offer 24/7 tutoring can give you the extra help you need if you can’t access the free resources that are available at your school. 

#3: Variety

Not everyone learns the same way. Maybe you’re more of a visual learner, but your teacher mostly does lectures. Or maybe you learn best by listening and taking notes, but you’re expected to learn something just from reading the textbook . 

One of the best things about online homework help is that it comes in a variety of forms. The best homework help sites offer resources for all types of learners, including videos, practice activities, and even one-on-one discussions with real-life experts. 

This variety can also be a good thing if you just don’t really resonate with the way a concept is being explained (looking at you, math textbooks!).

Not so fast. There are cons to homework help websites, too. Get to know them below!

3 Cons of Using Homework Help Websites 

Now, let’s take a look at the drawbacks of online homework help. 

#1: Unreliable Info

This can be a real problem. In addition to all the really good homework help sites, there are a whole lot of disreputable or unreliable sites out there. The fact of the matter is that some homework help sites don’t necessarily hire people who are experts in the subjects they’re talking about. In those cases, you may not be getting the accurate, up-to-date, and thorough information you need.

Additionally, even the great sites may not be able to answer all of your homework questions. This is especially true if the site uses an algorithm or chatbot to help students…or if you’re enrolled in an advanced or college-level course. In these cases, working with your teacher or school-provided tutors are probably your best option. 

#2: No Clarification

This depends on the service you use, of course. But the majority of them provide free or low-cost help through pre-recorded videos. Watching videos or reading info online can definitely help you with your homework… but you can’t ask questions or get immediate feedback if you need it .

#3: Potential For Scamming 

Like we mentioned earlier, there are a lot of homework help websites out there, and lots of them are scams. The review comments we read covered everything from outdated or wrong information, to misleading claims about the help provided, to not allowing people to cancel their service after signing up. 

No matter which site you choose to use, make sure you research and read reviews before you sign up–especially if it’s a paid service! 

When Does “Help” Become “Cheating”?

Admittedly, whether using homework help websites constitutes cheating is a bit of a grey area. For instance, is it “help” when a friend reads your essay for history class and corrects your grammar, or is it “cheating”? The truth is, not everyone agrees on when “help” crosses the line into “cheating .” When in doubt, it can be a good idea to check with your teacher to see what they think about a particular type of help you want to get. 

That said, a general rule of thumb to keep in mind is to make sure that the assignment you turn in for credit is authentically yours . It needs to demonstrate your own thoughts and your own current abilities. Remember: the point of every homework assignment is to 1) help you learn something, and 2) show what you’ve learned. 

So if a service answers questions or writes essays for you, there’s a good chance using it constitutes cheating. 

Here’s an example that might help clarify the difference for you. Brainstorming essay ideas with others or looking online for inspiration is “help” as long as you write the essay yourself. Having someone read it and give you feedback about what you need to change is also help, provided you’re the one that makes the changes later. 

But copying all or part of an essay you find online or having someone write (or rewrite) the whole thing for you would be “cheating.” The same is true for other subjects. Ultimately, if you’re not generating your own work or your own answers, it’s probably cheating.

5 Tips for Finding the Best Homework Help Websites for You

Now that you know some of our favorite homework help websites, free and paid, you can start doing some additional research on your own to decide which services might work best for you! Here are some top tips for choosing a homework help website. 

Tip 1: Decide How You Learn Best 

Before you decide which site or sites you’re going to use for homework help, y ou should figure out what kind of learning style works for you the most. Are you a visual learner? Then choose a site that uses lots of videos to help explain concepts. If you know you learn best by actually doing tasks, choose a site that provides lots of practice exercises.

Tip 2: Determine Which Subjects You Need Help With

Just because a homework help site is good overall doesn’t mean that it’s equally good for every subject. If you only need help in math, choose a site that specializes in that area. But if history is where you’re struggling, a site that specializes in math won’t be much help. So make sure to choose a site that you know provides high-quality help in the areas you need it most. 

Tip 3: Decide How Much One-On-One Help You Need 

This is really about cost-effectiveness. If you learn well on your own by reading and watching videos, a free site like Khan Academy is a good choice. But if you need actual tutoring, or to be able to ask questions and get personalized answers from experts, a paid site that provides that kind of service may be a better option.

Tip 4: Set a Budget

If you decide you want to go with a paid homework help website, set a budget first . The prices for sites vary wildly, and the cost to use them can add up quick. 

Tip 5: Read the Reviews

Finally, it’s always a good idea to read actual reviews written by the people using these homework sites. You’ll learn the good, the bad, and the ugly of what the users’ experiences have been. This is especially true if you intend to subscribe to a paid service. You’ll want to make sure that users think it’s worth the price overall!

What’s Next?

If you want to get good grades on your homework, it’s a good idea to learn how to tackle it strategically. Our expert tips will help you get the most out of each assignment…and boost your grades in the process.

Doing well on homework assignments is just one part of getting good grades. We’ll teach you everything you need to know about getting great grades in high school in this article.

Of course, test grades can make or break your GPA, too. Here are 17 expert tips that’ll help you get the most out of your study prep before you take an exam.

Ashley Sufflé Robinson has a Ph.D. in 19th Century English Literature. As a content writer for PrepScholar, Ashley is passionate about giving college-bound students the in-depth information they need to get into the school of their dreams.

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How to Do Homework

Last Updated: March 2, 2024 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Ronitte Libedinsky, MS . Ronitte Libedinsky is an Academic Tutor and the Founder of Brighter Minds SF, a San Francisco, California based company that provides one-on-one and small group tutoring. Specializing in tutoring mathematics (pre-algebra, algebra I/II, geometry, pre-calculus, calculus) and science (chemistry, biology), Ronitte has over 10 years of experience tutoring to middle school, high school, and college students. She also tutors in SSAT, Terra Nova, HSPT, SAT, and ACT test prep. Ronitte holds a BS in Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, and an MS in Chemistry from Tel Aviv University. There are 11 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 955,644 times.

Even though your parents probably complain about how hard it was in their day, students nowadays have more homework than ever before, even when just starting their first year at middle school. That homework doesn't need to be a struggle now. Learning to plan out an efficient schedule for completing your homework, working on it effectively, and knowing when to get help with difficult assignments can help take the stress out of studying. Don't put it off any longer. See Step 1 for more information.

Working on Homework

Once you go into your space and start working, try not to leave until you've got a break scheduled. If you want a quick snack or drink, get it now before you start. Hit the bathroom and make sure you'll be able to work for the amount of time before your next break, uninterrupted.

• It's common that students will try to multi-task, watching TV or listening to the radio or continuing to chat on Facebook or Instagram while also trying to do homework. It'll be so much more fun to do those things after you're already done with your homework, though, and your homework will take half as much time if you're focused on doing nothing but your homework.
• Check your phone or your social networking sites during your study break, but not before. Use these distractions as a carrot, not as a pacifier.

If one assignment proves challenging and time-consuming, it's okay to switch for a while to something else. Just make sure to save enough time to circle back and give it another shot.

• Try to figure out what works best for you. Some students might like to start their homework immediately after school to get it done as quickly as possible, while it may be better to give yourself an hour to relax before starting in on it and decompress from the long school day. Don't wait for the last minute.
• While it may seem like a better idea to work straight through and finish, it's possible that the quality of the work you're doing will start to suffer if you don't give your mind a rest. It's difficult to think hard for more than 45 minutes at a time on a particular subject. Give yourself a rest and come back refreshed.

• The first fifteen minutes after a break are your most effective minutes, because your mind will be cleared, and ready to work hard. Give yourself a pep talk and dive back in, refreshed and ready.

• If you have trouble staying focused, get a parent, sibling, or friend to help keep you honest. Give them your phone while you're working to avoid the temptation to check it, or give them the video game controller so you won't be able to plug in for a few minutes of alien-hunting when you're supposed to be doing your homework. Then, when you're finished, show them the finished product and earn back your fun. Make it impossible to cheat.

• You can make yourself take enough time by having your gate-keeper (the person with your phone or video game controller) check over your homework for quality when you're done. If you know you're not going to get it anyway unless it's done right, you won't have any reason to rush. Slow down and do it right.

Planning Your Homework

• It's common to quickly write out the math problems you're supposed to do at the top of your notes, or scribble down the page number of the English reading on a textbook page, but try to recopy this information into a specific homework list so you will be sure to remember to do it.
• Write down as many details as you can about each assignment. It's good to include the due date, corresponding textbook pages, and additional instructions from your teacher. This will help you plan your night of homework more effectively. Also, it's a good idea to write about your homework in a planner.

• Homework doesn't have to wait until you get home. Look through an assignment as soon as it's been given, so you'll have the time to ask your teacher any questions you might have before you leave school for the day.

• At home , a desk in your bedroom might be the best place. You can shut the door and tune out any distractions. For some students, though, this is a good way to get distracted. You might have video games, computers, guitars, and all sorts of other distractions in your bedroom. It might be a better idea to sit at the kitchen table, or in the living room, where your parents can call you out for procrastinating. You'll get it done more quickly without the temptation of distraction.
• In public , the library is a great place to study and do homework. At all libraries, it's a rule that you have to be quiet, and you won't have any of the distractions of home. The school library will often stay open after school ends, making it a good option for finishing up homework before heading home, or your school may even have an after-school study spot specifically for the purpose. [11] X Research source
• Try to switch it up . Studying in the same place too often can make work more difficult. Some studies have shown that a change in environment can make your mind more active, since it's processing new information. You'll be able to vary your routine and remember what you learned more effectively.

• Try starting with the most difficult homework . Do you really hate the idea of getting into the algebra homework? Does reading for English take the longest? Start with the most challenging homework to give yourself the most time to complete it, then move on to the easier tasks you can complete more quickly.
• Try starting with the most pressing homework . If you've got 20 math problems to do for tomorrow, and 20 pages to read in a novel for Friday, it's probably better to start with the math homework to make sure you'll have enough time to complete it. Make homework due the next day the priority.
• Try starting with the most important homework . Your math homework might be difficult, but if it's only worth a few completion points, it might be less important to spend a lot of time on it than the big project for Social Studies that's due in two days. Devote the most time to the most valuable assignments.

• Set an alarm or a timer to keep yourself honest. The less time you spend procrastinating and checking your text messages, the more quickly you'll be done. If you think you can finish everything in a half hour, set a timer and work efficiently to finish in that amount of time. If you don't quite finish, give yourself a few extra minutes. Treat it like a drill.
• Keep track of how long you usually spend on particular assignments on average. If your math homework typically takes you 45 minutes to finish, save that much time each night. If you start plugging away for an hour, give yourself a break and work on something else to avoid tiring out.
• Schedule 10 minutes of break time for every 50 minutes of work time. It's important to take study breaks and give your mind a rest, or you'll work less effectively. You're not a robot!

Finding Extra Time

• Do you really need an hour of TV or computer after school to decompress? It might be easier to just dive into your homework and get it done while the skills are still fresh in your mind. Waiting a couple hours means you'll have to review your notes and try to get back to the same place you already were. Do it while it's fresh.
• If you've got three days to read an assignment, don't wait until the last evening to do it all. Space it out and give yourself more time to finish. Just because you've got a due date that's a long time away doesn't mean it wouldn't be easier to finish now. Stay ahead of the game. Try either waking up earlier or going to bed later. But don't get too tired!

• If you've got to read a bunch of stuff for homework, read on the bus. Pop in some headphones to white noise that'll drown out the shouting of other students and tune into your book.
• The bus can be distracting, or it can be a great resource. Since it's full of your classmates, try to get other students to work with you and get things done more quickly. Work together on the math problems and try to figure out things together. It's not cheating if everyone's doing the work and no one's just copying. Also, you might make some new friends while you're at it!

• Don't rely on this time to finish homework just before it's due. Rushing to finish your last few problems in the five minutes before you need to turn it in looks bad in front of the teacher, plus it doesn't give you any time to review your homework after you finish it. Rushing is a good way to make mistakes. And always check difficult problems you had trouble with.

• Work on your homework while you're waiting for a ride, while you're killing time at your brother's soccer game, or while you're waiting for your friend to come over. Take advantage of any extra time you have in the day.

Getting Homework Help

• Asking for help with your homework isn't a sign that you're bad at the subject or that you're "stupid." Every teacher on the planet will respect a student that takes their homework seriously enough to ask for help. Especially ask if you weren't there that day!
• Asking for help isn't the same thing as complaining about the difficulty of homework or making excuses. Spending ten minutes doing half your math problems and leaving most of them blank because they were hard and then telling your teacher you need help isn't going to win you any favors on the due date. If it's hard, see your teacher ahead of time and find the time to get help.

• If there's not an organized homework help group at your school, there are many private tutoring organizations that work both for-pay and non-profits. Sylvan Learning Center and other businesses have after-school hours that you can schedule appointments at to get help studying and completing your homework, while community centers like the YMCA, or even public libraries will often have homework help hours in your area.
• Getting help doesn't mean that you're bad at your homework. All variety of students visit tutoring centers for extra help, just to make sure they have enough time and motivation to get everything done. It's hard being a student! There's no shame in extra help. Imagine being afraid to ask for anything! You wouldn't be able to ask in restaurants, shops, anywhere!

• Make sure that your group study sessions don't cross the line into cheating. Dividing up an assigned so your friend does half and you copy each other's answers is considered cheating, but discussing a problem and coming up with a solution together isn't. As long as you each do the work separately, you shouldn't have any problems.

• Some parents don't necessarily know how to help with your homework and might end up doing too much. Try to keep yourself honest. Asking for help doesn't mean asking your parent to do your work for you.
• Likewise, some older relatives have outdated ways of completing specific tasks and might suggest forcefully that something you learned in class is wrong. Always use your teacher's approach as the correct approach, and discuss these alternative ways of completing an assignment with your teacher if necessary.

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Share a quick video tip and help bring articles to life with your friendly advice. Your insights could make a real difference and help millions of people!

• If you missed school that day, then you should call a friend to get the notes and/or homework from that day. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• Make sure your little study space is well lit, quiet, and comfortable. This will make it much easier to do your homework properly. Thanks Helpful 1 Not Helpful 0
• Take a piece of paper or wipe board and create a schedule for your homework. Be generous with the amount of time that you give for each task. If you end up finishing a task earlier than the schedule says, you will feel accomplished and will have extra time to complete the next task. It makes homework get done quicker than usual. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

Tips from our Readers

• Make sure you have what you need handy when you get stuck on homework. Don't be afraid to ask questions if you're confused — asking helps you understand things better. And get enough sleep since it's easier to get your work done when you're well-rested.
• Don't put off starting homework just to have more playtime. Jumping in early leaves more free time for later but ensures you don't miss out on sleep. Plus, the class material is still fresh right after school, so you'll understand your homework better.
• Do your homework as soon as you get home every day except Fridays. On Fridays, give yourself permission to relax for the evening. Also, take short breaks as you work to help you focus. Play a quick game, eat a healthy snack, or use the bathroom.
• Ask for help when you need it, but don't rely on others to give you all the answers. The point of homework is for you to practice what you've learned, so try to work through problems yourself before asking for hints or explanations.
• Write down homework assignments in your planner right when your teacher gives them so you don't forget details later. Knowing exactly what work you need to do keeps you from being surprised.
• Break big assignments down into smaller pieces that feel more manageable. Taking things step-by-step makes big tasks feel less overwhelming, and helps you stay motivated.

• Never leave unfinished homework for the next day because you might have other homework to do and you will have to do both. Thanks Helpful 24 Not Helpful 0
• If you forget your homework, your teacher might not accept late work or may even give you more homework. Thanks Helpful 7 Not Helpful 1

Things You'll Need

• Writing equipment, such as pencils, rulers, and erasers.
• Resources that may help you work faster.
• A comfy place to sit while doing homework.

You Might Also Like

• ↑ https://www.warnerpacific.edu/5-tips-for-dealing-with-too-much-homework/
• ↑ https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/mental-wealth/201206/10-tips-make-homework-time-less-painful
• ↑ Ronitte Libedinsky, MS. Academic Tutor. Expert Interview. 26 May 2020.
• ↑ https://bigfuture.collegeboard.org/plan-for-college/college-prep/stay-motivated/take-control-of-homework
• ↑ https://kidshealth.org/en/parents/homework.html
• ↑ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/understanding-assignments/
• ↑ https://kidshealth.org/en/teens/homework.html
• ↑ http://kidshealth.org/teen/school_jobs/school/homework.html#a_Create_a_Homework_Plan
• ↑ https://tutorial.math.lamar.edu/Extras/StudyMath/Homework.aspx
• ↑ https://learningcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/studying-101-study-smarter-not-harder/
• ↑ https://kidshealth.org/en/kids/homework-help.html

About This Article

If you need to do homework, find a quiet, comfortable spot where you won’t be distracted. Turn off any electronics, like your TV, phone, or radio, and gather all of the supplies you’ll need before you get started. Work on the most important or hardest assignments first to get them out of the way, and if you have a homework assignment that actually seems fun, save it for last to motivate you to finish your other work faster. Keep reading to learn how to find extra time to get your homework done, like working on it on the way home from school! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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A former high school teacher in Ohio who resigned when her OnlyFans account was discovered by her bosses said she joined two X-rated sites to pay her debts and provide for her single-income family — but said it feels like a “part of me has died” since leaving her teaching gig.

Jennifer Ruziscka, 50, who taught English at Springfield High School in Holland, Ohio, for 28 years, began posting adult content on OnlyFans and Fansly under the name “Jenniferssecrets” in December.

The former teacher said she had run two side businesses to make ends meet until she decided to post adult content when faced with financial hardships.

“Those businesses required a great deal of time and dedication to flourish, which would’ve required me to cut back on the level of commitment to my classes and my students that I was known for upholding,” Ruziscka told Fox News Digital.

“Running an OF site was quite simple in that I could set aside 20 to 30 minutes a night to produce content to post and then resume the three to four hours of work I so routinely brought home with me every night,” she said.

Despite joining OnlyFans, the teacher was still saddled with credit card debt and was behind on her mortgage and car payments, so she decided to join Fansly, according to the outlet.

She said she instantly made five times as much as she did after a month on OnlyFans.

“Just when I thought I could breathe a sigh of relief that there was now an additional source of income to help me close the financial gap that was growing larger every day, I was informed that the district was aware of my after-hours activity and was put on paid administrative leave,” Ruziscka told Fox News.

“Just like that, a 28-year career with the same school was now in jeopardy,” she said, adding that a friend who was aware she was in dire financial straits revealed her racy side gigs to the district.

“Knowing firsthand the agony and heartache associated with losing a place of employment, I cannot bring myself to [disclose the friend’s name and] avenge that level of betrayal,” she said.

“That is not who I am nor who I ever wish to be,” the former educator added.

Despite her long career, Ruziscka was not tenured due to a master’s degree requirement, according to the outlet.

She incurred discipline because her presence and content on the subscription sites had violated her teaching licenses’ conduct and technology policies.

“Springfield Local Schools was made aware of allegations where one of its teachers was participating in conduct unbecoming of a professional educator,” district Superintendent Matt Geha said last month.

“That teacher was put on administrative leave as of Monday, January 29, 2024, with the last day in the classroom Friday, January 26, 2024,” he added.

The teacher resigned on Jan. 29, two days before a disciplinary meeting was scheduled.

Ruziscka, who was also a cheerleading coach and yearbook adviser with a salary of $74,720, shared with Fox News Digital several screenshots of messages of support she has received from former students.

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“I wholeheartedly believe my students would agree that my animated teaching style, innovative curriculum, and classroom expectations demonstrated all of those characteristics [of a great teacher],” Ruziscka said.

“I didn’t just teach students, I reached students,” she said, adding that each day after she left teaching “has contained a sense of sadness, emptiness and heartbreak.

“I genuinely loved entering that building, excited about what I had planned for that day, as the energy in my classroom was electric, the camaraderie among my students was contagious, and the personal and academic growth was gratifying,” Ruziscka said.

“Without my presence in a classroom, it’s as if a part of me has died,” she said.

Ruziscka previously defended her X-rated hobby by quoting Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet.”

“In William Shakespeare’s ‘The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet,’ as Juliet laments Romeo being a Montague, the only son of her family’s great enemy, she recognizes, ‘A rose by any other name would smell as sweet,’ ” Ruziscka said.

She has since gotten a position as an English language arts tutor for an online learning platform to reduce dropout rates, according to her LinkedIn profile.

Ruziscka is just the latest teacher to be investigated and subsequently resign after their OnlyFans and other adult content sites were discovered by their schools.

In September, Missouri teacher Brianna Coppage’s OnlyFans account, which she ran with her husband, was discovered.

She resigned weeks later and eventually landed a job as a community support specialist at Compass Health, but lasted only five days before she was fired because of her adult content.

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Spotify Premium Listeners in Canada, Ireland, and New Zealand Can Soon Access More Than 250,000 Audiobooks

April 2, 2024

Attention booklovers in Canada, Ireland, and New Zealand! Listening to your favorite audiobooks is about to get even easier. Beginning April 9, Spotify Premium users in these markets will have access to up to 15 hours of audiobooks per month, seamlessly integrated alongside music and podcasts, on a single platform through a unified subscription. 

Our Premium audiobook catalog , already available in the U.S., U.K., and Australia, is one of the largest subscription-based audiobook-streaming platforms at 250,000 titles and growing—we’re already up from 200,000 titles since late last year. We’re excited for more listeners than ever to discover and engage with books, and to mark the occasion we asked authors from these markets—Canada’s Carley Fortune , New Zealand’s Chloe Gong , and Ireland’s Rosemary Mac Cabe —to share some of their favorites.

Carley Fortune

Canadian Carley Fortune is the best-selling author of Every Summer After and Meet Me at the Lake . Her new book, This Summer Will Be Different , will be published May 7.

What are three of your favorite audiobooks? 

• The Dutch House by Ann Patchett , narrated by Tom Hanks
• Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert , narrated by Adjoa Andoh
• Becoming by Michelle Obama , narrated by the author

What do you love most about audiobooks?

I’m not sure if this is a positive trait, but I’m a multitasker, and I love to figure out ways to use my time efficiently. I’m a full-time writer and a parent to two young, energetic boys—I will never be able to read all the books I’d like to, but audiobooks help! I can squeeze in reading while I’m driving or washing the dishes. But it’s not just that audiobooks help me read more. A truly excellent audiobook elevates the reading experience, absorbing you in the story and bringing the emotion to life. And they’re so accessible. Listening to an audiobook is reading: Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.  

Raised in Auckland, New Zealand, Chloe Gong is the best-selling author of the Secret Shanghai novels and the Flesh and False Gods trilogy .

What are three of your favorite audiobooks?

• The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna , narrated by Samara MacLaren
• Curious Tides by Pascale Lacelle , narrated by Gary Furlong, Shakira Shute, and Toni Frutin
• Ophelia After All by Racquel Marie , narrated by Maria Liatis

What’s your earliest memory of stories’ being read aloud to you, audiobooks or otherwise?

In primary school, we would read a class-selected book quietly, and then we would come together for the teacher to read it aloud while we sat cross-legged on the mat. It was one of the most joyous parts of my day as a five-year-old. I developed such an appreciation for how class read-aloud time held my attention, and I grew more and more intrigued by the act of storytelling until I became an avid reader myself and eventually an avid writer.

Rosemary Mac Cabe 

Irish author and journalist Rosemary Mac Cabe was raised in Dublin and published her book, This Is Not About You: A Menmoir, in summer 2023.

• Lady in Waiting: My Extraordinary Life in the Shadow of the Crown by Anne Glenconner , narrated by the author
• Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris , narrated by the author
• Heartburn by Nora Ephron , narrated by Meryl Streep

What’s your earliest memory of books’ being read to you? 

One of the few books from my very early childhood that I remember is Smoke and Fluff , a Ladybird book written and illustrated by AJ McGregor, a fact I didn’t even have to look up because it’s now on nightly rotation in my house. I ordered a secondhand copy online for my two-year-old pretty much the month he was conceived.

Opening it up again after so long was weird, though. I hadn’t seen or read it in probably three decades. I remembered it almost word for word. The illustrations were almost as familiar to me as my childhood bedroom, or a scarf my mum has worn every winter for my whole life.

There’s something about reading this same book—which is quite long, for a children’s book—every single night that reminds me just how much time goes into parenting. It makes me feel close to my own mum, too, who put in this same time, this same love, when she read it to me over and over so many years ago. I live in the U.S. now, while she’s still at home in Ireland, but when I’m reading this it’s like she’s there with us.

200,000+ Audiobooks Are Now Available to Spotify Premium Listeners in the U.S.

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Author Min Jin Lee Reveals the Unique Quality That Make Audiobooks So Powerful

Five Reasons To Listen to Audiobooks on Spotify

Content Creator Serena Kelly Explains Why It’s OK To Just Have Fun With Audiobooks

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IRS: Maine taxpayers impacted by severe storms, flooding qualify for tax relief; various deadlines postponed to July 15

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IR-2024-93, April 4, 2024

WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service announced today tax relief for individuals and businesses in parts of Maine affected by severe storms and flooding that began on Jan. 9, 2024.

These taxpayers now have until July 15, 2024, to file various federal individual and business tax returns and make payments.

The IRS is offering relief to any area designated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) . Currently, individuals and households that reside or have a business in Cumberland, Hancock, Knox, Lincoln, Sagadahoc, Waldo, Washington and York counties qualify for tax relief.

The same relief will be available to any other counties added later to the disaster area. The current list of eligible localities is always available on the Tax relief in disaster situations page on IRS.gov.

Filing and payment relief

The tax relief postpones various tax filing and payment deadlines that occurred from Jan. 9, 2024, through July 15, 2024 (postponement period). As a result, affected individuals and businesses will have until July 15, 2024, to file returns and pay any taxes that were originally due during this period.

This means, for example, that the July 15, 2024, deadline will now apply to:

• Individual income tax returns and payments normally due on April 15, 2024.
• 2023 contributions to IRAs and health savings accounts for eligible taxpayers.
• Quarterly estimated income tax payments normally due on Jan. 16, April 15 and June 17, 2024.
• Quarterly payroll and excise tax returns normally due on Jan. 31 and April 30, 2024.
• Calendar-year partnership and S corporation returns normally due on March 15, 2024.
• Calendar-year corporation and fiduciary returns and payments normally due on April 15, 2024.
• Calendar-year tax-exempt organization returns normally due on May 15, 2024.

In addition, penalties for failing to make payroll and excise tax deposits due on or after Jan. 9, 2024, and before Jan. 24, 2024, will be abated as long as the deposits were made by Jan. 24, 2024.

The Disaster assistance and emergency relief for individuals and businesses page has details on other returns, payments and tax-related actions qualifying for relief during the postponement period.

The IRS automatically provides filing and penalty relief to any taxpayer with an IRS address of record located in the disaster area. These taxpayers do not need to contact the agency to get this relief.

It is possible an affected taxpayer may not have an IRS address of record located in the disaster area, for example, because they moved to the disaster area after filing their return. In these kinds of unique circumstances, the affected taxpayer could receive a late filing or late payment penalty notice from the IRS for the postponement period. The taxpayer should call the number on the notice to have the penalty abated.

In addition, the IRS will work with any taxpayer who lives outside the disaster area but whose records necessary to meet a deadline occurring during the postponement period are located in the affected area. Taxpayers qualifying for relief who live outside the disaster area need to contact the IRS at 866-562-5227 . This also includes workers assisting the relief activities who are affiliated with a recognized government or philanthropic organization. Disaster area tax preparers with clients located outside the disaster area can choose to use the Bulk Requests from Practitioners for Disaster Relief option, described on IRS.gov.

Reminder about extensions

The IRS urges anyone who needs an additional tax-filing extension, beyond July 15, 2024, for their 2023 federal income tax return to request it electronically by April 15, 2024. Though a disaster-area taxpayer qualifies to request an extension between April 15 and July 15, 2024, a request filed during this period can only be submitted on paper. Whether requested electronically or on paper, the taxpayer will then have until Oct. 15, 2024, to file, though payments are still due on July 15, 2024. Visit IRS.gov/extensions for details.

Additional tax relief

Individuals and businesses in a federally declared disaster area who suffered uninsured or unreimbursed disaster-related losses can choose to claim them on either the return for the year the loss occurred (in this instance, the 2024 return normally filed next year), or the return for the prior year (2023). Taxpayers have extra time – up to six months after the due date of the taxpayer’s federal income tax return for the disaster year (without regard to any extension of time to file) – to make the election. For individual taxpayers, this means Oct. 15, 2025. Be sure to write the FEMA declaration number – 4764-DR − on any return claiming a loss. See Publication 547, Casualties, Disasters, and Thefts, for details.

Qualified disaster relief payments are generally excluded from gross income. In general, this means that affected taxpayers can exclude from their gross income amounts received from a government agency for reasonable and necessary personal, family, living or funeral expenses, as well as for the repair or rehabilitation of their home, or for the repair or replacement of its contents. See Publication 525, Taxable and Nontaxable Income, for details.

Additional relief may be available to affected taxpayers who participate in a retirement plan or individual retirement arrangement (IRA). For example, a taxpayer may be eligible to take a special disaster distribution that would not be subject to the additional 10% early distribution tax and allows the taxpayer to spread the income over three years. Taxpayers may also be eligible to make a hardship withdrawal. Each plan or IRA has specific rules and guidance for their participants to follow.

The IRS may provide additional disaster relief in the future.

The tax relief is part of a coordinated federal response to the damage caused by these storms and is based on local damage assessments by FEMA. For information on disaster recovery, visit DisasterAssistance.gov .

Reminder about tax return preparation options

• Eligible individuals or families can get free help preparing their tax return at Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) or Tax Counseling for the Elderly (TCE) sites. To find the closest free tax help site, use the VITA Locator Tool or call 800-906-9887 . Note that normally, VITA sites cannot help claim disaster losses.
• To find an AARP Tax-Aide site, use the AARP Site Locator Tool or call 888-227-7669 .
• Any individual or family whose adjusted gross income (AGI) was $79,000 or less in 2023 can use IRS Free File’s Guided Tax Software at no cost. There are products in English and Spanish.
• Another Free File option is Free File Fillable Forms . These are electronic federal tax forms, equivalent to a paper 1040 and are designed for taxpayers who are comfortable filling out IRS tax forms. Anyone, regardless of income, can use this option.
• MilTax , a Department of Defense program, offers free return preparation software and electronic filing for federal tax returns and up to three state income tax returns. It’s available for all military members and some veterans, with no income limit.
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