“The value of a man resides in what he gives and not in what he is capable of receiving.”

-Albert Einstein

Not only are quotes inspirational and motivational, they can also be a great learning tool. Quotes can help you expand your vocabulary, show you grammar structures, and can give you practice with expressing your opinion. This last thing is perhaps my favorite! Many of you, and all of my students want to improve speaking skills, and a huge part of this English fluency is knowing how to express your opinion on a variety of topics.

So this post, and the quote above will be your English lesson this week. Let’s review how you can use quotes to practice and improve English.

Expand Vocabulary

Use the quote to define new words.
- For example: reside [verb] exist or be present, to live at a particular place
Use those words to learn synonyms
- For example: reside → consist, lie, occupy, remain
Use those new words (from the quote and your synonym review) to make new sentence examples

Grammar Structures

Notice the following grammatical patterns and structures:

articles: definite article “the” and indefinite article “a”
- we use THE when a noun is specific. In this case, we see “the value of a man”, we are talking about a particular value. Therefore, we need the definite article THE
- we use A when a noun is nonspecific or in the first time it’s mentioned. In this case, we see “a man”, and this man in nonspecific (we don’t know who it is) and it’s the first time we’ve mentioned him. So we need the indefinite article A
preposition + gerund: when a preposition is followed by a verb it must be the gerund
- capable OF RECEIVING

Expressing your Opinion

Practice your writing or you speaking (if you record yourself) by expressing your opinion. To practice, answer the following questions:

What does this quote mean? (imagine explaining it to a child)
Does this quote inspire or motivate you in any way? If yes, how?
Do you agree with this quote, why or why not?
Think about a personal experience that this quote relates to and talk about that experience

There are 3 ways you can use quotes to improve English. I look forward to hearing your responses, so please share your opinions in the comments below!

Happy Studying! ♥

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