It is a situation most CISL students have experienced while living in San Diego or San Francisco: you go out to a great restaurant, beach, park, or bar. You see someone who looks interesting/attractive. You want to strike up a conversation with this person, but you stop. You remember that one tiny thing stands between...
Our 12-part series on all of the tenses in the English language continues with the Simple Past. If you missed them, be sure to check out lessons one and two! The Simple Past The Simple Past is one of the first things that English students learn. It is also one of the aspects of the...
A day at San Diego’s Comic-Con San Diego’s Comic-Con, a four-day event that draws roughly 150,000 people each year, is currently underway! If you are currently studying English at CISL San Diego, make sure to run downtown and check out the awesome costumes. You just might run into a celebrity or two while walking around...
Happy summer to all of our CISL students who are studying English in San Diego or San Francisco! July is the month of red, white, and blue, barbecues, picnics, and fireworks displays. To celebrate, we have a list of idioms that use the word “fire” (and some suggestions for where to watch summer fireworks shows...
The students in the above photo are playing volleyball. It is time for the second of 12 lessons on the 12 English tenses! Have you checked out last month’s lesson on the Simple Present? You might be surprised to find a new use of the Simple Present that you didn’t know before! July’s tense is...
We know. Life in California is awesome. The beaches? Awesome. The friendly people? Awesome. The weekend trips to Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Lake Tahoe, Julian, Santa Barbara? Awesome. And, of course, living in San Diego or San Francisco while studying English at CISL is AWESOME. What’s not awesome? Not having enough words to describe these...
CISL students living in San Diego or San Francisco learn many English words, but they also learn something not typically found in textbooks: how to speak “Californian!” As a Californian might (jokingly) say, “It’s, like, totally awesome!” California has its own special dialect and many of its own words. Thanks to Hollywood, some California slang...
Summer is here! In California, CISL students are enjoying San Diego’s beautiful beaches, San Francisco’s gorgeous parks, and all of the festivals and fairs that come with the season. To celebrate, we have a list of idioms with the word “sun.” Can you incorporate these into your daily English conversations? Go to bed with...
CISL TOEFL classes begin on Tuesday, July 9 and the next SD and SF TOEFL tests will be held in just four weeks. Best of luck to our students! To help them prepare, we have five useful verbs to help improve TOEFL vocabulary. These words can be applied to any section of the test. 1....
There are 12 tenses in English. Do you know them all? Starting June 2013, CISL will post a blog entry each month featuring one of the 12 English language tenses. It is a great way to review the tenses you know (and learn the ones you don’t!). Each post will feature an explanation of the...
