Untranslatable Words

Maptia.com

I found this on Facebook a while ago (thanks to the Memrise page).  It sent me to a really interesting website called Maptia, which is full of true stories from around the world.  They are not very long stories and many of them are very ‘uplifting’ (meaning they make you feel good).

Words like these are why English has so many words.  When we find a new word that we can’t translate, we often just steal the word!  These words aren't used in English... yet - but I might start using them in my conversations. ;-)

Maptia.com

If you are interested in the origin of words in English, then you might enjoy this little video.  It might be a little difficult to understand all the words that are said, but you will get a good idea of the story from the visual information.

Are there any other words you know in your language that don’t translate into English?  If so, please leave a comment below giving the word and some description of what it means - go on, it will be good practice for your English! :-)

To see the rest of the untranslatable words, click here.

Help with Writing Practice (Website Recommendation)

If you want some practice writing, then short stories are definitely something you should try. Not all writing has to be marked by a teacher to be useful. Your teacher isn't with you all the time to check your reading, speaking or listening.

One of the problems that some people have is getting ideas about what to write about. This is certainly true for me. However, I've found it just takes one little piece of help, a ‘prompt’ (something which helps you to think about other things).

So try this little webpage – Prompt Generator. It will give you the first sentence of your story and then you just need to continue your story from there.  Just remember that a short story doesn't need to be a book.

Here’s an idea for you:

Write a different short story each day for two weeks. Use the Prompt Generator for help if you need it. At the end of your two weeks you should have 10 stories - you don't need to write at the weekend. :-)

Now, take a look at your first story again. I'm sure you will see some mistakes in it that you can now fix. Maybe there will be some new vocabulary or more details you want to add. For the next two weeks, take a look at one of your stories each day and see if you can improve it. For 10 minutes a day (just over 3 hours in one month) I'm sure you will be impressed with how much you improve.

Let me know how you do with your writing.

Help with Grammar & Academic Writing (Website Recommendation)

If you like grammar to be explained to you very clearly then you probably want to take a look at this website. 

The Lecturette is a website with short, simple slideshows (like Powerpoints) about grammar and academic writing. Just click on something you want more explanation about and the slideshow in the middle of the page will try to explain it. It looks like the website has most of grammar points that you would find in a grammar book. However, what I really like are the extra slideshows about academic writing. Definitely worth looking at if you are preparing for university courses in English.

If you are on Twitter you can also get updates about new lessons from Piet.

Dropbox (App Recommendation for Academic Students)

I have a 'cautionary tale' for you (this is a story which describes a problem you should avoid).

Last year, while I was doing my M.A. course, one of my classmates got into some trouble. He was working very hard on his dissertation. He had been working on it for a couple of months and it was about 15,000 words long. The deadline was 12 noon (midday) on a Friday. He didn't sleep any of Thursday night because he was still working hard to finish his dissertation on time.

At 9 a.m. (3 hours before the deadline) his computer crashed. It died. It stopped working. Unfortunately he didn't have time to get the computer fixed before the 12:00 deadline. He missed the deadline and when he did get the computer fixed, he printed his assignment and submitted it to the university. However, because it was late, it only got the minimum pass of 50 (the lowest possible pass score).

The problem for my classmate was this:

Universities do not accept ‘computer failure’ as a reason for late work. 

What can you do to avoid this?

Well, I don’t worry about this problem because I use Dropbox. When you put Dropbox on your computer it creates a new Dropbox folder. Anything you put into that folder will automatically be saved online.

If my classmate friend had Dropbox, he could easily have gone to another computer, downloaded the essay, printed it and he probably would have gotten 60-70%.

What else can Dropbox do?

Dropbox will keep every version of your documents. So, for example, if you have a 5000-word document and then you accidentally delete half the words and save it again, Dropbox will keep copies of the 5000-word version and the 2500-word version.

Most importantly, if you have a smartphone, a laptop and a tablet, Dropbox can be on all three computers and that means you don’t need to worry about USB drives and you don’t need to remember which computer has which file.

Here is a short video to demonstrate:

If you think this is something that would help you, click on the Dropbox icon below or follow this link.

I prefer Dropbox but there are other systems you can use, like Microsoft’s SkyDrive or Google Drive. The important thing is to make sure that you are never in a situation where your computer has the only copy of important documents you need.

Hope this helps a few of you.

Gordon

Open Dyslexic Fonts

1. Wikipedia Article on Dyslexia
2. Telegraph Article on Dyslexics in Britain
3. Open Dyslexic Free Fonts

If you want this on your word processor (like Microsoft Word) then you can follow these instructions.

• Download the Open Dyslexic Fonts (click here) 
• If you are using Windows, open the Open Dyslexic folder, select the 4 files and copy them. Then go to Start > Settings > Control Panel > Fonts (if you can’t find Fonts, switch to ‘Classic View’). Now paste the 4 files into this folder. 
• If you open Microsoft Word, you should see the Open Dyslexic font as one of the options. 

If you want this on your iPhone or iPad, then follow this link.

If you want to put this on your computer, then follow these instructions.

Hope this helps some people.

Reading Exercises (Website Recommendation)

Nasreddin (Picture from Wikipedia)

Here is a piece of advice. Read something short and fun. Learning and language progress happens more often when you do a little bit regularly. It might feel good to do 4 hours of language study one night each week but you will learn more if you do just 30 minutes every day. 

This means that if you are trying to improve your reading you should be focusing on short reading passages.

Here are some great short stories with reading activities about a Turkish wise man called Nasreddin. (If you click on one of these, remember there are two more reading activities so click on ‘Next exercise’ at the bottom of the page.)

Nasreddin and the Pot

Nasreddin Goes Shopping

Nasreddin and the Beggar

Nasreddin and the Smell of Soup

Nasreddin the Ferry Man

Nasreddin's Visitors

As extra practice to help your English, when you finish exercises try to write one of the stories a few hours later and then compare the story you wrote with the story on the website.

These stories are for Lower Intermediate level students of English but there are more exercises for different levels:

Upper Beginner (2 stories)

Pre-Intermediate – Nasreddin (6 stories)

Intermediate – Urban Legends (5 stories)

Upper Intermediate (5 stories)

Advanced – Pulp Friction (1 story)

I love the Nasreddin stories. I think they are short, enjoyable and often educational. I hope you enjoy these.  This website, University of Victoria - English Language Centre Study Zone, is a great website with vocabulary and grammar exercises as well.  Very helpful to improve your English!

MusicEnglish (Website Recommendation)

Here is a website that learners of English might like, especially if you like songs and music.

MusicEnglish

This is a great website that has popular songs from youTube and gives you the English subtitles to the songs as well.  This is really good because you will understand a lot more of the song if you can listen AND read at the same time.

One of the things I really like about this website is that I have a 'similar taste in music'* as the maker of the site.  There are lots of really good songs to listen and read through.  For example, 'Starlight' by Muse, 'The Man Who Sold the World' by Nirvana, 'Nothing Else Matters' by Metallica and many, many more!

Also, if there is a song you want that you cannot find of the website, you can request it easily.

Excellent website and helpful for learning lyrics to favourite songs in English.

* If two people like similar music, then they have a 'similar taste in music'.  If two people like exactly the same music, you could say 'they have the same taste in music'.

English for Academic Purposes (Website Recommendation)

I'm teaching EAP at the moment.  That means 'English for Academic Purposes' and that basically means English for university or college.  It's quite different from IELTS or TOEIC in many ways: the essays are much longer, effective listening needs more vocabulary and better understanding of grammar, and there is a lot about academic 'culture' that needs to be taught such as referencing and citation to avoid plagiarism.  I want to talk about plagiarism in a future post but at the moment this is a small blogpost to direct you to a great website:

Using English for Academic Purposes by Andy Gillett

This is a brilliant website that explains a lot about English for university and college courses.  Thanks, Andy Gillett!

Alternatively, you can visit to mobile site if you are accessing from a smartphone: Using English for Academic Purposes Mobile

Daily Writing Tips (Blog Recommendation #5)

I think most of us have a secret desire to write novel.  If you think about it, a lot of our lives and conversations are spent telling stories: what you did last night, a funny incident when you were 8 years old, how you met your husband/wife, saying what you bought at the supermarket.  They are not all good or interesting stories but they are all stories.  So I think that most of us have the desire to write a whole novel, a big long story that we hope will become world famous.

If you are one of these people, then the next time you decide to try and do some writing you should take a look at this website.

www.dailywritingtips.com

Oh, and if you want to know how to start and complete a novel then you might want to try Matt Cutts's suggestion.  I showed this video in a previous post but I've put it here again, in case you missed it the first time.

Dominic Cole's IELTS Blog (Blog Recommendation #4)

Anyone studying for that exam should know about this website.

Dominic Cole's IELTS Blog

Dominic Cole has obviously put a lot of time and work into producing some excellent materials to help students prepare for the International English Language Testing System test.  Here is one example of 10 Top Tips for IELTS Reading.

Spend 10-15 minutes looking around this website and I promise you it will be "time well spent" (a good way to use your time).

You can also 'like' this site and follow it on Facebook or follow Dominic Cole on Twitter.

People you should be following, pt 1 (Twitter)

This is the first of a few posts I will make to give you some recommendations about sites and people on the Internet that can help you to improve your English.

If you are learning English I'm sure you know there is a LOT of information on the internet to help you.  Unfortunately there is usually too much information on the internet and it is difficult to know what to follow.

These are some recommendations for learners who use Twitter.  I think these people produce useful and interesting things for English language learners which can really help you to improve your English.

@EFLintermediate & @EFLadvanced – Two great feeds for a wide variety of useful content, depending on your level.

@englishwithjo – I’ve got to thank a former student of mine, Bengü, for telling me about this resource.  This tweeter provides simple explanations and gapfills on Twitter.  Jo looks like an excellent resource to follow.

@eslpod - ESL Podcast's Twitter feed.  Lots of free material for listening and they will tell you when there is something new to listen to.  I’ve talked about ESLPod before, read my previous post to learn more.

@InglesenLomas – A great person to follow who provides lots of useful links for learning English, especially around songs and singing.

@LearnEnglish_BC – A great person to follow for new information and activities from the British Council for all learners of English.

@ListenandWrite – Improve your listening skills with this website.  By following the feed, you will not miss anything new.

@myenglishexam – This is the twitter account for a brilliant website for Cambridge exam preparation, Flo-Joe.  You will receive daily tweets that often give links to short 2 or 3 minute exercises to help you prepare for your big exams.

@SpotlightRadio – Spotlight Radio is a great listening resource for lower-level learners.  Here they will tell you when there is something new to listen to.  (To learn more about Spotlight, read my previous post)

@SuccEng – I’ve recommended Warren Ediger’s website in a previous post and this is another opportunity to stay connected with his clear explanations and practical suggestions for better English.

@VOALearnEnglish – Thanks to Marcelo for recommending this tweet account.  It connects to the Voice Of America Facebook page as well as the website.  Lots of good reading and listening materials.

@ykarabatov - Yuri Karabatov has tweeted on lots of useful websites and gives a lot of useful, sensible information about learning a language.  Take a look through his tweets and I'm sure you will find something useful for you!

If you follow any of these or you already follow some of them, then please leave a comment with your opinions.  If you have any more suggestions, please give them below.

Next: FACEBOOK.  Everybody uses is, so who can you “like” on Facebook to help you with your English? Well first of all, you could click 'Like' below to start following me. :-)

Favourite Websites for English Practice, pt 3 (Listening, continued)

My first post about websites to help you with your listening skills gave recommendations for the BBC’s 6 Minute English, Videojug and Lyrics Training.  There are many more sites and I think it is time to share more recommendations with you from things I’ve found in the last few months.  I’ve divided these sites into levels of difficulty and given some suggestions about how you can use them for self-study.

For Low Intermediate students:

Spotlight Radio

Spotlight Radio has a huge (massive, very big) range of podcasts (about 15 minutes long) to download and you have the transcript (the text) that you can read as you listen.  Spotlight Radio is a great website if your listening skills are low – the speed of the talking is low and the pronunciation is very clear.  This is not very authentic (realistic), but it is good practice to start improving your skills – you can start listening to faster podcasts on other websites when you are more confident.

There is an amazing variety of topics to listen to: Drugs, Sport, History, Music, Health, Technology & Science, etc, etc.

Suggestion for Self-Study

1. Choose a podcast, for example ‘Stories for Wise People’.
2. Go through the transcript (perhaps copy it to Word or print it off) and highlight or circle words or phrases you are not sure how to pronounce.
3. Play the podcast and listen carefully for the difficult-to-pronounce words.
4. Vocabulary work – read through and identify words you are not familiar.  Write them down in a list and try to guess their meanings from context before you check in your dictionary or on Google Translate.  Remember that some new words might be repeated a few times so you will have plenty of context to help you.  Just looking up a word will not help you remember it – thinking about the word and guessing the meaning before you 'look it up' (which means to find something) will help you remember it much more.
5. Speaking practice – listen to the article again, try to read the words silently, moving your mouth like you are speaking.  This helps to exercise your mouth to make English-speaking sounds.  This sounds stupid but it’s really very useful, believe me. :-)

You can ‘like’ Spotlight Radio on Facebook.  Just click here.

ESLPod

ESLPod is another great archive of podcasts.  These are from the USA.   The podcasts are usually about 15-20 minutes long.  Each podcast has a short dialogue (conversation) between people and then analyses it carefully.  It works by first listening to a slow version of the conversation, and then most of the podcast is an explanation of various difficult words or common phrases and metaphors inside the conversation.  At the end of the podcast, the conversation is played again but at a regular speed.

Like Spotlight Radio, there is a wide variety of topics such as Competitions and Prizes or Wild Parties.  If you want to search by topic then you can search through all the podcasts in the left column of the website.  There is a Learning Guide for each podcast but you need to subscribe to download them and that costs $10 a month.

Suggestion for Self-Study

1. Choose a podcast, for example ‘Being Late for an Event’.
2. Read the transcript.  The new words and phrases are already in bold. Try to guess what they mean before you listen to the podcast.
3. Listen carefully and check if your guesses were correct when the words and phrases are explained.

For Intermediate/Upper Intermediate students:

Listen a Minute

Listen a Minute is a great site of short listenings – only about 60 seconds long.   The speech is clear but not as slow as Spotlight Radio or most of ESLPod.  Again, there is a wide variety of topics such as advice, clothes, credit cards and parenting.  What I really like about this website is that there are lots of interactive quizzes and if you want to print the transcript you will have a listening gap-fill, a word jumble, a spell checking exercise and even a writing assignment!

Suggestion for Self-Study

1. Choose a listening, for example ‘Gun Control’.
2. Print the transcript with exercises.
3. Listen to the mp3 (on the website or download it) and try to complete the gap fill.
4. Listen again to check for the answers.  You can obviously just look at the complete transcript but you will get more listening practice if you check the answers by listening again – remember the saying in English, “practice makes perfect” which means you get better and better with more practice.
5. Move on to the ‘Correct the Spelling’ exercise but hide the gap fill.  You can check your answers when you finish by looking at your completed gap fill.
6. Try the ‘Unjumble the Words’ exercise.  You can check the answers by looking at the transcript or, even better, listen to the mp3 again... practice makes perfect! :-)
7. If you are working by yourself, move down to the bottom and challenge yourself to do the writing exercise.  You can then ask a teacher or another English student to read it after you finish.

Listen to English

This is a wonderful website if you are interested in British culture.  I am from Britain and I learn things from these podcasts.  I really like these podcasts which are about 7 minutes long.

Unfortunately, I haven’t found a convenient list of podcasts but you can improve your skim reading by looking through each of them to find one you would be interested in listening to.

Suggestion for Self-Study

1. Choose a podcast, for example ‘Old money, new money’.
2. Listen to the podcast while reading the transcript.  Some words and phrases are highlighted and you can click on the link to see definitions.
3. When you have finished listening you can read the comments that other listeners have posted and maybe leave your own comment about what you think about the topic.

You can ‘like’ Listen to English on Facebook.  Just click here.

Feel free to make more suggestions about websites you like to use to improve your listening.

Gordon

BTW, you can also ‘like’ Videojug and Lyrics Training on Facebook by following the links.

Free Rice for Vocabulary

Hello all!

I’m preparing for a seminar this Saturday this will be a short post.

Have you seen the banner/link near the top of the page?  www.freerice.com.  This is a great tool to improve your vocabulary.  It builds from words you already know and asks you to recognize synonyms.  Don’t worry about level – it has 60 levels of difficulty and level 60 is FAR too difficult for me.  It will give you questions for your level based on what you get right and wrong.  It’s quite clever really.  :-)

I promise a bigger post next week.

Gordon

Favourite Websites for English Practice, pt 2 (Reading)

A couple of months ago I posted about my favourite websites for listening activities for the Internet.  Already I have a lot more listening websites I want to suggest but today’s post, as I promised, is a suggestion of a few websites that would be useful if you wanted to improve your English through reading.

As I already posted, reading is a VERY valuable and useful activity in English (and any language you are studying).  It helps to improve our vocabulary and the more reading we do, the faster we become.  One of the problems with reading activities is that most people don’t enjoy reading a computer screen for long periods of time.

News & Online Newspapers

This is why short news articles are an obvious thing to recommend.  A free, commuter’s newspaper in Britain, the Metro, is also available online (commuter is a person who travels to work every day).   They have a website but if you want to feel like you are reading a newspaper then they have a virtual newspaper you can read as well.  For this service you need to provide an email address and then you will receive a free, virtual newspaper every week day.  The level of English is not too high but you will still get a lot of useful vocabulary. 

If you are more interested in business and finance then you might want to look at a website connected to the Metro newspaper, http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/.  You can read articles about various topics in the financial world and there are lots of comments about these articles which are perfect to see how people “talk” about these topics.  If you want to improve your financial/business English but you are at a lower level, the BBC and British Council have made a website for you, Business Magazine.  The articles are short and clear and each article has learning exercises connected to them as options for extra practice.

General Interest

If you don’t want to read a newspaper regularly, then you might want to go so the Wikipedia Simple English site.  I love Wikipedia and I think it is one of the most useful websites on the entire Internet.  Sometimes the articles are very complicated so for learners of English I recommend the Simple English site.  There are not as many articles as in the main Wikipedia English site, but there is a lot of information and it is designed for learners of the English language.

Extensive Reading

If you want to do more extensive reading (as I suggested last week) then I recommend these two websites; Lit2Go and LoudLit are both websites with classic English-speaking stories, such as work by Jane Austen or A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.  The great thing about these websites is that you can listen to someone reading the stories while you follow (read) the story.

One more website that is certainly worth looking at is ESL Reading.  It has a variety of different reading materials as well as some learning activities.  I haven’t had much time to look at this site in detail yet but it looks good to me.

Please let me know what you think and, as always, any comments are welcome.

Gordon

RSS, Blogs and My 'New' Internet

Ok, this isn't about learning.  Well, it kind of is.  This is about how my internet experience has changed radically in the last month.  What do I mean by radically... I mean a LOT and in a BIG way.

You have probably seen this little icon (or picture) many, many, many times.

What is it?
Well it is an RSS feed.

What's that?
I don't know... but I know what it can do.

I think I am pretty good at using computers but I have only just started using this facility and now I understand more about the learning opportunities of the internet.

Here is a video that explains it very clearly in a much better way than I can.



So now I can follow many different blogs, websites, podcasts, news sites, etc. Now I can follow all these different places on the internet and I know that I will not miss anything.  Try it and see how much more you can enjoy and learn from the internet... and in less time!

Favourite Websites for English Practice, pt 1 (Listening)

So this week, I think we should start sharing more.  Sharing is good!  I have started with ‘listening’ because it is probably the easiest to give examples for – there are LOTS of podcasts and youtube videos to listen to and watch.

Nowadays there is almost TOO much and it is difficult to know where to go for GOOD listening material.  Of course, what is good depends on you, the learner.  What are your favourite subjects?  This is important because if you are interested in what you are listening to, then you will be more engaged and less bored.

I didn't have so much energy at the end!

One site which I know some of you use is BBC Learning – 6 Minute English.  I like this because it is short (only six minutes, obviously) and the topics change every week.  A friend sent me the link for one about marathon running last April just before I did the Brighton Marathon.  Then two weeks later the topic was punk music.  You see, there is a lot of variety.  There are also a lot of supporting activities if you have more time.

In general, I think that the BBC has a lot of really good material to improve you English with their Learning English site.  Some of it is more useful that other parts.  Explore it, see what you find and don’t forget to tell us on the blog what you find. J

Another BBC website which is very useful (especially if you are living/staying in Britain) is “RAW – Skills for Everyday Life”.  These are videos which clearly show and explain normal, common things like credit cards or shopping online.  You can watch them with or without subtitles and they explain things basically.  The good thing about this is that the language is authentic and it the topics are useful.
UPDATE (25/06/11):  Unfortunately it looks like this website has been terminated by the BBC.  What a pity!

For something a bit different and useful for ‘instruction English’ you might want to look at www.videojug.com.  This has everything and it is growing!  EVERYBODY should be on this site!  (I hope that with this site, I might actually learn how to cook!)  Some of these videos are serious and some of them are funny but they are all about 4 minutes long.  Be careful, a few of these videos are NSFW (Not Suitable For Work) which means that they have some ‘adult’ content that children shouldn’t see and some adults might find offensive.)  But, you can also learn magic tricks while improving your English!

I have a few more suggestions but I want to know what websites you use to improve your listening.  Just listening at the moment (remember, this is only part 1). ;-)

Thanks for all of your support.  Let’s keep this going and growing.  As always, I look forward to your opinions. J

Gordon