Spanish is quickly becoming the second language of the United States. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are over 40 million Americans of Hispanic origins, which include people with Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central American, and South American origins. In addition, there are over 47 million Americans who speak a language other than English […]
The following tips to learn German are personal recommendations that you probably won’t get from a teacher. But it is worth giving them a try.
Picture Dictionaries
Picture Dictionaries are books that differ significantly from what you would expect from a regular dictionary. They are made up of different themes - such as “At the airport” or […]
I was once an ESL teacherfor one day. That’s right, I taught English as a Second Language for exactly one day. The story behind this is not as strange as it may appear. It started when my wife, who was teaching a class too large and too mixed with different levels of students, asked me […]
In our previous mini-article entitled “Second Language Acquisition in Adult Learners” we mentioned that one of the main reasons why adults fail to acquire the language effectively is because they are presented almost exclusively with unnatural samples of language devoid of meaning or communicative goals. They are forced to repeat grammar patters, vocabulary drills and […]
Mind-maps are the creation of Tony Buzan, the memory expert. The basic principle is that the mind dislikes traditional, linear note taking and thus anything we write should start in the centre of the page with related ideas branching out in all directions. This tool has been successfully used by managers to organise, brainstorm, and […]
In the Reading and Listening tasks of the IELTS exam, band scores are determined only by the number of questions answered correctly. There usually are about 40 questions on each of the two tests.
Many candidates who do not understand the questions or do not know or are not sure of the answers leave blanks on […]
Specialists tell us there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 6000 languages currently being spoken, which spring from at least 200 families. A reliable source cites the five most widely spoken in descending order, with millions in parentheses, as: Mandarin Chinese (1120), English (480), Spanish (320), Russian (285), and French (265).
Toward the other extreme are […]
Japan really seems to be a foreign culture to our Western minds. You may think you don’t know much about Japan, but in the past few decades there has been increased communication with our neighbor in the Far East. Our great grandparents probably didn’t know nearly as much about Japan as we do.
Think about it. […]
Chinese is a language, or a group of languages, spoken by 1.3 billion people worldwide. If you believe Chinese to be one language, rather than a grouping, it is the single most commonly spoken language on the planet. It is spoken in countries like China, Taiwan Singapore, and Malaysia. If you are interested in learning […]
Do you have any plan to pursue your further education abroad? Will you need English for your career or your education? If so, you may wish to investigate your options for learning, or improving, your English skills.
The TOEFL Test: TOEFL (Test Of English as a Foreign Language) is a test used by many colleges, […]