Read A Book In A Second Language To Avoid Emotion; Reading In Your Native Tongue Improves Empathy

Do you agree or disagree?  How does this affect your reading in English? Does reading level or lived experience in the target language's culture make a difference?   

Vicariously experiencing the emotions of a character in a book brings readers closer to the storyline, but the way readers react to fictional emotions depends on the language they read it in. Research conducted at the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) in Italy examined the empathetic power of reading in a native language. The findings, published in the journal Brain and Cognition, not only revealed how mother tongues evoked readers’ emotions, but also the limitations of a second language.

Keep reading .... Read A Book In A Second Language To Avoid Emotion; Reading In Your Native Tongue Improves Empathy: 

Does 'English' exist?

from an article by Eric Kowal from Wordwizard • Members' articles



The English language is, and always seems to have been, a perpetual battleground whose skirmishes take the form of controversies over usage and grammar....There has also never been a shortage of vociferous listeners to the BBC (the state-owned British broadcasting organization) complaining of its supposed failure to uphold standards of English usage - these standards presumably having been handed down from some mystical, mythical golden age of grammatical and vocabularian rectitude which often seem to be located in the decade of the complainer's childhood. Mix into this already-potent brew of linguistic controversy and personal prejudice the element of class rivalry described in Professor Alan Ross's notoriously provocative article of 1954, 'U and non-U', and it really starts to fizz!

Write Your Future Self

Use FutureMe to write yourself an email that will be delivered to you in the future. You set the date and how far in the future.

Where will you be and what will you be doing next month? This summer? In six months? A year? Two years? What will it be like to get a note from the you of “now” in the future? Use it to send yourself reminders too. Come New Year's Day, send resolutions to your end of the year self. Write a note to the future to someone else (if you know their email).

What other uses can you think of?

Everyone … do the time warp! Write yourself or someone else a letter with FutureMe.



reblogged and adapted from #Ccourses Bonus #Dailyconnect: Connect with Your Future Self | The Daily Connector

EVO 2015: ICT4ELT & more

It's that time of year again: EVO, Electronic Village Online, and their annual online workshops for ESL educators. ICT4ELT replaces the venerable Webheads as an entry level for teaching with technology. Even if you don't teach ESL, it is a good tech refresher as well as authentic English practice

ICT4ELT means Information and communications technology for English language teaching. 

A hands on workshop to learn how to use information and communication technology to connect to educators around the world and transform your teaching. 

Some Blogging English followers teach ESL too. I can't how many or qualify as to few or many. I recommend this and other workshops is them ~ but not just for them. Intermediate through advanced learners will get a lot out of it too. Check out the other workshops too. It's late for registration but the resources are open. 

The pronunciation workshop should be of particular interest as well and helpful for speaking skills.

Learn English with Dave Pearl

This site, subtitled, "Helping you learn English quickly and easily" looks like a good learning resource. The business and conversational English videos are also on YouTube. Check it out and let me know what you think.

You can also email for a free e-book download as well as going straight to social media and following "Learn English with Dave Pearl" on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube (above) or G+ (where I found the page).

Learn English with Dave Pearl - Helping you learn english quickly and easily | Business English |Conversational English

General notices post with open thread for suggestions, questions and requests

This morning I made one of my increasingly rare visits to the StudyCom Help Board and found a new question. Questions are even rarer than my visits. I still check in though -- and post notices telling visitors to come here instead.

The Help Board does not have an automatic notice system that lets me know when someone posts but the blog does. I get an email whenever someone posts a comment because comments are set for moderation --not just to prevent spam but also to know when someone posts a comment so I can reply.

I apologize for not posting more often  and will try to do better. This is not a high traffic blog, but it does have regular followers who probably get email or rss notices. I can tell because the numbers spike whenever I post. 

How to teach the past perfect tense

 It is easier to teach the past perfect than to teach the present perfect. The past perfect is clearly situated in the past. This can even be represented without any ambiguity through a timeline or a diagram. what is more, an example with a past perfect tense may give a clear picture of the tense. 



In this lesson plan we will give ideas and hints on how to teach the past perfect. 



 Start with contextualized examples
It is of paramount importance to introduce grammatical constructions in clear contexts, relating them to the real world. The past perfect tense is undoubtedly well understood if it is used in contextualized examples because learners need to have a clear picture of not only the “how” but also the “why.”



Read the rest at How to teach the past perfect tense | My English Pages: