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How language changes over time

How language changes over time
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Kombinera ordspråk och bild Mina åttor håller just nu på med ett omfattande skrivarbete där de skriver olika typer av texter som på något sätt anknyter till identitet. De ska även skapa en framsida till sina texter. Ett omslag som berättar något om vem de är, vill vara eller kommer att bli. Uppgiften är ganska enkel och består av några steg: Välj en liknelse, ett ordspråk eller idiom som på något sätt berättar om vem du är, vill vara eller kommer att bli.Berätta om ditt valda ordspråk för en kompis. Känslan när jag får susa fram på mina supersnabba slalomskidor * Jag är hämtat idén från Sten Canevall, en bildlärare med grymma idéer. Activities for correcting writing in the language classroom How can teachers encourage learners to correct their own writing? Second-time winner of TeachingEnglish blog award, Cristina Cabal, offers a few tried and tested error-correction activities. Does every single writing error need to be corrected? In the learning of a second language, this is a question that stirs up great controversy. While it is true that most spelling errors will disappear as learner proficiency increases, there are some persistent errors – mainly grammatical – which remain despite repeated efforts to correct them. In the following collection of error-correction activities for writing, the main aim is to get students to identify and correct writing errors taken from their own essays. The activities are fun and highly motivating, and because they are fast-paced, I would suggest going through the errors with the whole class a second time at the end to reinforce learning. Use 'grass skirts' This activity is a lot of fun. Use sticky notes Use slips of paper Correct or incorrect?

Gaza and the language of modern war The propaganda battle in a modern war begins with its name. Israel's attack on Gaza this summer was given an official Hebrew name meaning "resolute cliff", so as to assure its victims of the futility of resistance. Only a fool would try to fight a cliff, even an irresolute one. The name in English was "Operation Protective Edge". This, an Israeli military spokesman explained, was chosen to "give a more 'defensive' connotation". The people fighting on either side of this "clash" or "conflict" (but rarely "war") were named in ways carefully emphasising a gulf in respectability: Israeli "soldiers" but Hamas "militants". That consequence was said rather to be the fault of Hamas, for using the people of Gaza as "human shields". Hamas told its supporters, when referring to those killed by Israeli actions, always to use the phrase "an innocent citizen", though some of those killed had actually been fighting or launching rockets at Israeli towns.

The 20 Most Popular TED Talks of All Time TED has recently rolled out its list of the most popular talks. The selection contains 20 TED talks that have received the most viewership ever. Surprisingly, Ken Robinson's classic " Do Schools Kill Creativity " aired in 2006 is still at the peak of this selection with 9 million views this year alone. In the second spot comes the phenomenal talk of Dr Jill Taylor " My Stroke of Insight ", I really couldn't tell how many times I have watched Jill's talk and each time I watch it I could feel tears running down my cheeks at the last 8 minutes.

BusyTeacher.org Students love being able to understand and read current news in English and there is something to interest everyone in a newspaper. The average reading age for most newspapers is approximately 11-13 years old, just perfect for those learning English as a foreign language. Newspapers are also a handy resource for English language teachers. If you are teaching in an English speaking country look out for the free press newspapers. Try to collect enough newspapers so that you have one copy between two students. If you are not in an English speaking country you could print articles from news websites such as the BBC or CNN. Here are a number of ways you can use a newspaper in your English language lessons. 1The role of newspapers in our livesTalk about the role of newspapers in daily life as a whole class, in pairs or in small groups.

Why is English so weirdly different from other langu... English speakers know that their language is odd. So do people saddled with learning it non-natively. The oddity that we all perceive most readily is its spelling, which is indeed a nightmare. In countries where English isn’t spoken, there is no such thing as a ‘spelling bee’ competition. For a normal language, spelling at least pretends a basic correspondence to the way people pronounce the words. But English is not normal. Spelling is a matter of writing, of course, whereas language is fundamentally about speaking. There is no other language, for example, that is close enough to English that we can get about half of what people are saying without training and the rest with only modest effort. We think it’s a nuisance that so many European languages assign gender to nouns for no reason, with French having female moons and male boats and such. More weirdness? Why is our language so eccentric? Sign up for Aeon’s Newsletter English started out as, essentially, a kind of German.

Steve Ramirez and Xu Liu: A mouse. A laser beam. A manipulated memory. Close Help with subtitles Desktop / laptop users: please make sure you have the most updated versions of your browser and Flash player, and that Flash is enabled when you visit TED.com. iOS users: to access subtitles, start playing the video, then tap the speech bubble icon that appears in the bottom row of video controls. Android users: although Android devices do not support subtitles, you can download the TED app from the Google Play store.

» Teaching English through songs in the digital age – #ELTchat summary 12/01/... This absolutely fantastic summary was contributed by Vicky Saumell on her blog in 4 consective posts which I have merged into one single post. As Viky herself remarks below in her post, it is an amazing collection of resources all shared by you, #ELTchatters! What a fantastic resource this has turned into! 1. In case you didn´t know, I´m an avid tweeter, especially for Professional Development and networking with colleagues all over the world. Yesterday, #ELTchat was about Teaching English through songs: activities, resources and benefits of using songs for teaching. 13 readings and resources,68 ideas for using songs,50 example songs with links,11 music-related web 2.0 tools All this information, which I have tried to digest for easier consumption, is too long to be posted in one blog post so I have divided it into 4 parts: 1. Some readers´suggestions that are worth sharing I hope you enjoyed these resources which were contributed by all those partcipating in #ELTchat. 2. Why use songs?

The full transcript of Michelle Obama's powerful New Hampshire speech | US news My goodness! You guys are fired up! Well, let me just say hello everyone. I am so thrilled to be here with you all today in New Hampshire. This is like home to me, and this day – thank you for a beautiful fall day. Let me start by thanking your fabulous governor, your next US senator, Maggie Hassan. And, of course, thanks to all of you for taking the time to be here today. Audience member: We love you! Thanks so much. So I’m going to get a little serious here, because I think we can all agree that this has been a rough week in an already rough election. See, on Tuesday, at the White House, we celebrated the International Day of the Girl and Let Girls Learn, and it was a wonderful celebration. So I thought it would be important to remind these young women how valuable and precious they are. And I have to tell you that I can’t stop thinking about this. This is not something that we can ignore. And to make matters worse, it now seems very clear that this isn’t an isolated incident.

Proof that you should never believe your own eyes Your peripheral vision makes up part of your overall field of vision, which is around 190 degrees. However, it’s far from perfect, and sometimes it causes us to see things which don’t really exist. We’ve found a cool way to prove this to you. All you need to do is focus on the cross at the centre of the picture below, without glancing away. The faces begin to become distorted, right? There’s an area of our retina which is called the yellow spot. In this case, our main field of vision is empty; there’s just a dark area with a white cross. We’d love to hear your views on this…

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