LET'S COMMUNICATE...

Some charts collecting expressions to say different functions.

SOCIAL MEDIA vs REALITY: ARE YOU LIVING AN INSTA LIE?

Are we living an insta lie? Are we addicted to technology, mobile phones and social networks? Watch this video and reflect about it for a moment. Give your opinions...

Video "ARE YOU LIVING AN INSTA LIE?"

NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTION: IMPROVING IN ENGLISH LEARNING

About to start classes again, here are sseven essential tips if one of your new year's resolution is to improve in your learning of English this year.

LOOKING FOR A PENPAL / KEYPAL?

A good way to practice your English is having a penpal. What is a penpal? A friend from another country who you exchange letters, or e-mails with (if it's this one, they are called keypals, because you use the computer's keyboard to write, not a pen). You are able to practice your written English with them apart from learning lots of interesting things from their own country and culture. Internet can help you find one. There are many websites that can get you in touch.

Here's one:

its-penpals
If you would like to find an e-mail penpal (keypal), you can either view the messages that have been posted at its-myworld and contact someone by e-mail, or add a message of your own and wait for someone to contact you. To help protect your privacy your email address will only be visible to its-myworld subscribers. All the penpal messages at its-myworld are divided into two age groups: 12 to 17, and 18+.

Link:
PENPALAND and their blog Penpaland-Blog.

15 YEARS OF WIKIPEDIA

Yesterday, January 15th Wikipedia, Internet's free encyclopedia, celebrated their 15th birthday. It's been working since January 15th 2011. Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger created it.

It was born as a webpage in English, but nowadays it has articles written in 287 languages. 28 of them have more than 300.000 articles each. Only in Spanish there are more than one million articles. Totally there are more than 38 million pages about every topic you can imagine inside it. Only between 2005 and 2015 the number of articles were multiplied by 10, as there are more than 700 new pages created every day. Each month the web receives 500 million visits.

Last year Princess of Asturias International Cooperation Prize was awarded to it for making universal knowledge accesible to everybody.

Link: Wikipedia15: What does Wikipedia mean to you?

Galician version of this post @ ArquivosDoTrasno.

WORLDWIDE LANGUAGE STATISTICS

Here are some maps and charts published by American newspaper The Washington Post, which shows the world's diversity of languages.

- NUMBER OF LANGUAGES BY CONTINENTS:

- LANGUAGES ACCORDING TO THE NUMBER OF NATIVE SPEAKERS:

- NUMBER OF COUNTRIES THAT SPEAK EACH LANGUAGE:

- NUMBER OF LEARNERS OF EACH LANGUAGE:

- ENDANGERED LANGUAGES THROUGHOUT THE WORLD:

• 35 COUNTRIES where english is official language:
• Belize
• Botswana
• Canada
• Cameroon
• Eritrea
• Fiji
• Ghana
• Guyana
• India
• Ireland
• Jamaica
• Kenya
• Liberia
• Lesotho
• Malawi
• Namibia
• Nigeria
• New Zealand
• Pakistan
• Philippines
• Papua New Guinea
• Puerto Rico
• Rwanda
• Sudan
• South Sudan
• Solomon Islands
• Sierra Leone
• Swaziland
• Trinidad and Tobago
• Tanzania
• Uganda
• Vanuatu
• South Africa
• Zambia
• Zimbabwe

COMMUNICATING IN THE XXIst CENTURY: PICTOGRAMS

 (6th Cultural Week-5: Writing in the 21st century)

Information is also shown through pictograms nowadays, specially in public places. They are used to be understood by people speaking any language. No written word is used, but precise information is communicated. Do you understand them?

Their meanings in the same order:

Public telephone / Emergency-Hospital / Post office-box / for the Disabled

Restaurant / Cafeteria / Gift shop-Souvenirs / Rent-a-car

Train-Underground / Helicopter / Taxi / Airport / Port-Docks

Luggage reclaim / Customs / Check in / Meeting point / Passport control

Escalators / Cloakroom-Left luggage office / Lift-Elevator / Men's & Women's toilets

- PROJECT 5 FOR THE CULTURAL WEEK IN ENGLISH:

a) CREATE YOUR OWN PICTOGRAMS. MAKE PEOPLE GUESS WHAT THEY MEAN. ANSWERS MUST BE SHOWN IN ENGLISH.

b) DO YOU KNOW ABOUT ANY OTHER PICTOGRAMS WIDELY USED? FIND OTHERS, THEIR MEANINGS MUST BE GUESSED & WRITTEN IN ENGLISH BY OTHER STUDENTS.

WRITING IN THE XXIst CENTURY: TWEETS

 (6th Cultural Week-4: Writing in the 21st century)

Continuing with the different ways by which we communicate by writing in the XXIst century, it's the turn for tweets. To tweet is the English word which refers to the vocalization birds do, both their calls and their songs, which have a function and a meaning.

From this original meaning, now the word has developed to give name to Twitter, the online networking service, which enables users to send and receive short messages, not more than 140 characters, which are called tweets.

Here are some examples of tweets on Twitter:

- PROJECT 4 FOR THE CULTURAL WEEK IN ENGLISH:

- WRITE ORIGINAL OR FUNNY TWEETS IN ENGLISH. REMEMBER NOT MORE THAN 140 LETTERS. YOU MAY USE ABBREVIATIONS LIKE WHEN TEXT MESSAGING.

WRITING IN THE XXIst CENTURY: SMILEYS OR EMOTICONS

 (6th Cultural Week-3: Writing in the 21st century)

Technologies have stirred up the way we communicate in writing. Text messages and Whatsapp have made us use all kinds of abbreviations and smileys o emoticons. Is this the way handwriting is changing for the future? Is digitalwriting and smileys the future?

Here are some charts with basic meanings of smileys.

- PROJECT 3 FOR THE CULTURAL WEEK IN ENGLISH:

- WRITE MESSAGES USING SMILEYS/EMOTICONS FOR OTHER STUDENTS TO DECODE INTO ENGLISH & ALSO TRANSLATE INTO GALICIAN/SPANISH.

HOW MUCH ENGLISH IS SPOKEN IN THE EU

Here's a map that shows how much English is spoken in the European Union countries in percentage of population. As you can see, after the British isles where you can better hold a conversation in English are the Netherlands (with 90%, only 5 less than in the UK and Ireland) and the Scandinavian countries (Sweden, Denmark and Finland). Spain is one of the countries where it's less spoken (a 22%), only above Hungary (with 20%). Even more Portuguese are able to speak English. 
Below another map that shows the most spoken second language in each EU country, again in most it's English. And under the second and third.

Maps from: jakubmarian.com

EVERY DAY ENGLISH IMMERSION

There's no doubt that the best way to learn a language is spending time in the country where it's spoken.  It will improve your fluency skills and it will give you the cultural context of the language, too.  Listening to spoken English in the classroom is completely different to listening to it on the London streets.

But nowadays it's quite easy to get some immersion in English every day in your own home. Here are 5 practical tips on how you can immerse in English easily every day.

[Taken from The WorldIsYourOyster]

1- LEARN A LITTLE EVERY DAY. Learning a language takes practice. The more regularly you practice, the better you'll improve. The best way of getting this practice is having a daily routine. A little every day is better than once a week. 20 or 30 minutes a day will be enough.

2- LEARNING BELONGS TO YOU. Choose what you're interested in. If you don't like reading, don't read books in English. But if you love football, immerse into football, looking up sport articles in English, watching football matches in English or listening to sport boradcasts.

3- READ ONLINE MAGAZINES, ARTICLES & BLOGS. Immersing into English now is so easy as there is lots of online information avalaible. Online newspaper and magazine articles are a quick and effective way of getting your daily dose of English. Again choose from your interests.

4- WATCH TV SHOWS & FILMS. There are many TV shows streamed and on demand on the internet. Watch films on DVD, you can watch them with English &/or Spanish subtitles. 

5- LISTENING TO MUSIC & POSCASTS. Songs are a wonderful way of practice you English and listening skills. if you prefer to listen to spoken radio programmes you can listen 6/or download podcasts.

Whatever you choose, the most important thing to remember is to make your immersion experience fun, practical and convenient.

WRITING IN THE XXIst CENTURY: MOBILE MADNESS TEXT-MESSAGING

 (6th Cultural Week-1: Writing in the 21st century)

OMG = oh, my God                                               NSFW = not suitable for work
AKA = as known as                                              THANX = thanks

We've been talking about text messages in 1ºBAC classes recently and how abbreviations or acronyms are also used when sending text messages in English. Above you can see a glossary of SMS English. Below there are links to a game to practice and play with text messages in English and also other websites which deal with this way of writing or a glossaries of possible acronyms to be used. 

Links to more about text messaging:

- HOW TO TEXT IN ENGLISH.
- NETLINGO: CHAT ACRONYMS & SHORTHAND
- TECHDICTIONARY

- PROJECT 1 FOR THE CULTURAL WEEK IN ENGLISH:

- WRITE TEXT MESSAGES IN ENGLISH USING ABBREVIATIONS FOR OTHER STUDENTS TO DECODE INTO ENGLISH & ALSO TRANSLATE INTO GALICIAN/SPANISH.