Learn English Through Song or Movie Scenes

A generous man called Teacher Frank (not me! A different one…) has created lots and lots of fun lessons which involve listening to songs and watching slide shows or movies on You Tube. He even has free exercises to go with them.

I find the songs and movie scenes are very well chosen and because the level is fairly easy for most of you, it is a nice relaxing way to work on your English. Nevertheless, I am rather confident that in each song or scene there will be a few idioms or phrases that may not yet be in your active, productive English. 

I suggest you try to use these new phrases in sentences of your own. And let others know about the site if you like it. Maybe it's worth a blogging about in your own blog.

Learn English Through Song  

Here is an example using a song I like very much, especially on a cloudy day :) I just love the singer's clear mellifluous voice

You can also study the lyrics and respond to your favorite lines. Have a look at the two-page Word handout that goes with it.

Here is the whole list of songs Frank has chosen for you. There are PLENTY of great songs to choose from and the slide shows are often quite amusing. 

Learn English Through Movie Scenes

Also very entertaining. Scroll down to see the script and do the exercise. Use the new words and phrases you learn so you remember them better!

Finally, here is a long playlist at youtube will a lot of the free lessons that Teacher Frank has prepared for your learning pleasure.

Have fun! (and who cares if you start singing along :) )

The Lion Eating Poet; a Quick Background: 

 Chinese is a tonal language. Which means that each sound can be pronounced in a number of different ways depending upon the inflection the speaker places on the syllable. A upward, downward, peaked or even inflection can change the word entirely. Unlike English where homonyms (words pronounced the same but spelled differently) like “flower” and “flour” are about as creative as it gets, Chinese is also very contextual, the word’s can change meaning depending on what precedes and follows them, so much more variation can be derived from the same base sounds.

 http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0a/StandingMingLion.jpg/800px-StandingMingLion.jpg

Using some creative linguistic flexibility Yuen Ren Chao wrote this fantastic poem that describes the bizarre tale of a lion-eating poet, reportedly to spoof the idea of converting Chinese characters into a phonetic Latin alphabet equivalent. The 93 word essay is composed of the same repeated sound only varying in tone (so it is unreadable in other dialects like Cantonese). Remarkable from a linguistic standing, the poem shows just how difficult it can be to translate from one language to another.

I must say I am impressed as the only English equivalent I have come across is the sentence “Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo” which means “Bison from Buffalo, New York, who are intimidated by other bison in their community, also happen to intimidate other bison in their community”. Not quite the same flare as the Lion eating poet, but i’ll chalk that up to a limitation of our language.

via rovemag.com

Frank says: This is really amazing for a language buff like me. I would really like to find a Chinese speaking person who would read this for me. It's kind of hard to believe really but then again language is a pretty incredible thing, isn't it?

Wait! I live in the 21st century... I will see if a machine can convince me that the story really is all SHE's cracked up to be ! 

I found the characters in copyable form here:

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-Eating_Poet_in_the_Stone_Den

and then pasted them into http://translate.google.com/ and clicked the little speaker to have the text pronounced for me. Try it!!

I will paste the characters here too if I can...

石室詩士施氏，嗜獅，誓食十獅。

氏時時適市視獅。

十時，適十獅適市。

是時，適施氏適市。

氏視是十獅，恃矢勢，使是十獅逝世。

氏拾是十獅屍，適石室。

石室濕，氏使侍拭石室。

石室拭，氏始試食是十獅。

食時，始識是十獅屍，實十石獅屍。

試釋是事。

Here's another strange language puzzle, in English. If done correctly, the same word appears 11 times in a row. Not as cool as Chinese, but English is cool in other ways, isn't it?

Can you punctuate this sentence so it makes sense?
"James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher".

Richard Lederer is truly a Pun-dit

If you like English, the pieces written by this very funny English teacher will keep you amused for hours. Or three...;)

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/richard/lederer1.asp

Which vocab game is better -- knoword or freerice?

Both of these games fun and challenging.

The main difference:

• knoword.com gives you the dictionary definition of a word and the letter it starts with. You type in the word being defined. You try to score more points by guessing correctly and quickly.

• freerice.com gives you just one word and a choice of 4 other words. You click on the one closest in meaning. The more you get correct, the harder they get. You try to reach a higher level.

Try them both and let me know which one you like better and why!

Tom Lehrer -L-Y

This has got to be the best song about adverbs ....

EVER!

(And I'm not LY-ing!)

:)

You can listen to many more songs and see the lyrics here.

Funny thing is that Tom Lehrer soon left the business of writing funny, if somewhat strange songs, and spent the rest of his life as a math professor. He turned 82 just a few days ago.

Arnie the Actor

160 Greatest Arnold Schwarzenegger Quotes

Nothing too complex here ...;)

Are you playing the piano?

I know it has been quite a while since my last post but things were, have been, and still are pretty busy at the uni. But if you're gonna have a blog, you gotta post, right?

So I'd like to kick off the season so to speak with something that has more to do with artistic expression than language and language learning, although many people say that music is the universal language.

http://www.thevirtualpiano.com/

It's so cool I have to be careful not to waste my entire Friday playing around with it. Just turn up your speakers and start making music. For those of you who had piano lessons at some point, you can jump right and start playing. Others can simply listen to their inner ear and express the music that is in there waiting to get out.

Austria is famous around the world as a Music Nation (probably not because of DJ Ötzi ...), so go ahead and start making music!

And when you are good and relaxed, pick up an English book or go to a website and read or listen to some English!

Have a great semester!

Frank

I'm not hanging noodles on your ears...

This is the funny title of a new book about idioms around the world. Some of the them are pretty humorous, even the German ones ;), especially when they are translated literally into English.



You can take a Guardian quiz here
I managed to correctly half of them. I could have guessed more had I thought like a Brit. That one about the British dinner, for example...

Have fun!

Watch some of the best Super Bowls ads ever made

Which ones do you like best?

Keep in mind who's most likely to watch the game.

Amazing who you meet in airports

 

There I was at the Washington DC airport, just minding my own business, when this guy in a suit wanted to shake my hand...

Punctuation

This is a classic sketch on a fascinating topic -- punctuation.

Victor Borge is such a genius that I'm sure you'll like it.

Below is the transcript, which you will not be able to understand unless you watch the video, so watch it here!

Part one:
Phonetic punctuation
I invented it many years ago, when I first noticed that people who speak together often fail to understand each other clearly. When we read all right we use punctuation marks, in order to underline the meaning of our sentences. But we do not use them when we speak, so why not integrate punctuation marks in our speech, then we can underline what we intend to convey to each other verbally.

Part 2:
A period will sound like this.
A dash.
An exclamation point is a vertical dash with a period underneath.
A comma.
Or two commas.
Or if you happen to be left handed.
Question mark is a little difficult.
Finally the colon, two little dots, you can put them over each other, you can put them under each other, or you can put them wherever you want to put them.
I have a story right here in the beginning of the book. I shall find it. It is marked, so I cant miss it.

Satire -- American style

I'm probably not the only one who finds this blog (maybe the French word "blague" is a better name for it!) very funny...

The sad thing that I'm afraid it's actually going to cause more folks to vote for the little lady than to steer clear of her and her "policies". What the heck is gonna happen if McCain gets into the White House and then falls down the stairs or chokes on a pretzel?! Then this lady would become the leader of the free world?!

God help us all!!

Of course I also had to check out what the cartoonists are doing with this theme over at cagle.com

Some good ones here!
http://www.cagle.com/news/McCainPalin/main.asp

Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Year

Larry is a teacher in California. He must be a very busy guy. And his students must have a lot of fun learning English because Larry's always on the lookout for websites that make learning English fun.

Have a look and see what you can discover!

http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/about/websites-of-the-year/

Arnie's English skills

I know (some of) my students are studying for their midterm exam on Tuesday, so just in case you need to take a break from all your "learning", here are two rather amusing
links to distract you (or maybe inspire you to get back to your books immediately?!..)

http://www.isnichwahr.de/r80879022-schwarzeneggers-englishskills.html

http://growabrain.typepad.com/growabrain/schwarzenegger/index.html


and I because this video is so educational and has a cross-cultural theme I need to include it as well...
http://www.isnichwahr.de/r89237268-warum-oesterreich-nicht-gleich-deutschland-ist.html

Now enough fun already! Back to grammar and vocab!

The World According to the Simpsons

The World According to the Simpsons

It's about time I introduced one of my favorite radio programs of all time: Here on Earth: Radio Without Borders. It's hosted by Jean Feraca and in this show, her guests discuss the impact of the Simpsons around the world.

She always has intelligent people (professors, authors, and other non-yellow characters) on the show whose IQ must be double or even triple that of Homer S.!

The topics are often quite interesting, like this one about Bart and Marge and the rest of the gang, especially the cultural programs.

You can find Jean's blog here, where she discusses the latest shows.

The forum gives people a chance to add their two cents.

For this show the questions were:

* Are the Simpons really the typical American family?
* How do you feel about Homer and Bart as American ambassadors?


Then there are the related links which will keep you up way past your bedtime

* Official site of The Simpsons
* Wikipedia: The Simpsons
* The Simpsons entry in The Museum of Television Encyclopedia
* Matt McAllister
* Steven Keslowitz and his book
* Aeon Skoble
* The Simpsons Archive

I will end by quoting one Listener's Comments:

* John 7/19/06: "I think the Simpsons Cartoon demonstrates to the world that Americans have an insight into what's dysfunctional in our own culture by allowing the world to laugh with us at our beer guts and lazy intellect."

I think that says it all. Americans are not as stupid as they seem to the unsophisticated European.

Awesome interactive sites for students and learners

Watch this 5 minute video by Jimmy Ruska and see if there is something you want to try out. They look like fun things to play around with. The last 3 in particular might be good for language learners.

SpongeFish - Look smart. Get smarter.

Thinkature - Real-time collaboration for the web

Flashcards: The world's largest library of printable flash cards

BuildQuiz.com: Quick Free Academic Quiz Creator

Quizlet › The End of Flashcards

fonetiks

http://www.fonetiks.org/

· Online pronunciation guides to 9 varieties of the English language and 9 other languages

· Instant sound

· Pronunciation samples by over 40 native speakers

· All 1,000+ pages free

· Click on a flag to open a dictionary

Why can't all language websites as good as this one!?

Spelling Bee

Because I am a word freak, I like this dictionary for many reasons.

The feature I want to share with you today is both fun and educational. It's called Spelling Bee.

Here's how it works.
1. You go to http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ and look for the Spelling Bee box.
2. Set difficulty level to "easy" so you don't get too frustrated too quickly and you get more common words that people actually use.
3. Look at the definition and guess the word. Take a few guesses. This is an important part of the exercise, so don't skip it!!
4. Then click on the speaker. You will here,... sorry, hear a man say a word. Click once more if you need to hear the word again.
5. Spell the word by typing it in the box as you say the letters in English out loud.
6. Click "answer" to see if you spelled it correctly.(Not "spelt"; that's British!)
7. Now try to use the word in a sentence of your own. If the word is completely new to you, and even if it isn't but you want to get some synonyms etc, click on it to see a definition and some example sentences, synonyms, etc
7. Click "next word" to continue.

Here's the link again.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/

8. Play for 10 words and record your score and the date. The nexttime you play you can see if you are getting better.

Why you should SPEAK two languages

Redneck humor



Ah found this here joke pretty funny...


what about you?

The Awful German Language

Listen and read one of the classic essays of all time about German. Just be glad you "got it for free" (acquired it naturally) and didn't have to go through the agony of learning it.
http://librivox.org/the-awful-german-language-by-mark-twain/