Toytown Germany

Toytown is an interesting website for people who like to walk the line between German and English. It is primarily in English, and the quality of the English is very high, so it is useful for native speakers of German who are learning English. Austria is a bit too small for such a site I guess.

But in Germany there is apparently a rather large community of close to 10,000 people from English-speaking countries who are living/working there and have formed a community. The forum appears to be lively and I have found several interesting things to read there, many cross-cultural comparisons, or discussions of "untranslatables", for example.

They have links to German publications that also publish an English version such as der Spiegel, die Welt, and one that is new to me called The Local. You could find the original German text and start a parallel text collection...

Here's the link again
http://www.toytowngermany.com/

Read the IHT!

The International Herald Tribune http://www.iht.com/

You may have seen this newspaper at the airport or at the better newsstands around town. It has many good quality articles and most importantly in the online version, two features students have found quite useful.

Here's how you can get more out of your reading experience.

Click on an article you would like to read and then look in the little box to the right of the headline. Among other things, you will see:
1) “Listen to article”, so you can read along as you listen.
2) “Translate”, so if you need some help with the difficult words, you have them translated into German. You can also get English definitions.

Try it out with one of today’s stories...

or this one:

Choose the right translator
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/11/24/news/atrans.php

What do you think?

NYTimes

For me, and many other people around the world, this is the best newspaper in the world.

The good news is that recently the good people at the NYTimes website have made their entire archives (back to 1981!)freely accessible.

This is an incredible resource for everyone who appreciates good writing.

A little anecdote: I was cleaning my office today and came across an interesting newspaper clipping I had saved and written a few RC Qs about.
It was about a speech therapist in NYC who helps people get rid of their accent or acquire a new accent (like actors often have to do. He has an unusual name, Chwat, so I thought what the hell...I'll go ahead and see if I can find the article and then I'd be able to use it in a class for RC practice. Sure enough, in less than 2 seconds I had found and printed out the entire article, which, even though it was written back in 1993, is still of interest for language students.

The website is huge, but well-organized and has a lot to offer language learners.

Have a look, for example at the Learning Network.

Or for some good conversation topics, try News Snapshot.

or improve your Vocab AND Culture by doing a Crossword Puzzle.

There is much much more interesting stuff to do and read and even videos to watch and entire First Chapters of the latest bestsellers to read...

Three reasons why so many people want to become US citizens

Legal immigrants seek American citizenship in surging numbers
interesting article in today's Christain Science Monitor, one of America's best newspapers. One of the good things about it is that it has free searchable archives!

Use voycabulary or wordchamp if you need help with the vocabulary.