St Patrick's Day Food and Beverage

St Patrick's Day Food and Beverage

A food site called The Daily Meal has quite a lot of information about how this famous "alcoholiday" (if ever there was one! :) ) is celebrated in the good ol' USA.

Read this text to get answers to these questions:

1) What is a  re-used "Fat Tuesday" float?
2) What river in which major American city is dyed kelly green?
3)  Which New England city is considered America's most Irish city?

Using the New York Times for Improving your English

Everyone interested in reading and learning and becoming a better person should read one of the best newspapers in the world, the New York Times.

Show me another newspaper that does a better job. How many prizes have NYT journalists won?
According to wikipedia, the New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization.

The link will give you some ideas of the parts of the NYT's huge website that might be worth exploring. Make it a goal of yours to read at least one article a week and do some language activities such as those you can find by following the link above.


What is YOUR favorite newspaper in English?

What is your attitude towards reading?

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?

Is this the tool you have been waiting for?

Eureka!!


So what can you do with this tool?

Basically, you can link any text you are reading to a variety of dictionaries. This saves a lot of time looking up words.

How do I use it?

It's very easy to use.
1. First go to http://www.esldesk.com/esl-reading/esl-reader.aspx and paste in the text you want to read and click the "Read Text" button.

2. Use the References drop-down menu to choose "Cambridge" to get an easy-to-understand definition in English and some example sentences or perhaps "Wikipedia" if it would be better to look it up in an encyclopedia, in English of course.

3. If you would like the word translated into German, use the "Languages" drop-down menu to choose "German I", which links to beolingus or "German II" which links to dict.cc. You can easy look it up in both to see which one gives you the best results.

4. Use Search drop-down menu to see how word is used on other internet pages. I recommend Ask.com or Google of course.

Here's the link one more time.

http://www.esldesk.com/esl-reading/esl-reader.aspx

Bookmark it immediately and also add it to your reading page in your Learning Portfolio, so you can use it during your very next workout.

If you are smart and have set up a free account for the Vocabulary Trainer available at either of the two German dictionary sites, then you can review the words you have looked up at a later date and greatly increase your chances of remembering them.

Enjoy reading!!

ESL Reader

This is a great time-saver that makes reading even difficult texts in English very easy.

Just copy any English text into the box and click on Read Text.
You can then easily get definitions and/or translations for any words in that text since each word is automatically turned into a link.

I suggest you look up new words in the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary first to get an understandable definition and a few example sentences. Use the drop-down menu under References.

If you want a translation, just choose the English-German dictionary under Languages. German I links to BeoLingus and German II links to dict.cc

Abbreviations (like ESL) can be looked up under Specialty.

If it's a place or a person you can look it up in Google or Ask.com.

What makes this tool so convenient is that you just paste the text in once and then if you want to learn more about the word, just change the reference source and click on the same word to look it up again. Very convenient!

(The only trick is having several windows open at the same time, but that shouldn't be a problem...!)

http://www.esldesk.com/esl-reading/esl-reader.aspx

If you want to start reading right away, try this link to one of my favorite classic books, already pasted into the ESL Reader...
http://www.esldesk.com/english-reading/reading-help.aspx?f=alice-adventure-in-wonderland

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...

The Paris Hilton prison diaries

Would someone please tell me who this Paris Hotel person even is???

Very funny if you like to make fun of rich, dumb blondes who may not even know what "bowks" are!

Looking for some good books to read?

How many of these books can you honestly say you've actually

1. read?
2. heard of?
3. got any intention of ever reading before you die?

Keep in mind that quite a few of them are available as free e-books at sites such as

http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/search

TASK: Try putting in "twain" under Author. Maybe you've heard of this guy...

You get a link to wikipedia so you can quickly learn more about the famous Mr Twain.

Click on The Awful German Language
and you will be able to download this famous story in many different formats (as an audio book read by a very nice English-speaking human named Rainer for example).

If you are absolutely insane, you can read Twain in the esperanto translation.

Learn English thru Lyrics

This site has LOTS of lyrics that will scroll by themselves. Good reading practice even if you choose lyrics that don't exactly qualify as poetry.