Confusing words

I have sometimes mentioned Random Idea English, as one of the leading blogs on the net for advanced English learners.

It was through Random Idea English that I came across this resource from the Merriam-Webster online dictionary:

Top 10 commonly confused words, volumen 1 and
Top 10 commonly confused words, volumen 2.

What's the difference between flaunt and flout, and  between affect/effect, desert/dessert, stationary/stationery, flak/flack, It's/its, pore/pour, fewer/less, flounder/founder, principle/principal?

Click on the picture below or on the link above and check if you really know the difference.

Similarly, click on Top 10 commonly confused words, volumen 2 for another list.

If I should have a daughter

A performing poet since she was 14 years old, Sarah Kay is the founder of Project V.O.I.C.E., teaching poetry and self-expression at schools across the United States.

"If I should have a daughter, instead of Mom, she's gonna call me Point B ... " began spoken word poet Sarah Kay, in a talk that inspired two standing ovations at TED2011. She tells the story of her metamorphosis, from a wide-eyed teenager soaking in verse at New York's Bowery Poetry Club to a teacher connecting kids with the power of self-expression through Project V.O.I.C.E., and gives two breathtaking performances of "B" and "Hiroshima."

Watch Sarah Kay recite her poem and watch her talk, where she explains her commitment to poetry.

Now I know

Now I Know is a new project from the video production company Sprinkle Lab.

The purpose of Now I Know is to record and publish short videos of successful entrepreneurs sharing lessons they've learned along the way. Each video is under three minutes long so they are short and to the point.

Some of the names you might recognize in the videos are Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist, and MG Siegler of TechCrunch and ChrunchFund.

H/T to Free Technology for Teachers.

Top 10 Thanksgiving movie scenes

Thanksgiving is a long way off now, but at the time of this celebration Time magazine published an interesting slideshow presenting their choice of the top 10 Thanksgiving movie scenes. The scenes featured belong to these movies:

A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving
Home for the Holidays
Broadway Danny Rose
The Blind Side
Planes, Trains and Automobiles
Funny People
Pieces of April
Scent of a Woman
The Ice Storm
Grindhouse

Unfortunately, some of the scenes have been removed from YouTube for copyright claims. Still, you are left with a few of them to enjoy and to bring back memories of Thanksgiving.

The chaos of English pronunciation

This is a fun poem about the chaos of the English language by Gerard N. Trenité. There are many different versions of this poem. This poem was first published as an appendix to his book Drop your foreign accent . It was a book of pronunciation exercises for students learning British pronunciation. The book was first published in 1909. The Chaos first appeared in the 1920 edition. With each successive edition of the book, the poem was expanded. The most complete version can be found on the website of The English Spelling Society (http://www.spellingsociety.org/journals/j17/caos.php). That version is 274 lines.

Don't worry about understanding the poem - there is no meaning! It's just a fun collection of many of the ridiculous irregularities of English spelling! Just listen to the pronunciation. Most native speakers would have difficulty pronouncing all these words, so don't worry if you find it difficult.

Finally you will find that some of the words at the end of a line don't rhyme. It is due to the fact that the poem is read with American English pronunciation, and not British English, as the poem was initially meant for.



H/T Teacher Melanie.

Name that thing

Name that thing is a vocabulary online game from Merriam-Webster Dictionary I learnt about through ESL Writing.

Just a word of warning: This is tough. Good luck!

Best Christmas movies

The Huffington Post has made a selection of the best Christmas movies. Their choice includes It's A Wonderful Life, Elf, A Muppet Christmas Carol, A Christmas Story, Home Alone, The Santa Clause, Miracle on 34th Street and Love Actually. There is a short video clip with a scene of each film, and a short comment on the film is also made.

Do lectures

Do lectures is an impressive site Russell Stannard informed about in his November newsletter.

This is what Do lectures say about their site:

The idea is a simple one— that people who Do things can inspire the rest of us to go and Do things, too. So each year Do lectures invite a group of people who have stood out in a field to talk about what they do. They can be small Do’s or big Do’s or just extraordinary Do’s. But when you listen to their stories, they light a fire in your belly to go and Do your thing, your passion, the thing that sits in the back of your head each day, just waiting, and waiting for you to follow your heart.

To go find your cause to fight, your company to start, your invention to invent, your book to write, your mountain to climb. The one thing the Doers of the world Do, apart from Do amazing things, is to inspire the rest of us to go and Do amazing things too. They are fire-starters.

NFB

The National Film Board of Canada is a website where you can watch films about arts, the world, biographies, history.

Many of the films are only available under subscription or registration, but there are also dozens of films open to everybody, some of which include a CC option.

Occupy Wall Street

This is a video on the Wall Street protests that I found on ESL Writing.

Rob White suggests some activities for us to do with the video, as you can try them if you wish:

1. Describe some of the daily life activities that you saw.

2. Make a list of the verbs that you see in action.
3. Why are people protesting on the street?
4. Summarize the story.

Anyway, the video gives us a fresh insight into what's going on in these protests and has a value of its own that you will appreciate just by watching it.


Right Here All Over (Occupy Wall St.) from Alex Mallis on Vimeo.

Experimental school

Read this The New York Times lengthy article by Clifford J. Levy, who is a deputy metro editor of the Times. He won a Pulitzer Prize for international reporting for his coverage of Russia in 2011.

For four years three American siblings attended an experimental school in Moscow where instruction is only in Russian and classes are videotaped to improve teaching.

You can watch a video showing some of the highlights of the experience embedded in the newspaper article or by clicking here.

Pronunciation poem

This is an anonymous poem about how strange English spelling is. Joanne Rudling commented on it on one of her recent blogs posts.

Self-study activity:
Read the poem aloud to find out for yourself how well you manage with the poem.
Then download and listen to the recording that Joanne has made, compare and work on the words that might have caused you some difficulty.

Finally, make a point of dropping by Joanne Rudling's blog on a regular basis to get further insight on the intricacies of English spelling.

I take it you already know

Of tough and cough and dough?
But what about, hiccough, thorough and through?

Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird,

And dead: it's said like bed, not bead --
For goodness sake don't call it 'deed'!

Watch out for meat and great and threat...
They rhyme with suite and straight and debt.
(meat-suite, great-straight, threat-debt.)

There isn't a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, or broth in brother,

And here is not in there
But ear is in dear and fear
But not in bear and pear;

And then there's dose and rose
But lose, goose and choose,

And cork and work and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword,

And do and go and thwart and cart --
Come, come, I've hardly made a start!

A dreadful language? Man alive!
I'd learned to speak it when I was five!

But will I write it before I die?
I hope so, I say with a sigh!

Steve Job's legacy

Technology editor from The Guardian Charles Arthur looks back at the career of the driving force behind Apple, Steve Jobs.

Jobs was the single-minded visionary who revolutionised three industries: computers, film and music. He simplified complicated things by making the customer's needs paramount, bringing cutting edge technology into globally popular consumer products.

You can find a video embedded here, but by clicking on the link above you will gain access to eight more Jobs-related videos.



H/T to Janet Abruzzo.

The spelling bee

This is a demanding game from EFL Classroom 2.0, where our spelling and listening and vocabulary skills will be put to the test.

The way you play is really straightforward and it is explained in the picture below. Click on it to be directed to the game.

Why You Can't Work at Work

Why You Can’t Work at Work is a presentation by Jason Fried, co-founder of  Big Think, a forum where top experts explore big ideas for the 21st century.

In his talk, which comes complete with transcript, Jason Fried holds that with its constant commotion, unnecessary meetings, and infuriating wastes of time, the modern workplace makes us all work longer, less focused hours. Jason Fried explains how we can change all of this.

Tribute

Tribute is the best-known cinema magazine is Canada. If you visit their website, you will find a throve of cinema-related stuff that might be of interest for the advanced English learner in search of authentic material: trailers, interviews, news, and so on.

The commercial campus

Corporations are hiring students to promote their brand on campus. At the University of North Carolina, American Eagle helps first-year students move-in, while Target hosts the inaugural party.

Watch this The New York Times video to find out more about this business practice which might be a bit unusual for us and judge for yourself.



You can also read the related newspaper article here.

The New York Times also presents a slideshow with the most general ideas of the scheme.

PISA -Measuring student success around the world

A test the whole world can take...

It's a breathtaking concept -- but for the OECD, it's a very real way of finding out how well-prepared today's students are to participate in society. If you're not quite sure what PISA is or does, and you've got about 12 minutes to spare, grab a comfortable chair. This video will help you to understand why the OECD's number-crunchers trigger such intense debate about the state of education around the world every time they release the results of the latest PISA survey.

I couldn't get hold of a transcript, so for comprehension purposes you will have to rely on YouTube's (inaccurate) CC, the powerful effect of the images and, best of all, your own skills.

Frontline

Frontline is a website that develops investigative journalism. Contains extended interviews, videos, transcripts, teacher's resources, and additional material related to its weekly documentaries.

Frontline has been broadcasting over 28 seasons each week through incisive documentaries covering the scope and complexity of the human experience, with topics ranging from biographies, to politics, crime, education, religion, the environment, sports and so on.

As an example, here's the documentary The Atomic Artist, about a group of Japanese artists who are challenging Japan's faith in nuclear power. You can read the transcript here. Bear in mind, however, that most of Frontline's documentaries are on the long side, so our biggest difficulty might just be finding the time to watch whichever programme we wish to watch.

Watch the full episode. See more FRONTLINE.

Great Questions

Great Questions is an interesting site for advanced English students to develop their listening and speaking skills. It is a section of Story Corps, a site whose mission is to provide Americans of all backgrounds and beliefs with the opportunity to record, share, and preserve the stories of their lives.

The Great Questions Lists and Great Questions Generator provide you with excellent questions that you can use when interviewing people about their lives or about the lives of others. The Great Questions Lists is just a list of questions that you can select on your own. The Great Questions Generator will help you select the best questions for the person or people you're planning to interview.

You can listen to lots of stories in the section Listen to stories of the site, and some of the stories have a transcript and can be downloaded. Simply click on More Stories, and then click on Read more... whenever the stories allow you to do so. On the right-hand side you will be able to check whether there is a transcript, if the story can be downloaded as a podcast, related stories and so on.

As an example, I have included the story submitted by Frank Kovac, who explains how he built a planetarium in his garden. Frank's story is perfect for us, as it illustrates everything we can get from Great Questions.

H/T to Free Technology for Teachers.