Our company blog featuring our work teaching English pronunciation, grammar, and test preparation in Washington D.C. Our place to share resources for improving English language skills and for newcomers to the city.
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Is texting killing language? |
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Another great lecture from the TED series. Linguist John McWhorter argues that texting is not destroying writing skills, but rather is an evolving hybrid of written and spoken language, a sort of "fingered speech" that is an exciting new form of communication. |
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Interesting article about grammar and identity |
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We think this is an excellent article about how native language structure affects one's interpretation of the world. The TED series is also a wonderful tool for practicing listening skills and expanding vocabulary. |
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Great listening/pronunciation resource: English Central |
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English Central is a fantastic site for individual practice in listening comprehension, pronunciation instruction, and vocabulary building. The site consolidates hundreds of authentic speech samples in the form of videos taken from media outlets. You can listen to the videos with or without subtitles and you can search for them according to the level of difficulty. In the pronunciation section you can record yourself, and when you play the recording back the site layers your speech sample with the native speaker's and shows you exactly where you might be mispronouncing sounds. Try it out! |
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Resource: Learning English at BBC |
We'd like to share this resource with you: Learning English at BBC. The web site pages feature excellent exercises for listening practice, including a news section, business English section, and "English as it's used today." Most audio segments feature a British accent, but the pronunciation section has an exercise on contrasting vowels that is useful for both American and British pronunciation.
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