Are you trying to learn new vocabulary? Form a long-lasting habit. Get your good old pen and a piece of paper. Draw a picture of something you want to remember. Come back to this picture every now and then. Not just once. Many times. Practice makes perfect. When 25 years have passed, ask yourself one simple question. Do I still recollect the word? I certainly…
I was meant to start this blog about procrastination weeks ago, but I kept putting it off. That is not only absolutely true, but a fine example of both irony and hypocrisy. Someone with a record of dithering is not really in the best position to lecture others about the virtues of proactivity. Nevertheless, in the words immortalised by the question master of the famous…
What on earth is an exonym? Good question! Let’s answer it by thinking of Germany: If you translate the word “Germany” (or “German” come to that) into your own language, you’ll probably find that it doesn’t sound like the word “German” at all. In fact, looking at this list, you can see that there are LOADS of ways to say “Germany” depending on where you’re…
Our son took off with my wife for a birthday celebration of his friend from school. It is a beautiful sunny day. I am sitting at home on the couch with the curtains pulled closed, trying to scrape together the most important from a sudden avalanche of thoughts. I start to hammer away at the keyboard. This article has been ripening inside me for half…
Wait. What’s the difference? And what on Earth is a “maxim”? OK. Good question. When I think about the differences between these, I imagine a sort of Venn diagram. Yeah, the one right at the top of this post. As you can see, this isn’t one of those classic (and much more satisfying) Venn diagrams with some circles overlapping each other; with some categories sharing…
I love it when language is playful. There are a lot of people out there who have this strange idea that we only use language to request and provide information, as if we were robots or members of some sort of cult. But the truth is that language is used in all sorts of ways. We use it to build relationships (or destroy them), we…
Compound Freaks – Season 3 Welcome to the challenging and fun world of English compound nouns! Compound nouns are integral to everyday life. These words are composed of two or more individual nouns joined together to form a new word. For example, ”work place” = workplace, the place where you go to work and earn money. Compound nouns take multiple, unpredictable forms. If you like…
Hiya! I’m Martin Norling. I’m the founder of, and CEO at, LOS Language Online Services, and my aspiration is to make LOS a truly virtual company. We’re going to start using XR technology in our courses from January 2022. We are not, however, throwing the baby out with the bathwater. No way, José! Everything we’ve created so far will still be fully functional; we just want…
Tímto textem bych rád povzbudil všechny své kolegy, studenty, kamarády, příbuzné a známé. Zkusme právě probíhající trend práce na dálku brát jako přípravu na budoucnost. No pain, no gain. Ne každý se může v současné době přesunout na chatu, kde je dostatek čistého vzduchu a spolehlivé internetové připojení. Pracovat z domova na 100 % se dá. Ale zvyknout si na online prostředí a naučit…
Long gone are the days when I taught English to people who shared the same cultural background and spoke the same language. Born and raised in the Czech Republic, I knew all about effectively communicating with Czechs. When I started my career in 2000, most people wanted to learn English, so I concentrated on translating for Czechs how the English felt about their language and…
Let’s start with the question “What’s an anagram?” I think the best way to answer this would be with the Bristol-based street artist, Banksy. Here he is: Just joking. That’s not Banksy; it’s Günter Grass, the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1999. No one knows what Banksy looks like – he’s one of those artists. Back when he got started, Banksy used…
Check this out! Some great examples of our students’ progress, and how we at LOS “accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, latch on to the affirmative and don’t mess with Mister In-Between” (Bing Crosby).
