I was born in the lake district of New York state, one of those places of incomparable and majestic beauty on this earth. When I was 7 years old, my family moved to Colorado, at the foot of the breathtaking Rocky Mountains. I grew up simply in a small town; my grandfather from Hollandlived with us for a while, but I lacked the curiosity to find out moreabout…
Recently I attended the International Academic Conference on Education, Teaching and E-learning in Prague. I met a bevy of great experts. One of them was Janusz Zalewski, Ph.D., a professor of Computer Science from Florida Gulf Coast University. In his opinion, the traditional schema of education – one teacher and many students in a physical classroom – has died. The classroom no longer works as it worked for many previous…
Having taught Chinese for three years, I have gained much teaching experience and made many international friends. I feel very lucky to be a Chinese teacher as it is an ideal job for me. I really want to share some of my thoughts with you. As a TCSL major (Teaching Chinese as a Second Language), I felt so confident about my future career, but my first job interview…
My name is Natasha and I’m a qualified Russian teacher and native speaker. Usually I teach Russian to English-speaking people, so I would like to share with you some common challenges and mistakes in learning Russian. I know that a lot of people think that Russian is too difficult to learn, but I think it’s not as difficult as some people say. There are, however, some points that are…
My name is Natasha and I’m a qualified Russian teacher and native speaker. Usually I teach Russian to English-speaking people, so I would like to share with you some common challenges and mistakes in learning Russian. I know that a lot of people think that Russian is too difficult to learn, but I think it’s not as difficult as some people say. There are, however, some points that are hard…
Quick! Can you answer the following questions? Where do poles come from? What do Cats do? Where would you find a hamlet? OK – fair enough. These are weird questions. However, if your answers were: “Poland,” “catch mice” and “in Shakespeare,” then you need to keep reading, friend! Why? Because these were all trick questions. A Pole comes from Poland, but a pole is something…
I have the same colleagues on my team that started the company LOS with me in January 2013. None of the ten founding members have left. Once in a while, someone new joins us. We have invited people onto our team even when there was not work for them to do immediately. I have thus discovered that, surprisingly, a lack of work, or even a…
Let’s take the windy, windy road. My dove dove fast. Bass like bass. What’s going on with these sentences? No idea? Then keep reading and discover the mad world of heteronyms! 1. Close Meaning 1 — (verb) the opposite of “open” /kləʊz/ Sure — we all learned this one ages ago, right? “Can you open the window?” “Can you close the door?” All those phrases your…
OK. So you’ve just done your amazing presentation and you completely killed it. That’s a good thing – English idioms are strange. Your presentation was a complete success! So now you can go and sit in the hotel hot tub, eat carrot cake and watch Clint Eastwood movies, right? Wrong! There’s still a bit of work to do. But after that you can hit the…
OK. So you’ve practised your presentation. You’ve done the research, the script’s perfect and the slides are looking awesome. Then the big day arrives. You’re up there on stage, and they’re all looking at you. Waiting for you to say something clever. You know what that means, right? Well, sure – you feel so nervous that all you want to do is run to your…
Colours are everywhere! But colour isn’t just something we see; it’s something we feel. Different colours represent different things in lots of different cultures. Take the colour green, for example. It can represent nature, aliens,Islam, environmentalism, eternal life, money and cannabis. And that’sjust green. So it’s unsurprising that in many languages there are lots of idioms associated with colours. Here are some of the most…
OK. It finally happened. You need to give a half-hour presentation in front of hundreds of people. And you’ve never talked about anything in front of more than ten people before in your life. In fact, you almost fainted when you had to give a small speech on your birthday in front of a few friends and family. And now you have to talk in…
