Entries Tagged 'Language Learning' ↓

For Christmas, I got the book The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo from my husband. He wanted me to improve my English by reading good books that will increase my vocabulary and understanding. It worked. The story was very engrossing and kept my interest from start to finish, but that’s not the best thing that it did..

The book did something more than to make me think. I really did notice that it helped my grammar and vocabulary and increased my understanding. I really suggest reading good books for my students as well. I think there is no better way to improve your writing than by reading good books.

During this time of the year, there are always seems to be a list coming out for some kind of best of the year, this time is it is the word of the year. I have seen a couple of these lists of the top words of the previous year and I usually have actually heard of the words, but not this year. It seems like they have a list of some obscure words.

The American Dialect Society decided that subprime is the 2007 Word of the Year. Subprime is a euphemism for loans to people with less than perfect or less than golden credit. With the mortgage woes, I think most of us have heard the word.

The other nominations seem obscure to me like wrap rage. That’s the rage you feel when opening a plastic wrapper. Never heard of that word. Tapafication is the tendency of restaurants to serve small portions. I haven’t heard of this word either. Ditto for googleganger. Googleganger is someone who shows up when you do a Google search for your name but isn’t you.

Well, I least I learned a few new words. Now, can I put them into my vocabulary?