If you are thinking ‘Patrick hasn’t posted anything for a long time’ then you’d be right! That usually means that it has been particularly busy at work and yes, it is marking time again. But, better late than never as the saying goes.
Readers who are interested in Britain may have been following the General Election in the UK which I mentioned a few times over the last few weeks. Well, it’s over at last and well, it was really exciting! You might remember me mentioning this guy:
and saying that nobody knew who he was. Well, now he’s our Deputy Prime Minister! Nobody saw that coming. (If you know his name then you win a prize.) We are in for a real test to see if our political system can manage a coalition government. The worst thing of all is that now I am older than the Prime Minister.
Everybody is getting in on captioned videos. I have to say I think this is where internet technology is really useful for language learning. When you can listen and read what people are saying your language learning can really take off. My advice to learners is to listen first, then read afterwards to get the bits which you missed and then listen again and read at the same time. If you listen to the hard bits several times as you read the words then you can start to separate the flow of sound into distinct words. The latest site with captioned videos which has come to my attention is 22frames.com. I had an e mail telling me: It is well known that that captioned and subtitled videos are useful for learning English. However, many are scattered across the Internet and mixed with the billions of other videos. 22frames aggregates them so that they can be found easily. Several users are now using the site to train themselves with English, particularly idioms, slang, and commonly mispronounced words. Well, I had a look and I liked it. Tell us what you think by leaving a comment. 22frames.com is here.