These 15 countries speak English as a second language best Nearly two billion people - that's almost one in three people - study English as a non-native language. In the developing world, English is less of a foreign language skill and more a tool synonymous with development, expanding a country's economy and increasing its connectedness to the rest of the world. And for small countries with few native-language speakers, it also makes sense to learn a little of the world's lingua franca for business and policy making. The English Proficiency Index has just released statistics on where English is learned around the world and quality of teaching to find the countries with the highest proficiency of English as a second language: Four Nordic countries and the Netherlands come top of the rankings, with at least 65 per cent of the population fluent in English. Other European nations dominate the rest of the list. The only non-European countries to feature are highly-developed city state Singapore, and its neighbour Malaysia, as well as Argentina.
lieder translations Welcome! The Lied, Art Song, and Choral Texts Archive is an ever-expanding collection of texts used in 128,885 Lieder and other classical art songs (Kunstlieder, mélodies, canzoni, романсы, canciones, liederen, canções, sånger, laulua, písně, piosenki, etc.) as well as in many choral works and other types of classical vocal pieces. The archive currently indexes 78,599 texts with 22,801 translations to English, French, Italian, Dutch, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, and others. The website has almost daily updates . Where to start? The Introduction is a good place, or the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ). You can browse the collection by using the indexes by composer, text poet or author, first line, title, or language; or you can search for words or phrases. The following links will give you an idea of the type of information this website has to offer. Be sure to read this note about how to tell when a text shown is the sung text or the published stand-alone text or both.
Using plays in the language class Here are some suggestions and guidance on how to get the best from your students. Using plays with language learners can Improve their reading and speaking skillsEncourage creativityHelp them experiment with language -tone of voice, body language and their own lines if they are involved in writing the play.Bring them out of themselves -some students like performing or find the script gives them confidenceInvolve the whole class – non speaking parts can be given to learners who do not wish to speak or are less confident. Technical parts of a production can give others a role: sound effects, making scenery, being in charge of lights, props or prompting their classmates from the “wings”. Plays suitable for language learners Short narratives based on very brief scenes of 2-3 lines maximumPlays with more than one narrator and plenty of humour through actionPlays that can be broken up with songs.One or two scene mini-plays based on stories familiar to the class. Making your own plays
Italy rescues 600 migrants from Mediterranean Italy has rescued about 600 migrants in six operations, one in cooperation with Maltese authorities, in the past 24 hours, the country's coastguard told Al Jazeera. The rescued people included 100 Somali migrants who were stranded on a plastic boat in the Mediterranean on Tuesday, an official involved in the rescue said. A coastguard source, contacted on Wednesday, did not to give further details about the operations. One of the stranded migrants had called Al Jazeera on Tuesday and said the boat was flooding with seawater and that those on board - men, women and children - needed to be rescued immediately. The migrant contacted Al Jazeera after obtaining the phone contact details of the channel's journalist from a friend in Somalia. "We left from Tripoli three days ago and we are going to Italy," said the migrant who declined to disclose his name to Al Jazeera. "We don't have supplies, we don't have food, there are pregnant women on board. Source: Al Jazeera and agencies
aria database Christmas Traditions, Christmas History, Christmas Around the World, The Christmas Story and Christmas Fun! Here are the funniest 'global stereotype' maps Unless you've been living in a cave for the last few years, you've definitely seen (and laughed at) the wildly popular 'global stereotype' maps. The man behind them is Bulgarian artist Yanko Tsvetkov, who told i100.co.uk he started making the satirical maps for fun when trying to explain European geopolitics to friends from abroad. Yanko said the maps he put up on Flickr "accidently" went viral, and based on the interest, he decided to expand the project. It was so popular it ended up spawning two books called Atlas of Prejudice Volumes 1 and 2, and Yanko has just finished a third which unveils "new fascinating landscapes of human bigotry." His ideas span from visualisations of how the ancients viewed the world: To the intricacies of modern geopolitics... Cultural phenomenons (these maps are brand new): And even predictions for the future. Yanko told i100.co.uk he doesn't have a simple explanation for why people love the stereotyping maps so much. Yanko Tsvetkov
Olla- ja omistaa-verbit | Enkkua myönteinen I am you are he/she/it is we are they are kielteinen I am not = I’m not you are not = you aren’t he/she/it is not = he/she/it isn’t we are not = we aren’t they are not = they aren’t kysyvä Am I? Are you? Is he/she/it? Are we? Are they? myönteinen Have I got? Like this: Like Loading... If you can pronounce correctly every word in this poem, you will be speaking English better than 90% of the native English speakers in the world After trying the verses, a Frenchman said he’d prefer six months of hard labour to reading six lines aloud, and we’ll be honest with you, we struggled with parts of it. Dearest creature in creation, Study English pronunciation. I will teach you in my verse Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse. I will keep you, Suzy, busy, Make your head with heat grow dizzy. Tear in eye, your dress will tear. You’ve been reading “The Chaos” by Gerard Nolst Trenité, written nearly 100 years ago in 1922, designed to demonstrate the irregularity of English spelling and pronunciation.
Can you pronounce all the words in this poem? Most people probably can't Dutch poet Gerard Nolste Trenité wrote a colossal poem containing about 800 bizarre irregularities in the English language. Written in 1922, the poem reads part tongue twister, part instruction manual. It begins: Dearest Creature in creation Study English pronunciation I will teach you in my verse Sounds like corpse corps horse and worse Let's stop there for a moment. Once you've managed to stumble your way through the first part, surely you get used to it? No. Hear me say devoid of trickery Daughter laughter and Terpsichore Typhoid measles topsails aisles Exiles similes and reviles Scholar vicar and cigar Solar mica war and far One anemone Balmoral Kitchen lichen laundry laurel There's also this wonderfully simple line: Eye I ay aye whey and key The poem finally ends on a very important question: Finally which rhymes with enough Though through plough or dough or cough? To which he helpfully answers: My advice is to give up! How did you get on? HT The Poke
Get Organised! Collaborative Speaking Tasks | Tim's Free English Lesson Plans Image credit: www.organisemyhouse.com Follow me on twitter @RobbioDobbio This is a speaking lesson plan designed for teenagers that focuses on various exponents of suggesting, offering, agreeing and disagreeing. The main aim of the lesson is for students to improve their collaborative speaking skills, it will work well as preparation for FCE/CAE speaking exams. get-organised – Powerpoint Get organised Teachers notes Teacher’s notes The class is loosely based on Willis’s Task Based Learning in that students are given the opportunity to repeatedly practice a similar task and hopefully internalise some useful exponents for collaborative speaking. Put students into groups of 3, it would also work with pairs but 3s are ideal. Show the 2nd slide of the power point. Note: This is a good opportunity to teach the difference between “will” for decisions in the moment of speaking and “be going to” for a future intention. “We’ll have the party on Friday so we can stay up late.” Follow up Like this:
Twelve phrases only british people understand Americans have always had a bizarre fixation with the Queen (a remnant of the empire George Washington couldn’t scrub away?) and her birthday seems to be no different. The Queen is turning 90 this week, and it seems people abroad are more excited than many Britons themselves. But how well do people abroad actually understand Britain? Here are twelve phrases that'll be utter gobbledygook to everyone else but the British: 1. It basically means “there you are!” However “fanny” is also British slang for vagina, and although this ruder context isn’t used, it's still baffling to others. 2. This means someone has lost their temper, but it can also refer to a loss of sanity. For example, "Donald Trump has completely lost the plot." 3. For some reason British people think donkey’s years are really really long, and use this expression when talking about a long period of time. The phrase is believed to have originated from cockney rhyming slang “donkey’s ears” 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. No, it’s not a disease. 9. 10.