Search This Blog
Showing posts with label WEEKLY PICKS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label WEEKLY PICKS. Show all posts

WEEKLY PICKS - 14

This is a weekly selection of recommended free online exercises, games, videos and resources so that you can improve your English language skills while having fun – ENJOY!

📜READING PICKS – Articles, blog posts, quizzes and more:

From BBC FUTURE: The obsolete tech that children can't recognise, Helene Schumacher. Show your age by seeing if you recognise this list of tech objects from the recent past. A recent study has revealed which kinds of tech have stood the test of time – in terms of recognition, if not use. Would your children recognise these? (And would you?). (Continue reading)

From Mind Tools Blog: Does Your Profession Reflect Who You Really Are?, by Bruce Murray. Toni Morrison is a favorite author of mine, who recently brought to my mind one of life’s fundamental questions: “Does the work that I do define me? Or is the ‘real me’ the person I am outside of my work?” – What Defines You? (Continue reading)

From BBC CAPITAL: This single phrase makes Japan go round, by Yukari Mitsuhashi. “Yoroshiku onegaishimasu” is a term that is heard all the time but hard to define. It’s the Swiss Army knife of the Japanese language, and it goes a long way in any type of situation.
... “It’s a phrase to convey respect and appreciation. It’s usually accompanied by a bow that can range from a little tilt of the head to a full sweeping bow.” Goto adds: “Yoroshiku onegaishimasu is critical to ensure that everyone is appreciated for their different skills. I would say it to the hair stylist that I am planning to see tomorrow. But I would say it much more seriously with desperation if I needed to go see a doctor tomorrow for a medical emergency. Both the stylist and the doctor play a role in society that makes the world go round and it’s really a sort of verbal lubricant.”
Although commonly translated in Japanese class textbooks or travel guides as ‘nice to meet you’ or ‘please take care of me’, these fall far short of truly encompassing its diverse uses and how it embodies Japanese culture and its people. (Continue reading)

🎬 VIDEO PICKS – Short and fun videos:

LESS-THAN-5-MINUTE VIDEOS:
Stop Saying...: Avoiding direct language to sound more polite (3:02 minutes)

5-TO-10-MINUTE VIDEOS:
Learn about cultural differences in 6 minutes (6:12 minutes)
Archetypes and Male Divinities: Crash Course World Mythology #15 (11:45 minutes)


💬 VOCABULARY PICKS:

📌 This week's special ⇒ WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE?

 Between or Among? (From Learn English with Emma)
After watching the video, take the quiz here ⇒ http://www.engvid.com/between-or-among/

➕ A few more vocab picks:
💡 GRAMMAR PICKS – Assorted exercises and games:



MORE PICKS NEXT WEEK!
at
Labels: , , , , , ,

WEEKLY PICKS - 13

This post offers you a selection of recommended free online exercises, games, videos and resources so that you can improve your English language skills while having fun – ENJOY!

📜READING PICKS – Articles, blog posts, quizzes and more:

 From BBC FUTURE: The new phones that are stuck in the past, by Peter Rubinstein. These sleek, downgraded cell phones are meant to promote mental wellbeing – by turning the clock back to the pre-smartphone era.
… After several years of tinkering, Neby invented the solution to his mobile obsession: another cell phone. But unlike his Blackberry, this one was specifically designed to promote healthy behaviour by being used as little as possible. With this idea in mind, Neby’s company Punkt was born.
It now stands as one of several start-ups aimed at tempering advanced technologies with a return to good old-fashioned humanity, providing an escape route from the anxiety and addiction of smartphones. Because these secondary devices do little more than make calls, owners say they have rediscovered the freedom they had before their iPhones were surgically attached to their palms. (Continue reading)

 From BBC CAPITAL: Are you guilty of 'cyberloafing'?, by Emily Lowe-Calverley and Rachel Grieve. A spot of online shopping, checking out your holiday snaps on Facebook: if you break up your work day with non-work online activities you may be guilty of 'cyberloafing'.
Cyberloafing – engaging in non-work online activities while “on the clock” – is a modern form of counterproductive workplace behaviour ...
Cyberloafing can lack malicious intent, but not always ... So, who is likely to cyberloaf, and why? (Continue reading)

🎬 VIDEO PICKS – Short and fun videos:

LESS-THAN-5-MINUTE VIDEOS:
BBC Masterclass: Advanced Learner Mistakes - go, come, bring and take (3:26 minutes)

News Review: Money spent on time makes you happy (8:14 minutes)

A LITTLE LONGER BUT WORTH IT!
Meet Your Master: Getting to Know Your Brain – Crash Course Psychology #4 (12:33 minutes)

MORE PICKS NEXT WEEK!
at
Labels: , , , , , ,

WEEKLY PICKS - 12

This post offers you a selection of recommended free online exercises, games, videos and resources so that you can improve your English language skills while having fun! ENJOY!

📜 READING PICKS – Articles, blog posts, and more:

From BBC CAPITAL: What is the future of English in the US? By Bryan Lufkin. Similar to the UK and Australia, US citizens can rely on the luxury of being native English speakers – but in today's changing world, could monolingual Americans be left behind? (Continue reading)

From BBC FUTURE: The 'invisible allies' inside the body, by David Robson. How bacteria can save children’s lives. A ground-breaking new project in Bangladesh could help reduce the life-long health problems that come from childhood malnourishment – by focusing on the gut. (Continue reading)

From BBC NEWS: The troubled 29-year-old helped to die by Dutch doctors, by Linda Pressly. BBC News, The Netherlands. In January a young Dutch woman drank poison supplied by a doctor and lay down to die. Euthanasia and doctor-assisted suicide are legal in Holland, so hers was a death sanctioned by the state. But Aurelia Brouwers was not terminally ill – she was allowed to end her life on account of her psychiatric illness.
"I'm 29 years old and I've chosen to be voluntarily euthanised. I've chosen this because I have a lot of mental health issues. I suffer unbearably and hopelessly. Every breath I take is torture…" (Continue reading)

🎬 VIDEO PICKS – Short and fun videos:

LESS-THAN-5-MINUTE VIDEOS:
How do we smell? - Rose Eveleth (4:19 minutes)
A LITTLE LONGER BUT WORTH IT!
LITERATURE: Franz Kafka (10:32 minutes)
💡 GRAMMAR PICKS – Assorted exercises and games:

MORE PICKS NEXT WEEK!
at
Labels: , , , , , ,

WEEKLY PICKS - 11

This post offers you a selection of recommended free online exercises, games, videos and resources so that you can improve your English language skills while having fun! ENJOY!

📜READING PICKS – Articles, blog posts, and more:

Article from BBC FUTURE: Five myths about heatwaves, by Claudia Hammond. What you should – and shouldn’t – do in a heatwave.
As summer temperatures climb, keeping cool becomes a priority. But what age-old tips are worth sticking to? BBC Future takes a look.
With heatwaves everywhere from Japan to the UK, and Algeria to California, everyone has plenty of tips on how to keep cool. But which tips and facts stand up to scientific scrutiny? We look at the evidence for whether you should do the following 5 things or not. (Continue reading)

Article from BBC CAPITAL: Does ‘mindfulness’ kill motivation? By Jessica Brown. Companies are investing huge sums in mindfulness programmes for employees, but could these be having unintended results?
Meditation has long shed its Buddhist roots to become a secular answer to all of our ills in the West, with numerous studies finding benefits like reduced stress and better concentration.
Some of the world’s biggest firms, including Google and Nike, have embraced the practice, using meditation programmes as a way of tackling stress, staff turnover and absenteeism.
Meditation is also used as a tool to motivate workers, partly thanks to research on the relationship between wellbeing and productivity. But a new study suggests that mindfulness meditation, a popular type of meditation that practises being aware in the present, may not be the best way to increase your motivation at work. (Continue reading)

🎬 VIDEO PICKS – Short and fun videos:

 LESS-THAN-5-MINUTE VIDEOS:
USING ZERO ARTICLES (2:05 MINUTES)

5-TO-10-MINUTE VIDEOS:
10 Things That Will SHOCK You About London, England (9:06 minutes)
A LITTLE LONGER BUT WORTH IT!
RSA ANIMATE: The Empathic Civilisation (10:39 minutes)
💬 VOCABULARY PICKS:

MORE PICKS NEXT WEEK!
at
Labels: , , , , , ,

WEEKLY PICKS - 10

This post offers you a selection of recommended free online exercises, games, videos and resources so that you can improve your English language skills while having fun! ENJOY!

📜READING PICKS – Articles, blog posts, quizzes and more:

Article from BBC EARTH: The river that runs through the dawn of life, by Vivien Cumming. Every river has a story to tell and this one covers 500 million years.
Rocks sculpted by the Coppermine River took us on a journey through 500 hundred million years of Earth’s history, starting over 1.5 billion years ago when the earliest multicellular life was beginning to emerge. By studying and sampling the rocks along the riverbanks, and hiking into the wilderness using drones to map the area, we hoped to expand our understanding of early life on Earth.
The Coppermine River winds its way through the high Arctic landscape, cutting the easiest path through a remote part of the world until it reaches the Arctic Ocean and the Inuit settlement of Kugluktuk, where we ended our journey. (Continue reading)

Article from BBC FUTURE: How your age affects your appetite, by Alex Johnstone. Our relationship with food changes through our lives, and there are seven stages of life that affect how we eat.
Do you eat to live or live to eat? We have a complicated relationship with food, influenced by cost, availability and even peer pressure. But something we all share is appetite – our desire to eat.
While hunger – our body’s way of making us desire food when it needs feeding – is a part of appetite, it is not the only factor. After all, we often eat when we’re not hungry, or may skip a meal despite pangs of hunger. Recent research has highlighted that the abundance of food cues – smells, sounds, advertising – in our environment is one of the main causes of overconsumption. (Continue reading)

🎬 VIDEO PICKS – Short and fun videos:

 LESS-THAN-5-MINUTE VIDEOS:
5-TO-10-MINUTE VIDEOS:
A LITTLE LONGER BUT WORTH IT!
💬 VOCABULARY PICKS:
💡 GRAMMAR PICKS – Assorted exercises and games:


MORE PICKS NEXT WEEK!
at
Labels: , , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)

BLOG

Popular Posts


WEEKLY PICKS