Thursday, March 28, 2019

News Literacy 2



VOA Learning English: New Literacy 2   lesson  /  pdf

VOA Learning English: New Literacy Playlist




Passive Voice with Get pdf

Monday, March 25, 2019

News Literacy 1

News Lit Quiz
How news literate are you?  The next 12 questions will help you test your news literacy knowledge.



VOA Learning English: News Literacy Introduction: News Through Time

newsletter

VOANews: American Moms Fight for a More Family-Friendly Country

MomsRising is one of the largest women’s organizations in the U.S. The group's goal is to ease challenges women and mothers face on a daily basis. Tatiana Vorozhko spent a day on Capitol Hill with organization members and saw for herself how they're fighting for a more family-friendly America. Elona Voytovych narrates.

Monday, March 18, 2019

The World Is Big and I am Small



The World Is Big and I am Small

Nine-year old Zayne Cowie turns the table on grown-ups, reading a children’s book written especially for them: “Goodbye, Earth!” This book calls out the adults who’ve failed at addressing climate change, leaving the consequences to be dealt with by younger generations.


VOANews: Tens of Thousands Join Climate 'March of the Century' in Paris video

VOA Learning English: Study: Warm Waters Caused Many Sea Creatures to Move Far North (pdf)

JenniferESL:  AT/IN/BY the end and more prepositions of time 🕰️ Grammar with JenniferESL 📽️


Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation is a non-fiction book written by Lynne Truss, the former host of BBC Radio 4's Cutting a Dash programme. In the book, published in 2003, Truss bemoans the state of punctuation in the United Kingdom and the United States and describes how rules are being relaxed in today's society. Her goal is to remind readers of the importance of punctuation in the English language by mixing humour and instruction.

Overview: There is one chapter each on apostrophes; commas; semicolons and colons; exclamation marks, question marks and quotation marks; italic type, dashes, brackets, ellipses and emoticons; and the last one on hyphens. Truss touches on varied aspects of the history of punctuation and includes many anecdotes, which add another dimension to her explanations of grammar. In the book's final chapter, she opines on the importance of maintaining punctuation rules and addresses the damaging effects of email and the Internet on punctuation.

The title of the book is a syntactic ambiguity‍—‌a verbal fallacy arising from an ambiguous grammatical construction‍—‌and derived from a joke about bad punctuation:
A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and proceeds to fire it at the other patrons.
"Why?" asks the confused, surviving waiter amidst the carnage, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.
"Well, I'm a panda," he says. "Look it up."
The waiter turns to the relevant entry in the manual and, sure enough, finds an explanation. "Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."
An Educational Companion to EATS, SHOOTS and LEAVES by Lynne Truss pdf

Sub-titled video of the author reading EATS, SHOOTS and LEAVES  (fast British English)

EATS, SHOOTS and LEAVES by Lynne Truss. Grandma Annii's Storytime (video of kids version of the book)

vocabulary.com: "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" by Lynne Truss, Introduction–The Tractable Apostrophe

Monday, March 11, 2019

What Americans Really Earn After Taxes




VOANews: Untangling US Tax System

Nearly all U.S. taxpayers say American tax law, which runs tens of thousands of pages, is an incredibly complicated, annoying mess. And there is no agreement on how to fix the problem. Republicans recently outlined a new effort they say will be clearer, fairer and helpful to the economy. Critics say the Republican plan would cut taxes for the rich and increase the U.S. debt. VOA's Jim Randle looks at how the system is supposed to work, and what critics say is wrong.

VOX: Why Republicans failed to fit taxes onto a postcard video

VOANews: What Americans Really Earn After Taxes pdf

The Internet Can’t Get Enough Of These Hilarious Coincidences

Thursday, March 7, 2019

Jobs of the Future




VOANews: Workers Must Train for Jobs Computers and Robots Can't Do

Stock prices have hit new highs. Consumer confidence has been rising. And job creation has increased for 76 consecutive months.That's a snapshot of the U.S. economy that President Donald Trump inherits. But as Mil Arcega reports, the new president will face serious challenges as he takes responsibility for the economy of the future.

VOANews: Best and Worst Jobs of the Future  pdf

Kiplinger: 30 of the Best Jobs for the Future
https://www.kiplinger.com/slideshow/business/T012-S001-best-jobs-for-the-future-2018/index.html

Kiplinger: 20 Worst Jobs for the Future
https://www.kiplinger.com/slideshow/business/T012-S001-worst-jobs-for-the-future-2018/index.html

Also see:

VOANews: Most of 2030's Jobs Haven't Been Invented Yet pdf

VOANews: Best US Jobs That Don't Require College Degree

VOA Learning English: Report: 25 Percent of US Jobs at Risk of Being Lost to Machines


WEForum: Humans wanted: why automation won’t kill off your job (thanks Tina)


Wednesday, March 6, 2019

STEM Worries



VOANews: White House Worries Too Few American Kids Study Science and Math

White House officials are worried that unless more American students study math and science the United States won't be able to compete with China, India and other nations. The U.S. administration has just published a five-year plan to boost the number of kids who go into Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, or STEM subjects. VOA's Sahar Majid has more in this report narrated by Bezhan Hamdard.

VOALearning English: US Doctoral Degrees May Be Losing Their Appeal pdf

CANDIDATE FOR A PULLET SURPRISE

Monday, March 4, 2019

Nine surprising Facts about the English Language



VOA Learning English: Everyday Grammar: Portmanteaus

ExpressoEnglish: New English words added to the dictionary in 2018

VOA Learning English: Nine surprising Facts about the English Language  pdf

I take it that you already know
alternate ending:
I'd learned to speak it when I was five!
And yet to write it, the more I sigh,
I'll not learn how 'til the day I die.

Ricky and Lucy: Learning English: "Ough" is tough to figure out

I take it you already know ( English pronunciation )
https://youtu.be/cRe-j2EC1j8

Student Council Ballot

request: forming questions in English with different tenses and aspects
https://esldiscussions.com/