Follow readable on Twitter
www.flickr.com
wintersweet's items Go to wintersweet's photostream

English-language Word Processing

Several of my students have had Japanese computers and Japanese operating systems, with Japanese versions of Word. They needed to write English essays for their classes. However, it’s difficult to get the settings (line spacing, paper size, etc.) correct in Japanese, because everything is different. For example, English essays are spaced by line: double-spaced, single-spaced, [...]

New Laptop

I have a new laptop. I didn’t want a new laptop, but I have one. On May 28, I came home at night after I went to a convention. My door was open a little bit, and the frame (the part around the door) was damaged. I realized that someone must have broken in to [...]

A New Way to Read

If you do not live in an English-speaking country but you really want to read a lot more English, there is a new way to do it. Amazon.com has an “e-reader” called Kindle that lets you read books electronically. It’s very nice because the screen is very clear, like paper. It’s easier to read than [...]

Reading This Blog on Your Phone

The words “poll” and “survey” are similar. Both can be nouns or verbs. To “poll” or “survey” people (verb), you ask for their opinions about something, and then you share the answers. Newspapers and TV news shows often report on polls and surveys (noun). For example, “A new poll today showed that 89% of people [...]

Twitter

Do you use Twitter? (You can read about it in several languages on Wikipedia.) If you are a Twitter user, you can follow Readable. I’ll write about what I’m doing sometimes. I’ll try to use easy English, so beginners can read it too. You can send short, simple questions to me there. If the question [...]

5 Reasons for English Learners to Use Firefox

1. Firefox is safer and more reliable. The internet is full of misleading websites that can infect your computer with viruses and worse. Firefox will protect your computer better than Internet Explorer can. Firefox also crashes less often. 2. Firefox handles non-English languages well, so it’s a better choice for multilingual people who may view [...]