Readable Blog

If you are an intermediate to advanced learner, I recommend subscribing to English with Stacy on Youtube. Here’s one of her videos: “-ing and -ed adjectives.” This video will help you use adjectives like “interested” and “interesting” correctly. The videos are great because they include some review and practice so that you can check your understanding. She doesn’t just talk to you! It’s very nice.

These videos will help you with listening and with grammar. She also explains how Americans (and some other English speakers) change their pronunciation when they are talking in a relaxed or normal way, which she calls “Fast English.” You don’t have to copy this pronunciation unless you have a special reason for needing to sound like this kind of English speaker. However, it’s still very useful for listening comprehension.

By the way, Stacy is the co-author of the current edition of Understanding and Using English Grammar, the advanced grammar book that I recommend for self-study.

I’m sorry I haven’t posted this summer. I had a health problem at the beginning of the summer. I’m getting better, but I had to concentrate on that for a while. Here’s something that has no words but is very interesting:

These two guys drove from San Francisco to Washington, D. C.–all the way across the United States. That’s about 3000 miles or 4900 km, 48 hours of driving if you never stop! They had a camera that took 1 photo every 10 seconds. They put all the photos together to make a video. (That’s called “time-lapse photography”–you can find some beautiful videos on YouTube if you search for “time lapse Grand Canyon” “time lapse Yosemite” etc. Try it!)

By watching the video, you can travel all the way across North American in 4 minutes! It might give you a headache to travel that fast…After you watch the video, you can click on it to go to the YouTube page. Look in the information box to the right, and you can find a link to a map of the route that they took across the US.

Does anything surprise you in the video? Did you see fewer cities than you expected? More trees? Lots of different kinds of scenery? (I think I saw a rainbow!) I’ve never driven this route myself, but I’ve driven across the southern part of the US. When you drive across the southern part, you see more desert. Here is some of that area (not time-lapse; regular video).

I hope your study of English is going well! Comment if you have questions you would like me to try to answer.

The terms “MV,” “PV,” and “CM” are popular in Asian countries such as Japan, China, Taiwan, and Korea. However, most people in North America and other English-speaking countries don’t know what MV, PV, and CM mean. You need to be careful with letter-based words (usually called “acronyms”). Even though they’re based on real English words, native English speakers may not use the same acronyms.

• Pitfall: MV, PV
  American English: Music video. We don’t generally use this abbreviation (short form). We just say “video” or “music video.”
  Example 1: My band made our first music video this weekend! Example 2: Did you see Gnarls Barkley’s new music video? I really liked it!
  
  
  
  
  Here’s a music video by Calexico, a band I like. It might be hard to hear the words, so you can read the lyrics here. Their lyrics are very poetic, so it’s probably still hard to understand!
  
  
• Pitfall: CM
  American English: Ad (casual), advertisement, commercial. (Note: “advertisement” is pronounced differently in British and American English.) Usually, to refer to both radio and TV advertisements, we just say “ad.”
  Example 1: I really hate that new diamond ring ad–it’s sexist and insulting to women. Example 2: I love watching TV shows on DVD because I don’t have to see any commercials!
  
  
  
  This ad from the pay-TV network Discovery Channel was really popular last year. A lot of people made their own versions, and the geeky webcomic xkcd even did a parody.
  

Do you know some other acronyms that you’re not sure about? You can leave a comment and ask, and I’ll try to to answer you or write about it in a future Pitfalls post.

(Read other “Pitfalls” posts about words and phrases that can be a little dangerous.)

The word “dream” has several meanings in English. The basic meaning refers to the “dreams” that you have you’re sleeping–you feel like you are seeing or doing things that aren’t real. Another meaning is idiomatic, referring to your hopes and wishes. You may have heard of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech, “I Have a Dream.” In this speech, he is not talking about the dreams he has when he sleeps. He is talking about his hope that racism will end someday. This was a big dream, and I think it hasn’t fully come true yet. (When a dream “comes true,” it becomes real.) Most people have big and small dreams for their lives. Childhood dreams are the hopes and wishes that you have when you are a child. Some childhood dreams are realistic (such as visiting another country); some are difficult (such as becoming a professional singer); and others are almost impossible (such as becoming a superhero or owning a castle).

Recently, many internet users have been watching a video called “Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.” Randy Pausch was a writer and computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University, a well-known university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. He died on July 25, 2008, when he was just 47 years old. Last fall, he gave a lecture called “Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.” Many people really liked it at the time, and it has become even more popular since then.

It’s a very long speech, and it is definitely at an advanced English level. There are images included as part of his presentation, which may help you understand what he’s saying. However, he does use some slang, many idioms, etc. (You can read the speech here [PDF] or here [website]. Look for page 3, where it says Randy Pausch:. That’s where the video starts.) Give the video a try if you are interested:

What were your childhood dreams? Have they come true? I’m honestly not sure what mine were, but maybe I should try to remember them.

If you’re an adult, you should check out the Real ESL blog. This blog includes video conversations and explanations of normal spoken English (including slang). Kim, the blogger, makes her own videos to explain things to you. Currently, she has videos about everything from pronouncing “th” to ordering coffee at Starbucks.

You should be at an intermediate or advanced level to use these videos. You should be an adult, too, because Kim feels that it’s useful to be able to understand and use “swear words.” These are words that most English-speaking adults use when they are angry or joking or speaking very strongly, but you can also get into a lot of trouble if you use them incorrectly.

I hope you’ll check out Kim’s videos and make sure to visit her blog regularly.

(Another good resource for learning to speak natural-sounding English is the Speak English Like an American book and CD series. I’ll be reviewing these soon.)

Elizabeth Bear, an excellent writer whom I’ve gotten to know online, posted this line in her blog today: To double your success rate, quintuple your failure rate.

She was talking about writing fiction, but this is also true for learning languages. Research shows that students who are brave enough to take more chances DO make more mistakes, but they ALSO learn faster and better. If you only say or write things that you are sure are correct, it’s nearly impossible for you to raise your level.

I know it’s scary, but it’s also necessary.

Now, I don’t particularly like Nike, and I dislike TV ads in general. However, I think Michael Jordan does a good job of reminding us that making mistakes and failing is part of getting better and winning:

When you hesitate to speak, think of what Michael Jordan and Elizabeth Bear said, and then take that chance.