The English Blog

Making the most of Twitter

Real-time micro-blogging is gaining in popularity. But if you're wondering what's the point, read The Guardian's guide to the benefits of Twitter—and how to get started.

READ ALSO
• Inside Twitter HQ (Guardian)

• Guardian interview with Twitter founder Biz Stone

• Twitter etiquette: the rules (Guardian)

• How to be a 'twitt': a guide for Twitter's late adopters (Guardian)

British Council TeachingEnglish

The British Council's award-winning TeachingEnglish site brings together everything busy teachers need, from classroom materials to ideas for development.

The site is divided into four main sections:

THINK: where you can find teachers' articles on different aspects of teaching, from classroom practice to learning theory

TRY: where you can find lesson plans, quizzes, ideas for activities and other materials which you can download to use in class

TALK: where you can keep you own personal blog, join discussion forums and and form groups around particular areas of interest.

TRANSFORM: where teachers can can get help and advice on their professional development (training, qualifications, personal development, specialist areas, etc.). 

The materials on this site are designed for non-native speaker teachers of English working predominantly in secondary education in state schools around the world. However, the wide variety of material available will also be of interest to teachers of all age groups and working in other kinds of teaching institutions.

COMMENT
Without doubt one of the best ELT resource sites. The teaching materials are particularly good. Check out this advertisement storyboard lesson plan, for example.

Cartoon: The Nuremberg Defence

This cartoon by Morten Morland at TimesOnline uses a historical event to comment on the current controversy over MPs' expenses. The Nuremberg Defence is a legal defence that essentially states that the defendant was "only following orders" and is therefore not responsible for his crimes. The defence was most famously employed during the Nuremberg Trials, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of Nazi Germany after its defeat in World War II. [Source: Wikipedia]

In the first panel of the cartoon we see a Nazi in the dock. His defence is that he was only following orders. The second panel shows the waterboarding of a prisoner in Guantanamo Bay. The soldier carrying out the torture uses the same defence. In the third panel, an MP is taking delivery of a load of goods he has bought on expenses. His defence is that he was only following the system. In reality, this is what many MPs caught up in the expenses scandal have claimed: that they were acting within the rules. However, their lack of remorse has not gone down well with the public, whose prejudices about 'greedy politicians' have been confirmed by this affair.

VOCABULARY
1. There's a play on words relating to the word 'order'. In the first two panels, the word 'order' means the same as 'command'—something you are told to do by a superior. In the final panel, 'order' has a different meaning. It refers to goods which have been bought.

2. 'Defence' is the English spelling. Americans spell it 'defense' (with an 's').

MORE CARTOONS

Gerald Scarfe (Sunday Times)

Peter Brookes (The Times)

Posterous: Group Blogging Made Easy

Posterous lets you post things online fast using email. You just have to send an email to post@posterous.com and you get an instant reply with a link to your new Posterous blog. Attach any type of file and it will be posted along with the text of your email. Add other people's email addresses to any Posterous site you control, and they can then email stuff in too and receive automatic updates when anything is posted.

COMMENT

Posterous has fantastic potential as a platform for class blogging projects. You could also use it as a discussion forum. One of the problems I've had with blogging projects is that the students can't know when something's been posted, unless they're using a feed reader, and in my experience most students can't be bothered with that. With Posterous, not only does everyone get an email with what's been posted, but there's a record of all that content on the blog as well.  

Thanks to Mashable for the pic.

Wikinews

Wikinews is a free news resource. Like its big sister Wikipedia, Wikinews is run, funded and written by volunteers donating their time and money, and has no advertising. Articles are written collaboratively for a global audience. As well as starting your own articles, you can edit any page you see — expand it, fix spelling mistakes, correct facts, make policy suggestions, talk to other Wikinews contributors and more. Discussion is encouraged, and there are plenty of people around to learn from. It is Wikinews policy to have neutral point of view, ensuring the reporting is as fair as possible. 

WHAT I THINK
The 'latest news' on Europe was 4 days old when I checked out the site, so Wikinews may not yet be the best place to go for breaking news. However, there is some interesting original content, such as an interview with Noam Chomsky and a personal report on the G20 protests in London. There's also a weekly World News Quiz. With the printed press in seemingly terminal decline and the rise of services like Twitter, it could be that sites like Wikinews will provide a model for future news coverage.

Alibela: Language Courses for Free

Alibela is a place where you can take part in language courses as both student and teacher. Like everyone, you are an expert in at least one language, typically your native tongue, and you qualify to give a conversation course. In return, you can take courses in any language you like. Getting a course is based on a basic point system: A course costs 10 points, a course given earns 10 points. For more details you can read the FAQ.

Comments
Sounds like a great idea for any English-speaker who wants to learn a rare language. Nearly 100 languages are listed from Albanian to Zulu. The website is pretty basic, however, and could do with a few more suggestions as to how the lessons should be organised.

Blogs Exchange Language Learning Community

Blogs-Exchange (BE) is the first community of blogs dedicated to the learning and interchange of languages (Spanish and English so far). It takes just a minute to create your blog, and soon you will be learning Spanish or English. Request a learning buddy (intercambio) if you prefer to learn in tandem. Reflect, write, give and receive feedback. If you are a teacher, sign your students up and ask for a free assessment. Find out more on the About page.

Comments
This looks like an interesting initiative. It's a pity the website isn't more user-friendly—it's easy to get lost in all that English/Spanish text.

eslbase

eslbase is an attractive site with a lot of useful resources for EFL teachers including job boards, country guides and a forum/chat section. The site also has a good selection of downloadable activities and worksheets for teachers to use in class.

Verdict: One of the better "all-round" TEFL sites. The advice section will be particularly helpful for teachers looking for jobs abroad.

Twitter Bores

I must confess that I find the whole Twitter phenomenon rather bemusing. An opinion which this article from MailOnline did nothing to change.

Millionaire celebrities, you might imagine, lead riveting lives, full to the brim with excitement and derring-do.

But the website Twitter – one of the web’s fastest-growing phenomena – has cast a fascinating light on just how mundane, not to say downright dull, the day-to-day existence of many stars really is.

Twitter, a social networking site, allows its six million users to broadcast their every move to the watching world through 140-character messages sent via the web or their mobile phone.

Since ‘twittering’ revolves around talking about yourself, it’s no surprise that it has been embraced by celebrities and politicians – but most of their posts would be worthy of the most tedious dinner-party bore. Read full article >>

Comments: I already spend too much time reading e-mails and RSS feeds—not to mention blogging— without having to worry about "tweeting" as well. However, if you are into Twitter, please leave a comment and let us non-Twitterers know what the attraction is.

Jollo - Online Translation Community

Jollo is an online translation site with a difference as it offers users results from multiple translation engines (e.g. Google, Microsoft, Worldlingo etc.).

The translation quality of each engine is measured by collecting user vote/feedback on translation results. (It turns out that some engines are better than Google for certain language pairs.) 

Jollo also offers users the option to request human translations, as complex sentences are not translated well by tools like Google Translate.

Verdict: The community features make Jollo an interesting alternative to all those other online translation services, some of which I reviewed here and here.

italki.com social language learning network

I got an e-mail from Toffler Niemuch telling me about his site italki.com. Here's how he describes it: 

We are a social network that is trying to harness the web for social language learning. We have lots of language partners that are interested in language exchanges, tutoring, and simply making friends. We also have functions like social questions and answers (ask any question about learning English and get an answers from English speakers), shared files (downloading of textbooks), and more.

If anyone is a member of italki.com or has tested it, please leave a comment.

Lang-8 Social Networking Service

I got an e-mail from Jaered, who works at a website called lang-8 and thought readers of The English Blog might find it interesting. Here's the site description: 

Lang-8 is a SNS (Social Networking Service) site for language exchange and international communication. In this site, you can write in the language you are studying, and other users (whose native language is the language you are studying) can correct your diary. And you can also correct the diaries of those who are studying your native language. 

You are able to not only learn a language, but help teach others your own language as well. For example, if there is a Japanese person studying English and an American person studying Japanese, the American can correct the English entries of the Japanese, and the Japanese, in turn, can correct the Japanese-written entries of the American. 

It helps to make teaching one's native language simpler and takes less time than traditional teaching methods. It is also very beneficial to be taught and corrected by a native speaker of the language you are studying. In this way, with lang-8, users can teach and learn a language as well as have international exchanges with each other.

Read a detailed review including a YouTube video.

DailyMe - The Next Movement in News

DailyMe allows users to choose the mix of news and information that's relevant and interesting to them and then delivers it in whatever format the user wants - on the web, via email, on mobile devices and even in personalized print newsletters.

At DailyMe.com, users have access to three views of the news – editorialized, personalized and socialized:

• The personalized My DailyMe allows users to select their news preferences from topics, sources, or keywords.
• Top News presents the most important stories as selected by the DailyMe editorial team.
• DailyWe is driven by its community, including the unique Meme–It feature that allows users to rate stories by emotion. 

Verdict: DailyMe is a news junkie's dream. In fact, I've yet to come across a better news aggregator (but Newser is also worth a look).

Adopt a Word

The English language is officially up for sale in a new fundraising initiative by children's communication charity I CAN, supported by dictionary publisher Collins. Participants can adopt a word for a year from just £20. A number of celebrities have already adopted their favourite words. Spice Girl Mel C chose her favourite colour 'red' because it is 'strong, powerful, energetic and can be dangerous', while 'Countdown' dictionary expert Susie Dent chose 'moonset'. To adopt a word and make a donation, log on to www.adoptaword.com.

Twitter in Plain English

If you are a regular blog-reader, you've probably come across references to Twitter and micro-blogging. But have you any idea what Twitter is? If not, watch this video from CommonCraft which gives an easy-to-understand explanation (view transcript).

I'm not into micro-blogging myself - I already spend too much time online. Still, I'd welcome comments from any Twitter users about what they use it for.