Monday, September 25, 2017

10 Things to Do If You Find Learning Languages Way Too Difficult by Rachel Bartee

Language learning is an exciting adventure but at the same time, it can be a mind-boggling process. However, it’s not a sprint race but rather a marathon. You need to invest a lot of time and efforts in this project and that’s mostly why many people find language learning way too difficult.

For that reason, only 7% of college students in America are enrolled in a language course. That doesn't mean that you should despair and give up. Remember that the more languages you know, the more human you are. With each new language you learn, you enrich your personality and extend the borders of your self-awareness. At the same time, language learning even boosts academic achievements

Bearing all these things in mind, you should never give up trying to master a foreign language. Here is my list of the 10 most practical things that can help you while studying. 

Start Off Slowly


The easiest thing you can do while learning a new language is to give up because you plunged into learning and exerted yourself too quickly. What you should do is to prepare yourself for a long studying period and don’t expect huge improvements in the beginning. Be patient and learn gradually. 

For example, you could begin by learning only a dozen basic words each day. This may sound silly but you’ll actually learn a lot of words that way in only one month. After all, keep in mind that it takes only around 500 words to reach the A1 language level.

Set Clear Objectives


Whatever you do, you should set the personal objectives and follow the plan you have created. It’s the same with foreign languages – you should decide how long it will take you to become fluent or how many words per month you would like to learn. Additionally, you can narrow down the focus. If your mission is to become a football coach in France, you can start simply by learning the sport-related expressions and phrases.

Practice Regularly


Our brains often resist new things or things that we don’t want to let in. The same is with a new language. This seems like the unfathomed deeps you may be afraid of. However, after several repetitions our brain starts to accept it as something familiar, something that is usual and common. So the clue is making it regular and regular practice makes perfect in everything. 

Combine Reading with Writing


Reading is one of the essential activities in this process. Seeing the language working in context helps you grasp it more effortlessly. You should take a few books or magazines and read them every day. Of course, don’t engage in heavy philosophy at first but instead begin with the simplest texts that more or less match your current knowledge. While reading, you can always stop, consult a dictionary, and check the new words. Dan Wilson, a writer at www.essayontime.co.uk, you should write a small review or summary of what you read using the key phrases and structures in the book. This activity really upgrades your knowledge. So try it out!

Join Online Communities


In the Internet era, it's easy to find a lot of interesting online groups where language students exchange opinions and ask others to help them while learning. The good thing about this is that you can find many people who used to be in the same position like you. They'll understand your confusion and explain things even better than real-life tutors. At the same time, you won’t feel ashamed to make mistakes in front of the peers, which is a common problem among language students.  

Play Online Games


Today, many courses in all areas of expertise accept gamification elements as the natural part of their syllabus. Games are interesting and keep the students engaged, while it is very easy to adopt new knowledge using this mean of studying. Online language games can help you big time to develop language proficiency, so make sure to use this learning method. It won’t feel like you're really studying but you'll gain a lot of knowledge in the meantime.  

Listen to Music and Watch Movies


You probably enjoy listening to foreign music and watching dubbed films. This is a great way to learn a foreign language because it really makes you relaxed. You don’t have to understand everything and you can always look up any word you find important. You can learn new phrases and adopt the accent and pronunciation of native speakers.

Furthermore, music and video materials are great tools to find out more about the culture of any given country. This is an important step in the language learning process. The best thing is that you can choose the genre you like so it won’t feel like too much of a burden.   

Engage in Conversations


You can't master a foreign language by avoiding one-on-one discussions and group conversations. It always feels awkward when you stand in the middle of a group and don’t exactly know what is going on but this is the phase that you must go through. Don’t be afraid to ask people to repeat something or even to re-phrase their sentences. If you want to learn, you'll occasionally need to swallow your pride and be ready for some confusing moments every now and then. 

Test Your Knowledge


With all these steps being taken, it's obvious that you're going to make good progress. Testing your knowledge every now and then is a great way to see how you're improving. There are a lot of online language proficiency tests that you can take for free so don’t hesitate to check them out. They don’t take too much time but they can give you an additional incentive to keep improving.


Reward Yourself


There is one more way to nurture your learning enthusiasm: promise yourself a reward once the studying is over. Buy a ticket to visit a foreign country or organize a party. Whatever makes you happy will be a nice incentive while learning.

Language learning is an inspiring process but it also brings a lot of obstacles. In this article, we made a list of 10 interesting, effective, and practical ways to make the language learning process easier and more reasonable. Using these tips, you can overcome the most common difficulties that may occur along the way but feel free to give us your own suggestions in comments. 

Rachel Bartee is an ESL teacher and a freelance writer who finds her passion in expressing own thoughts as a blogger. She is constantly looking for the ways to improve her skills and expertise. Her life principle is “Always do more than you can”. Get in touch with her on Twitter.

Monday, September 18, 2017

How to Check Grammar and Sentence Structure Online by Sophia Clark

There are plenty online tools you can use to check grammar.
Would you like to make your grammar and sentence structure flawless? Here are a few tools that you can incorporate when writing to check your grammar and sentence structure:

After The Deadline


This tool was created by Automattic and is considered one of the best for checking grammatical mistakes made while working online. With this tool, you can check for spelling and grammatical mistakes in your writing and it will also offer suggestions improve your piece of writing.

This tool also provides different add-ons and extensions that work on various platforms. However, since there’s no official support for these add-ons, we recommend that you stick to the online version.

PaperRater


PaperRater’s proofreader feature offers instant results
(Source: https://www.pexels.com/photo/app-business-connection-device-221185/)

PaperRater is a free online tool that checks for plagiarism and grammatical mistakes. The Plagiarism Checker is an exceptional feature and the grammar checker feature relies on a patented cloud system.

PaperRater’s proofreader provides instant results and the scoring component in the program gives scores based on your written work. The fewer mistakes you make, the higher the score.


Grammarly


Grammarly is regarded as the ideal grammar checker tool and can help you find spelling and grammatical errors. It is one of the most popular grammar checkers in the world.

In spite of the fact that it isn't free to use, there is a free chrome extension that’s very handy for writing "error-free" content online.

If you want to use it, just visit their site, create a free account and get the free chrome extension to quickly improve your written work. You can also use this tool to check spelling whenever you write online (whether Wordpress, Gmail or even Twitter).

Online Correction


Online Correction is an online tool that helps you to find any grammar, spelling or stylistic errors that may have slipped into your writing. If you want to use this tool, simply go to their site, and you will see a basic text editor where you will enter your text to check for grammatical errors.

It also has an auto-correct feature whose results will appear on your results page. You can choose the language including regional variations like UK English or US English. No matter which language you're working in, this online checker tool will enable you to find and correct any grammatical errors made.

Virtual Writing Tutor


With this tool, you can use a microphone to change your text into speech while revealing any errors in your speech. You can also enter check your content for any grammar, spelling, and punctuation mistakes. It is an excellent tool for all beginners who want to improve their writing online.

Sentence Correction

Poorly-written content can greatly affect your blog's readership and search rankings. Nobody likes to read poorly-punctuated texts. When it comes to these kinds of problems,, this tool can come in handy.

Sentence Correction can be used for the following: 
  • Spelling errors and inaccurately utilized words
  • Improperly utilized punctuation; the right use of apostrophes, commas, colons, and semicolons among other marks.
  • Enhances your grammar through rectifying issues, for example, dangling modifiers and fragments among others. 
  • Assists you to locate any plagiarism issues 
Check out their site, put your content in, and it'll correct your grammatical errors. All you have to do is click on Check your text and it'l give you some suggestions.

And there you have it! The above are just some of the tools that you can use to check grammar and sentence structure online. For college students, if you have any issues with definitions essay topics given in class, you can visit any online source for assistance.

Sophia Clark graduated University in New York with a B.A. in Journalism in 2011. She's a creative writer who loves to share her thoughts with readers and currently writes for Eliteessaywriters.  In her free time, she enjoys writing fiction as well as reading it. Connect with her on Twitter and Google +.

Monday, September 11, 2017

Languages Online: The Best of August 2017

It's once again time to take a look at some of the best stuff we found on languages from the last month. Let's get to it!


Another great article from one of our favourite language websites. If you're wondering about learning a language, how difficult it is, and what it takes, this is an article you have to read!


Getting the accent right in a foreign language can be tricky. This article includes some interesting views on accents as well as tips and tricks for making your accent better.


There are plenty of benefits to learning foreign languages. Find out how speaking another language could do wonders when it comes to jobs.


If you love wordplay and puns as much as I do, you'll probably want to read this article on them and how there are a number of linguistic reasons why puns work so well in English.


According to 5 Minute Language, you can make things easier by reading these 5 books. Which ones are they? You'll just have to read the article.


This article is a fascinating look at the benefits of learning languages as well as all the disadvantages of not doing so. You should definitely read this article if you're still not sold on speaking a foreign language.


This article from the BBC has a look at a few people from multilingual places from around the world. It's an interesting read for anyone who grew up in a predominately monolingual place like I did.

There's a reason it's Little Red Riding Hood.

With August being Women in Translation Month, the Metro brought us a list of translated works that everyone should read. Check it out!


If you're a language enthusiast like myself, these are the kind of questions that keep you up at night. Fortunately, the Oxford Dictionaries' blog had it covered in this article on lexical differences.


If you're a native English speaker, you can often just tell when things aren't right. There are tonnes of "rules" in this article that you didn't know you knew and we didn't either!

Were there any other interesting language articles we missed? Tell us about them in the comments!

Monday, September 4, 2017

7 Awesome YouTube Channels for Learning English by Brenda Savoie

Have you ever thought about learning English on YouTube? YouTube isn’t just a place for cute animals and funny videos anymore. A lot of interactive courses on a vast number of topics are starting to emerge via YouTube. As we all know, in today’s world, a knowledge of the English language is often a necessity. I’m not saying you can’t survive without learning it but in order to travel or gather knowledge, it would be advisable to at least know the basics.

So why is learning English from YouTube such a great idea?

As you probably know, a foreign language can be much easier to learn if you use videos instead of books. One of the many benefits of videos is that you can hear the spoken words and improve your pronunciation. You can also see the words and images simultaneously on the screen. This will help you a lot if you're a visual learner and your listening skills will also improve. Other benefits include:
  • Vast amounts of learning materials.
  • Pause and rewind as you please (which you can’t do in class).
  • The chance to watch the speaker’s mouth, making it easier for you to learn how to pronounce different words.
No one said that that learning a foreign language was easy. It's definitely be a challenge. However, the learning process shouldn’t be a painful experience. That’s why you should focus on interactive learning through videos.

In the following article, I'll share 7 of the most resourceful YouTube channels that may aid you in learning English.


This guy’s channel is incredibly popular on YouTube these days. His style of teaching is extremely interactive and passionate. You can really see on this guy’s face how passionate he is about teaching. You can feel his excitement along the whole video. Every course that he uploads to YouTube is totally free. He considers humor to be a major part of learning. He has dozens of lessons on his YouTube channel which are extremely easy and fun to watch. So what are you waiting for? Pay him a visit!


This channel was created especially for those who want to learn English the quick way. An interesting thing about this channel is that, while learning English, you will learn about the American and British culture as well. It’s awesome because you get the chance to know the countries which language you are learning. It’s like the full package! They have over 1000 free videos on their YouTube platform. Give it a try!


In case you are just starting to get accustomed to the English language and looking for beginner lessons, look no further. Real English is the perfect learning channel for you. They have a vast library of free lessons that can be really useful for you. Each lesson is written in words, so pay attention to the text first. Continue by watching the video. Every lesson comes with two videos. So, you can read, listen and watch. The perfect way to learn English!

Radu Moldovan from Essayontime had this to say about learning English with YouTube:
“I had such a hard time learning English until I found out about these extremely useful channels that teach English for free. In comparison with learning English from books, these channels are much more efficient. It took me no more than five or six months to learn it. As you can see, now I’m making a living from writing in English. Interactive learning changed my view completely about the process of learning foreign languages.”

Here’s a learning innovation made possible by Voice of America. They have a very interesting way of teaching you English. Every lesson is somehow like a normal TV news report. But here comes the exciting part: the lessons are presented by English teachers.

They talk slower and clearer than normally, so you will get the chance to hear everything much better. They even add English subtitles to make it easier to understand. Therefore, you will learn English while watching the news. Crazy, right?


As you may know, in the workplace or in business, the English that they use may be totally different to informal English. So, how can you practice it? It’s quite difficult to learn it without being in a business environment.

The perfect place to learn may be Business English Pod. They offer extensive videos about all possible situations or vocabulary types that you might come across in a business. If you're interested in learning business English, this channel is exactly what you are looking for.


Jennifer ESL is a great channel for all kinds of learners. There are over 200 videos is available on the channel including lessons on writing, grammar, and speaking. What differentiates them from other channels is that they focus on pronunciation. Everything is natural; there are neither scripts nor actors. It’s a great channel for casual learners.


This particular channel has a totally different approach to teaching English. Each lesson focuses on the vocabulary you may need in a specific situation like in an airport, a store, a cinema or even at an embassy. All their videos have subtitles so you can gain a better understanding. Their main goal is to help you handle unexpected situations. All their lessons are straightforward and easy to follow. In case you wish to travel, remember to make use of this great platform.

Learning English can be a fun and interesting process. With the right tools, you can make it easier. In the past, we could only learn from books. Nowadays, there are countless ways of learning English. Go for it!

Brenda Savoie is a content marketer, private English tutor, desperate dreamer, and currently writing her first romance novel. Seeking contentment through mindfulness. Check out her latest article “How to Write an Argumentative Essay: A Complete Guide”Find her on Twitter and Facebook