Readers - New Website

I have just found this new website which covers "graded readers". These are books that are written especially for people who are learning English.

http://www.english-readers.de/

My favourite for adult learners are Penguin Readers, which are also sometimes available with a CD to listen to the story.

http://www.penguinreaders.com/

Word Families - Wikipedia

We all know this: if you want to learn a language, you have to learn vocabulary. And many teachers also say this: a good way to learn new words is to put the words together in 'word families'. These are groups of words which have something in common (DE:etwas gemein haben).

One good way to choose word families is to choose a subject which interests you.

And a good way to find words on this subject might be the following link to all the glossaries in Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Contents/List_of_glossaries

Have fun with all those words!

A wonderful talk about dictionaries

As language learners, you need your dictionaries. With today's blog post I want to inspire you to use your dictionary in a much better way. So here is a question:

Is your dictionary like a police officer? Do you just want it to tell you if words are 'right or wrong'?

In fact, a language is a very human thing and humans are not 'black and white'. There are no absolutely 'wrong' words - there are words that you use in the wrong place, perhaps. But these words might be 'right' in another situation or if you are talking to another person - CONTEXT is the key. A good dictionary should help you find more words that are similar to the one you look up. So you can use the best word for your context.

This morning I watched a talk from the TED series - this is a great series of talks from experts in many fields.

The talk was from a woman who is one of the editors of a top American dictionary. She says she is not a 'traffic cop' - directing the bad words out of the dictionary. She is more like a 'fisherwoman' - fishing in the huge ocean of words to find the ones she hasn't seen yet.

I have linked the talk below. If she talks too fast for you and you can't understand everything, then go to this page and you will find the transcript of the talk. Print it out and then you can read it while you are listening.