Magic of English!

Professor Ernest Brennecke of Columbia is credited with inventing a
sentence that can be made to have eight different meanings by placing
ONE WORD in all possible positions in the sentence: "I hit him in the
eye yesterday."
 
The Query: What is this word?
 
The Answer: The word is "ONLY".

The Message:

1.       ONLY I hit him in the eye yesterday. (No one else did.)
2.       I ONLY hit him in the eye yesterday. (Did not slap him.)
3.       I hit ONLY him in the eye yesterday. (I did not hit others.)
4.       I hit him ONLY in the eye yesterday. (I did not hit outside the eye.)
5.       I hit him in ONLY the eye yesterday. (Not other organs.)
6.       I hit him in the ONLY eye yesterday. (He doesn't have another eye.)
7.       I hit him in the eye ONLY yesterday. (Not today.)
8.       I hit him in the eye yesterday ONLY. (Did not wait for today.)

Arts & Humanities Citation Index (2009)

Source publication list for Web of science®
Arts & Humanities Citation Index®


Click HERE to download the list. 

How to Learn READING and Vocabulary

• Read something every day
  Children's books, simplified readers (Penguin), newspapers, magazines, Internet sites, novels, and much much more...
  
  
• Read what interests you.
  Remember that you learn better when you are having fun.
  
  
• Read at the appropriate level
  You want to learn new vocabulary, but you also want to understand what you are reading. If you are looking up every word, the reading is too difficult.
  
  
• Review Who, What, Where, When, Why for each story you read
  You can do this for almost any type of reading. Who is it about? What happened? Why did it happen? Where did it take place? When did it take place? This is very useful when you have no comprehension questions to answer. You can write or speak your answers.
  
  
• Always have an English-English dictionary nearby
  It is a bad habit to always rely on a translation dictionary or electronic dictionary.
  Think of your English-English dictionary as your life line.
  Use online dictionaries when you are using the Internet (keyword online dictionary).

• Record vocabulary in a personal dictionary

        
        Source: EnglishClub

       

How to Learn WRITING and Spelling

• Keep a diary/journal
  Don't always pay attention to grammar. Free-writing can be very useful. It can show you that writing is fun. Have fun with the language.
  
  
• Write emails in English
  Stay in contact with teachers or other students.
  
  
• Rewrite your local news in English
  This is another exercise that can be done on a daily basis. Remember that regular activities are the best ones.
  
  
• Learn important spelling rules
  Remember, you won't always have a dictionary or a spell-checker handy, especially when you are writing a test. Even native English speakers need to review the spelling rules from time to time.
  
  
• Learn commonly misspelled words
  
  
• Learn common English errors
  
  
• Get an ESL penpal

        
        Source: EnglishClub

How to Learn SPEAKING and Pronunciation

• Talk to yourself
  Talk about anything and everything. Do it in the privacy of your own home. If you can't do this at first, try reading out loud until you feel comfortable hearing your own voice in English.
  
  
• Record your own voice
  This might feel very uncomfortable, but it will help you find your weak pronunciation points. Listen to yourself a few days later. Which sounds do you have difficulty hearing?
  
  
• Use the telephone.
  
  
• Participate in class
  
  
• Learn common idioms
  
  
• Understand the sounds that your language doesn't have
  For example, many languages don't have the "r" sound. These sounds require extra practice.
  
  
• Recognize that teachers are trained to understand you
  When you get out into the real world, average people will have a more difficult time understanding you unless you practise speaking slowly and with proper pronunciation.
  
  
• Practise minimal pairs
  
  
• Study word and sentence stress
  
  
• Practice tongue twisters

        
         Source: EnglishClub

How to Learn Listening

• Listen to the radio
  Don't always have a pen in hand. Sometimes it helps to just listen.
  
  
• Watch English TV
  Children's programming is very useful for ESL learners.
  Choose programs that you would enjoy in your own language.
  Remember that much of what you hear on TV is slang.
  
  
• Call Automated Answering Machine recordings
  You can find these numbers at the front of telephone books in many English-speaking countries. Before you dial, make sure that you are calling the free numbers.
  
  
• Watch movies
  Choose ones with subtitles, or one from ESLNotes.com (provides useful notes on popular movies).
  
  
• Use Internet listening resources
  Every day there are more and more places to listen to English online.

      
          Source: EnglishClub

The world's most widely spoken languages

Estimates of how many people speak a certain language can only ever be generalised, and can vary quite a lot. As an example, English estimates can vary from 275 to 450 million, Spanish from 149 to 300 million plus, Hindi from 150 to 350 million...
Also, the definition of “speaker” can vary. Some surveys of languages only give information on its native speakers. Others count native speakers and secondary speakers as well.
Some languages have large populations of speakers but are almost exclusively in a few countries. Then again, other languages have relatively small populations of native speakers but can be used in many different countries as an official or national language.


Top languages by population:

1. Chinese (937,132,000)
2. Spanish (332,000,000)
3. English (322,000,000)
4. Bengali (189,000,000)
5. Hindi/Urdu (182,000,000)
6. Arabic (174,950,000)
7. Portuguese (170,000,000)
8. Russian (170,000,000)
9. Japanese (125,000,000)
10. German (98,000,000)
11. French (79,572,000)

Source: The Summer Institute for Linguistics (SIL) Ethnologue Survey (1999)

The Longest English Word

Although some languages have longer words, English does have a number of words which use a lot of letters. 

The longest word in the Oxford English Dictionary is a 45-letter word for a lung disease: pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. 

The longest one-syllable English words are nine letters long: 
scratched, stretched,  scrounged, scrunched and strengths.

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Source

Sources for MA in TEFL

These are the sources I recommend for MA in TEFL. Of course, the list should not be considered as a fixed one. In fact, TEFL is a very dynamic field of study and to keep abreast of new developments and findings, other sources should be consulted as well.


A) METHODOLOGY
1- Principles of Language Learning and Teaching (D. H. Brown)
2- Teaching Foreign Language Skills (M. Celce-Murcia)
3- Developing Second Language Skills (K. Chastain)
4- Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching (J. C. Richards & T. S. Rodgers)
5- Teaching Foreign Language Skills (W. M. Rivers)
6- Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching (D. Larsen-Freeman)
7- Longman Dictionary of Applied Linguistics (J. C. Richards & R. Schmidt)


B) TESTING
1- Testing Language Skills (Farhady, Jafarpur & Birjandy)
2- Testing for language Teachers (Hughes)
3- Techniques in Language Testing (Madsen)
4. Fundamental Considerations in Language Testing (Bachman)


C) LINGUISTICS
1- Linguistics and Language (J. S. Falk)
2- An Introduction to Language (Fromkin & Rodman)
3- The study of Language (G. Yule)
4- Chomsky's Universal Grammar (V. J.Cook)


D) GENERAL ENGLISH
1. TOEFL (Longman, Cambridge, NTC, etc.): CBT Edition
2. 1100 Words You Need to Know
3. English Grammar Digest: Aronson
4. Barron’s Essential Words for the TOEFL
5. Rahnama’s Vocabulary and Tests for TOEFL: Farhady