A Few Chinese Things

As you may know, I'm currently taking a Chinese course and I'll be visiting China soon. So naturally I've been interested in Chinese language and culture. I've come across a few resources recently and I thought I'd share them here. They're all in English (at least the explanations), so even if you don't know a word of Chinese they may be interesting for you.

The first resource is actually my teacher Elizabeth. She's sent a lot of videos, and some of them may be interesting for you. This is one about Shanghai:

Next, there's a site called LingoBite. I found out about this site through a contact on Airbnb, actually. The site has very short and quick lessons to help you learn Mandarin Chinese. It also has a blog, which recently had a list of the 8 Best YouTube channels for learning Chinese.

Finally, the language blogs at Transparent are usually pretty great and they post frequent updates, and the Chinese one is no exception. A few days ago they had one that described the parts, history, and evolution of Chinese characters. It's pretty cool, so check it out!

I hope something here is interesting for you. Thanks for reading, and have a good one!

A Really Good English Blog

Peter Bruegel's painting Tower of Babel. (Image)

I recently came across a blog called Separated by a Common Language. The author is a woman who goes by the name Lynneguist. The blog mostly focuses on differences and similarities between American and British English and indeed, the blog's name comes from a quote by George Bernard Shaw that says:

England and America are two countries separated by a common language.

It's a pretty funny quote, since in my job as an English teacher I constantly notice little differences between American and British English, but I really like how Lynneguist investigates and explains them more.

For example, in this post from a day ago she talked about how British people seem to be more likely to say "please" when making a request, especially in restaurants, and then explains why that may be. 

In short, I'd definitely recommend the site if you're an upper-intermediate or advanced English learner, or if you're a native speaker that just likes to learn more about our language's idiosyncrasies.

That's it for tonight. Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend! 

Hearing, Part 3: My Top 5 Favorite Podcasts

Use your headphones, don't let them get moldy like mine!
(Although mine are moldy because of the climate, not neglect)

Hello! It's Friday, so you know what that means: party! But when you get a chance to look at this blog again on Sunday evening, I wanted to share my suggestions for my Top 5 Favorite Podcasts. All the podcasts in this list are produced in the USA and are therefore fairly advanced, but you may like them and learn something even if you're not a native speaker. 

You can find all of these podcasts for free through iTunes (that's what I do), or you can go to each podcast's webpage for more information about getting the episodes. So, here's my list!

5. On The Media - This is a weekly NPR (National Public Radio) program that investigates news stories and how they are reported. We have a TV in my house, but we don't have an antenna or cable, so we don't get any channels. Listening to programs like this help me keep at least partially connected to reality. 

4. Stuff You Should Know - I talked about this podcast a while back, and you can read my comments here. The main idea: I still like and recommend this podcast.

3. This American Life - Same as number 4; I mentioned this on the blog here, and I still think it's a great weekly podcast that you should check out.

2. Freakonomics - I've still never read the book with the same title, but I've become a big fan of this podcast, which comes out at least once a week. It's motto is "the hidden side of everything," and it does have quite a variety of topics. It does talk about numbers and statistics, but it still makes economics seem interesting.

1. The Complete Guide To Everything - This is still one of my favorite weekly podcasts, if not my absolute favorite. It's hosted by Tim and Tom, two guys who live in Brooklyn. They mainly just talk about (or around) a new topic every week. It's very funny, and I like their humor. Have a listen if you've not already.

So, that's it for today. Have a great weekend or if you are indeed reading this on Sunday evening like I suspect, then have a nice week!

Fun Friday: Two Ideas

Today I wanted to share two interesting things you can do to have a good time while practicing English:

1. Play Scramble

(Image from game's iTunes page)

If you have an iPhone or an iPod Touch, this is a fun little game that you can play with friends (or even with me... look up my name or send me an email if you want to start a game with me). It's very similar to a game called Boggle, where have two minutes to find words by connecting letters. I've been playing it with some friends, and it's pretty fun (and a little addictive). You can find it on iOS/iTunes here, and a similar game on Android phones here.

2. Check out Costa Rica Outsider

I recently started this website about Costa Rica. It's not a tourism website, but it does talk about strange and interesting aspects of Costa Rican life. Since many of Sitzman ABC's readers either live in Costa Rica or have visited (or would like to visit), the site may be interesting for you. I've written about local customs, the president's visit, Easter week, and even Juan Santamaría. If you have any comments or suggestions for posts, or if you'd even like to write a guest post yourself, please tell me. You can find the site by clicking here, or you can also follow or "like" it on Facebook or Twitter if you prefer.

So, that should keep you busy for the rest of the weekend! Have a good one, and thanks for reading!

Great Website and Podcast: ESL Pod

I use iTunes to organize my podcasts,
then I put them on my iPod.

Good afternoon! Today I wanted to mention a great podcast that I recently discovered. It's called ESL Pod and even though I recently discovered it, it's been around for a long time. 

There are different types of listening programs on the site, but all of them are designed for people learning English. There are dialogues that are very good, clear, and slow, for example. In these dialogues, the speakers talk very slowly, then identify important vocabulary, and then repeat the vocabulary at "natural" speed. 

They also have what they call "English Café," which are longer programs featuring special topics. For example, English Café recently talked about Star Wars, my favorite movie, so you know it must be good! 

You can go to the site (ESLPod.com) to see what kinds of things they offer, or you can also download the podcast through iTunes or any other program you use to download and listen to podcasts. I personally use iTunes to organize podcasts, since it downloads them automatically for me when there are new episodes.

So, that's it for now. I hope you have a great weekend, full of relaxation and enjoyable podcasts!

A Few Internet Resources For... Chinese??

Yes, Chinese! As you may know, I recently started a Mandarin Chinese course. It's enjoyable but also pretty difficult! My teacher is nice and patient, and the materials she's given us are good, but I've also been searching around for some additional resources to help me learn. I found a few sites on the internet and I thought I'd mention them here, in case any of you are interested. Best of all, they're all FREE! Additionally, if you know Chinese or someone who speaks it, and you have any tips or resource suggestions for me, I'd love to hear them!

Here are a few sites I've found so far:

Chinese With Mike

This is a series of videos done by a Chinese teacher named Mike. The style is a bit goofy at times (it's shot in his garage and he tends to wear strange shirts, hats, and/or sunglasses), but he seems to genuinely know what he's talking about when he teaches. He's able to make the 10-minute video lessons interesting and entertaining, and he does a good job explaining details about the language. The best part is each video also has a transcript you can download, and together the transcripts form chapters of a book. Especially considering that it's a free site, Chinese With Mike is a pretty great resource for people wanting to start learning Chinese on their own.

BBC Languages - Chinese

I'm a big promoter of the BBC's offerings for English learning, but they also have good sites for other languages. The Chinese learning site isn't very extensive but it does have a good variety of activities and articles, including games for tones and characters, sample dialogues, cultural information, and language guides. It would be interesting even for people who are just curious about the language, but don't necessarily want or need to learn it.

Live Mocha

Angela recommended this site after using it to practice some of her new German vocabulary. I think it's good, but it may a bit difficult for Mandarin language beginners to use. All the language courses on the site start off the same way, introducing basic phrases like "Good Morning" or "I don't feel well." That's OK for a non-tonal language that uses the Roman alphabet (like English, German, French, etc.), but for Chinese it's a bit difficult to just jump into it, without even mentioning tones or the writing system at the beginning. It can be good to listen to and identify vocabulary, but it's a bit lacking in terms of additional information.

I also downloaded a few programs and Chinese learning games to my iPod touch. If any of them turn out to be useful, I'll be sure to mention them here. 

Thanks for reading, and if you have any comments, suggestions, or language tips, please leave a comment below. Have a great day!

Two Recommended Websites For General English Practice

As I mentioned a while ago, I often have my students complete practice logs. It's a good way to encourage them to practice, and it's also a good way for me to find new language-learning resources that I can pass on to other students. 

This week my student Henry included two good websites in his practice log, and I wanted to mention them here. 

The first is apparently called Randall's ESL Cyber Listening Lab (although the URL is simply "esl-lab.com," which seems much easier). As the name indicates, it's got a lot of listening exercises with audio, partial scripts, quizzes, and vocabulary highlights. It's even got cultural tips in some of the sections, so the site is pretty great. The topics are very diverse, from pizza delivery to how to behave in a Japanese public bath. There seem to be between 200 and 300 different pages with different topics, and they're conveniently arranged according to difficulty. Check it out!

The second link my student visited was engvid.com. It's also got a self-explanatory name, as it's mainly focused on videos. If you scroll down on the home page, you'll see different topics like business English, grammar, pronunciation, and even my favorite, idioms. The grammar section alone has 105 videos, so there's plenty of material to keep you busy for a while! Check it out, and enjoy!

Thanks for reading, and if you have any additional suggestions for online practice, please leave a comment. Have a great day!

Great Pronunciation Site

The words Bag and Back: A minimal pair
that's difficult for some language learners. 

I was going to do a common error today, but I decided to share a link to a great website instead. Honestly, I'm running low on ideas for common errors, so if you have a suggestion for one, I'd love to hear from you.

Anyhow, the site is called "shiporsheep.com," and it focuses on minimal pairs. If you don't know what a minimal pair is, it's basically two words that are pronounced exactly the same, except for a single sound. Some examples of minimal pairs are words like bag and back, chip and cheap, chip and ship, pig and pick, and, of course, ship and sheep.

shiporsheep.com is great because after you click on the sounds you want to focus on, it'll open a page with all sorts of examples of the sounds you want to practice. Then you only need to put your mouse over a word to hear it pronounced.

One disadvantage of the site is that there's no feedback. You can pronounce the words after you hear them, but there's no one or nothing to indicate if you're actually pronouncing them correctly. Still, it's a cool site, so you should check it out!

That's all for today, but later this week I'll try to give you a few more language-learning resources. Thanks for reading, and have a great day!

Recommended Podcast: This American Life

A while ago I did a blog post about Podcasts (click here to see it), but I wanted to highlight a few of them in a bit more detail. Today I'll talk about one and in the next few weeks I'll try to mention a few others I've enjoyed and recommend for language learners.

One of the most popular podcasts in The United States is This American Life. Since it's for native speakers, it's not necessarily made for English learners, but it still can be a great resource if you're trying to learn English. 

The program comes out once a week, and each episode is an hour long. Every week they focus on a different topic and talk about normal people who have experience with the topic. For example, a few weeks ago the show talked about some people who thought they had discovered the original recipe for Coca-Cola. 

One of the best things about this podcast is that it often comes with a transcript of the whole episode (Here's one from a recent episode about people in a drug-prevention program). For an English learner, these transcripts can be an incredible resource if you read along while listening to the podcast. However, doing that could also become tiring, so it might be best to break it into smaller parts.

This American Life's website is very extensive and has past episodes in its archive, but if you go through there, you can generally only listen to old episodes for free by using streaming audio. But if you get the show through itunes, it's free and you can keep older episodes for as long as you want. So that's the way I do it.

That's it for today. I'll try to highlight more recommended podcasts in the future. If you've listened to This American Life and have comments about it, or if you want to recommend other podcasts you enjoy, then please feel free to leave a comment. Thanks for reading, and have a great day! 

Language-Learning Site of the Week: VOA Learning English

In a previous post related to podcasts I mentioned that one of my favorite online resources was the BBC Learning English site. I still highly recommend that site, since it's almost like a little world of English-learning resources. However, just this week a student recommended the VOA Learning English site to me, and it seems like a good site if you're looking for additional English resources, without necessarily having to deal with the British accent that comes with the BBC's site (that may sound like I'm joking or being catty, but that has actually been one of the most common complaints or comments I've heard from my students who've checked out the BBC site).

VOA stands for "Voice of America," and although it's based out of the United States, it's meant for audiences in other countries. Their Learning English site has a lot of current news, cultural reports, and other information relevant to English learners. I'm still checking it out myself, but I'll post anything interesting I find on the site to Sitzman ABC's Twitter feed.

In the meantime, if you have any comments or other suggestions related to the VOA site or any other sites that you've come across, I'd be happy to hear your thoughts. Either comment in the section below, or contact us through email.

Thanks for reading, and have a great day!

VOA Logo Image Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:VOA_Logo.jpg

German Corner: "The Dumb Fish Song"

So far, I've mainly stuck to talking about English on this blog, but I've been meaning to add more content about other languages, as well. I actually studied German and struggled for nearly a decade to learn it, so often it's actually more interesting for me to talk or think about the German language than it is for me to write about English.

On the rare occasions that people ask about German, they often ask, "Is it hard?" 

Short answer: Yes. 

Long answer: Yes, it is.

German pronunciation is easier than English, since it's phonetic and English isn't, but that's about it. The main killer of students who are trying to learn German is grammar. I remembered I'd heard the following song about 10 years ago, and believe it or not, it's actually a song specifically written to illustrate German adjective endings. You can feel free to watch the video, although only the song is original; the video was made by some junior-high schoolers as an extra-credit project, apparently, and the video quality seems to verify that fact:

Now, if you don't understand German, then it'll likely seem like a bunch of gibberish. If you do speak German, it'll probably still sound like a bunch of gibberish, because it basically is. I guess that's what you get when you write a song based on grammar. For example, the first line* is:

"Eins, zwei, drei / der gute Mann / ein guter Mann / der gute Mann / ein guter Mann / schlag den guten Mann nicht / schlag einen guten Mann nicht / schlag den guten Mann nicht... gib dem guten Mann einen Fisch / gib einem guten Mann einen Fisch"

That means:

"One, two, three / the good man / a good man / the good man / a good man / don't hit the good man / don't hit a good man / don't hit the good man... give the good man a fish / give a good man a fish"

Look at the English, and compare it to the German version. If you notice, there's a lot going on here. In the German, the definite article the appears to be either der, den, or dem, and the indefinite article a comes out as ein, einen, or einem. And it's true! The words "the" and "a" really can have that many variations (or a few more, if you count plurals and genitive/possessive words). And what about "good"? That comes out as gute, guter, and guten. The reason for these linguistic shenanigans? In German, articles and adjectives change depending on whether the noun they're referring to is the subject, object, or direct object of a sentence.

And the worst part of it is this: "Mann" (meaning "man," pretty obviously) is a masculine noun... and German has three genders: masculine, "neuter," and feminine. Plus, you also have to change the articles, the adjectives, and the nouns themselves when you make them plural. And in fact, that's what progressively happens in the following three verses of the song.

English does have quite a few similarities to German due to the two languages' partially-shared history and development, but luckily for today's English learners --and much to the frustration of today's German learners-- English didn't retain a lot of this grammatical complication, while German did.

So, whenever you're having difficulties learning a language, it's sometimes nice to realize that it could always be worse. And if you're struggling with German, remember this: at least it's not Finnish!

Thanks for reading, and have a great day!

*This Turkish site has a kind of half-baked version of the lyrics (For example, it doesn't capitalize nouns, as is necessary in German), but I only direct you there for quick reference. For a better alternative, I suggest checking out Brad Yoder's website. I just realized two days ago that he wrote the song, and in a strange twist of fate, I actually met him in Pittsburgh in 2001. He's a good guy and deserves your patronage. Plus, he looks quite a bit like me, and he might even be my long-lost, evil-twin brother (or vice versa)!

Open Your Brain!

I recently read a book called The Art of Non-Conformity by Chris Guillebeau (click here for a short review I wrote). I liked the book, and I wanted to mention an idea that the author talked about. One of his pieces of advice for improving understanding of the world is to read a new Wikipedia article every day. He says:

"Set your home page to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Randompage. Over the next year, every time you open your browser, you'll see a different, random Wikipedia page. Read it. Cost: $0."

Actually, that sounds like a great idea to me if you want to learn English! This trick works with other languages, too, but the address would be slightly different. For example, you can try a random article in these languages:

Danish

German

French

Spanish

Swedish

You can apparently do this with any other language that uses Wikipedia, if you know where to click; another option is to simply open Wikipedia and type [alt-x] to get a random article.

Finally, if you're learning English, did you know that there's a "simple" version of Wikipedia? You can find it here. It has shorter, more basic versions of articles. If you want a random, simple article, click here.

So, have fun exploring a bit! If you find anything interesting, tell us in the comments. Thanks for reading, and have a great day!

Two Useful English Links

Good afternoon, everyone!

I want to share two more English-language links with you. The first one is called "China 232." Despite the name, it's actually a site with English-learning podcasts. The site has two areas: "normal" and "VIP." The VIP part costs money and has more resources, but free normal section is also quite good. The site is done by two Canadian brothers living in China, and their English is very clear. Typically, they pick a topic, present a short dialogue, and explain some of the important vocabulary in the dialogue. Their latest topic was Facebook, actually.

My coworker Lidio showed me another site a few days ago. It's called "Qwiki," and it's a sort of interactive Wikipedia with videos, pictures, and spoken text. The voice you hear definitely sounds robotic, but it's still interesting to check out, and a good place to start if you're looking for information or just curious about new things. Here's an article about Niagara Falls to get you started. Check it out!

So, good luck with these links. If you have comments, questions, or other good links you want to suggest, please tell us!

HOW TO Start Your Own Blog!

Welcome to Part 2 of 2 in our "Start a Blog" series! If you're motivated to get blogging but you're not sure where or how to begin, then this post is for you. If you already have a blog, or if you're good with computers and technology in general, you can probably skip this post. If there's anything I can do to make the process easier to understand, please tell me.

There are quite a few different blogging services available on the internet, but today we'll focus on how to work with Blogger. Other sites such as WordPress can also be a great option if you want to start blogging, but to be honest, I'm simply not as familiar with how they work. The other advantage to working with Blogger is its integration with Google. If you have a Gmail account (or any Google account, for that matter), then starting your blog is even easier!

Step 1: Go to Blogger.com

Step 2: "Get Started" or "Sign In"

If you don't have a Google or Gmail account, then you'll want to click on the orange "Get started" button and move to Step 3.

If you do already have a Google account (like if you use Gmail, for example), then this process will be even quicker. In the circled box on the right, just enter your email address and password connected to your Google account and click "Sign in."

Step 2B: If you do have a Google or Gmail account, just follow the directions to add Blogger to your account

The process should be very quick and painless, but you can skip to step 4 if you're having troubles.

Step 3: If you don't have a Google account, fill out the form

This shouldn't be too complicated. You'll need an email address, but it can come from another service (I still use my Yahoo address to sign in to Google, for example). 

Most of the other information on the form is pretty basic, like creating a password (be sure to make it strong), providing your birthday, and choosing a display name.

It also gives you an option to receive Email Notifications, which you probably don't need.

After you finish the form, it will probably send a confirmation email to the address that you just provided. I've also had a few experiences with my students where it asked for their cell phone number to confirm that the person applying for an account was real. This may sound suspicious, but from what we experienced, the code was sent to their phone very quickly, and it was legitimate. Either way, if you go to the email account you provided while registering and click on the link in the email, it should take you to the following page, where you actually start setting up your blog:

Step 4: Name your blog and choose an address

The first thing you'll have to do is choose a name for your blog. (Sorry the picture is in Spanish, but since I live in Costa Rica, it stayed in Spanish. Don't worry, though, it's the same in English.)

In this screen, you'll give your blog a title and choose the blog address. For the address, try something that's short and easy to remember.

Step 5: Choose a design--but don't worry, you can always change it later

This screen will allow you to choose a basic design for your blog. Most of the designs have many variations and once you start blogging, you can easily change almost any element of the design. 

So, just choose the least ugly one for the moment, and remember that you can adjust or even completely change it later.

Step 6: Start Blogging!

When you get to this confirmation screen, click "Start Publishing," and you'll officially have a blog! Congratulations!

A Few Tips:

Once you have a blog, adding new entries to your blog is easy. Just click on "New Post," and you'll see a screen like this:

It's pretty straightforward from here. Give your post a "Title," and then just start typing in the big blank space. You can upload pictures or videos using their respective icons. Just play around with it a bit and don't worry; you can always delete or change things. When you've finished writing, click "Publish Post."

Another Tip: Use the "Dashboard" and "Design" Buttons

As you see from the circle at the top of the picture, almost anywhere in your blog you can click on "Dashboard" and you'll see a screen similar to the one on the left. You can see a preview of your blog, start new posts, change profile information, or adjust the blog's "Settings" and "Design." The "Settings" menu is more related to the way you and other people access and interact with your blog, and the "Design" menu is more about its visual aspects.

When you click on "Design," you'll see a screen similar to this one. You can make a LOT of aesthetic changes here, and you can also add different elements  to your blog's page ("Add a Gadget"). 

Once again, just play around with it a bit so you can see the possibilities. You can't really break anything.

A Quick Tip for Teachers:

If you're a teacher, a blog can be a great tool to keep in touch with your students. You can assign homework, post notes, provide links for additional practice, and help your students connect with each other.

The image above shows a blog that I created for one of my classes last year. It was a good way for me to remind students of homework and to post links, but even better, it allowed my students to express themselves in a new way. 

As you see in the red circle on the right, each student started his/her own blog. Each week, I would give them a blog homework assignment. Normally, they had to do some research, respond to a few questions, or write a few paragraphs about the week's class topic. Often, they also were in small groups of 3 or 4 students, where group members would read each others' blogs and respond to their partners' thoughts in the comment section. 

I got great feedback from my students about blogging in general, and I'm sure that you can find even more new and interesting ways to use a blog to help your students learn. If you have any tips for ME, then please tell me!

So, that's it for now. Once again, if there's anything that I can do to make this post easier to follow or more understandable, please be sure to tell me either in the comments section or send me an email. 

Thanks for reading, and have a great day!