Writers, hasten slowly!

The poetry in the snapshot[s] below represent... sage advice from Nicolas Boileau to writers that derived from an ancient Greek adage by way of Latin, "festina lente" (Wikipedia, Festina lente), meaning hasten slowly.

"Hasten slowly..." (Boileau, 1674, & Beaufait, 2015), ver. 1

"Hasten slowly..." (Boileau, 1674, & Beaufait, 2015), ver. 2

The snapshot[s] above comes from a presentation in preparation by Edwards, Beaufait, and Lucovich ([n.p.], [n.d.], except as otherwise noted some rights reserved). The French text comes from the Wikipedia article (Festina lente, History, ¶5, similar rights reserved).

[147 words]

Do you know what day it is?

On the United Nations' calendar, it's the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, and the beginning of the UN Secretary General's campaign for over two weeks of activism on related themes.

Image source: United Nations
End Violence Day

On the main page about the day, you'll find rationales for international activities and observations, alongs with facts and figures about violence against women and its consequences. There's more info. about the Secretary General's campaign here, including a poster on "school-related gender-based violence (SRGBV) in [the] Asia-Pacific" region:

Image source: United Nations
School-Related Gender-Based Violence
(SRGBV)

On the Orange Day page is a call for business, governmental, institutional and social action. Want to find out what you can do? Grab the toolkit (PDF) and get started!

[129 words]

Did you ever wonder about ...

... the difference between Holland and the Netherlands? Well, this high-paced geography lesson covers not only differences between ... [two] Hollands [N. & S.] and the Netherlands, but also similarities among them ana other far-flung reaches of the world.

Enjoy!

[38 words]

A Timely Video from One of Larry's Bests Posts

Today is World Toilet Day!

The video below is one that I've just found in Larry Frelazzo's post: The Best Resources For Learning About World Toilet Day & The Issue Of Public Sanitation In The Third World. Watch and learn!

World Toilet Day 2012 - Official Animation Video

If that interests you, there are plenty of other resources you can check out in Larry's post.

[66 words]

Pointers to videos from the LLD Project Blog

In this post, I'm replicating a post on the Language Learner Development Project Blog with the author's permission. I want to share, here, the same pointers to a collection of videos for listening comprehension that I did on that blog.

Let’s Have Fun with English: Videos for listening comprehension

Posted by Paul Beaufait in LanguageLearning

Thanks to Larry Ferlazzo for pointing out Ms. Haquet’s Let’s Have Fun with English video collection in one of his posts:

• Excellent Video Site for Learning English (2012.03.26).

Here’s a direct link to Ms. Haquet’s site, and here’s another straight to her menu of videos for listening comprehension. The two videos that I’ve previewed so far represented … [two distinct] cultures, and ranged in difficulty from intermediate to advanced:

• The Crown Jewels, and
• Wolverine.

[70 words]

Tags: activities, cultures, listening, videos, viewing

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 11th, 2012 at 14:57 pm and is filed under LanguageLearning. ...

If you're looking for a bit of variety or a change in pace in video viewing, you should check out Ms. Haquet's video resource collection. I have no doubt you'll find other videos there that are challenging to listen to, as well as interesting to watch.

[85 words, above and beyond the 70+ from the other post]

Paul Gilding: The Earth is Full! (TED Talks)

"It takes a good crisis to get us going. When we feel fear and we fear loss we are capable of quite extraordinary things" (Paul Gilding).

The words in the Wordle (the graphic just below the video above) come from the transcript of Paul Guilding's TED Talk. What kind of impression do they and the video of his presentation give you? Please let us know by add a brief comment to this post.


Sources:

• Video – TED Talks, February 2012 (retrieved 2012.03.05)
• Graphic representation of transcript created with Wordle

[92 words]

New Year's Customs and Traditions

Dr. Nellie Deutsch has prepared an interesting trivia quiz representing New Year's customs and traditions around the world that I'd like to share with you. You'll find answers and explanations on slides immediately following each quiz item.

After taking the quiz and reading the explanations, please feel free to ask follow-up questions, post notes on local customs and traditions, or share related resources in comments on this post.

Learning English Online: New Year Around the World

Uploaded by Dr. Nellie on WiZiQ Tutorials

[83 words]

PocketCultures: Poll of the Month (September 2010)

Thanks to a link from Carla Arena, who explores "the wonders of the Online World" from Brazilia (Google Profile), I discovered the PocketCultures website today. On it, prominently displayed near the top of the home page, was a Poll of the Month asking, "How many languages do you speak?"

Though people responding to that poll hardly represent a random sample of world populations, or even blogger populations for that matter, it is interesting to note two points in particular:

1. Less than a quarter of current responses represent speakers of only one language, and
2. More than a quarter of the responses represent speakers of more than three languages!

 (2010.09.28, c. 11:00 JST)

How about you: How many languages do you speak now, and how many do you want to be able to speak in the future?

If you're interested in finding out about various cultures around the world, PocketCultures offers three categories of posts to explore, focusing on topics, people, and blogs. Check 'em out, and let us know what you discover in a comment on this post when you get back!

[183 words]

"Can you use chopsticks?" (pab, Speechable)

Before

 

PB [direct from cell phone]

After

 (pab, Speechable)

See the whole photo collage here.

[15 words]

"Listen to English - learn English: the podcast website ...

... for people learning English" (title and tagline). This website presents prepared texts accompanied by audio recordings (MP3s) about three times a month on various topics of interest. Colloquial expressions, cultural notes, customs and traditions, ...; you name it, and you may be able to find it!

Can you imagine 40 to 50 thousand people all listening to Peter Carter, of Birmingham, England (Author and Copyright, 2005.12.25), at the same time? Recent recordings show download histories numbering in the tens of thousands. Apparently plenty of English learners and teachers around the world are making this one of their favorite sites. The visitor map in the sidebar indicates that there have nearly 17,000 visitors already this month, and over a million site visitors since 2006 (Visitors [ClusterMaps], Listen to English sidebar, 2009.05.12).

The quality of the recordings that I've sampled is impeccable, and the delivery, deliberate. However, the sophisticated language Carter uses might challenge intermediate level learners, especially those who give the MP3s a go without pre-reading his scripts or reading along while listening.

[172 words]

Did You Know? 3.0: Broadband for the Brain

Are you in ... [a] broadband backwash [bayou], or [a beach in] Bermuda?

Source: http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=jpEnFwiqdx8
(buencaminos, November 07, 2008)

Where would you rather be? Get a load of the new stat's in this video, and find out!

Blogged with the Flock Browser
Revised in Blogger

[40 words]

Happy Halloween!

The following is a representation of a post from the Language Learner Development Project Blog (LLD Project Blog, Happy Halloween, 2008.10.31), a work licensed "under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License" (LLD Project Blog, License). I am reusing the copyright image in the original post with permission of the copyright owner. You can see the copyright notice if your hover your cursor over the photo below [in the actual Blogger post, not the Feedburner mail announcement], before clicking.

This is a quick, seasonal, website recommendation... for anyone ... interested in customs, history, and traditions: a History of Halloween minisite at history.com. I recommend the articles entitled Ancient History and Around the World, but there's much, much more on the site [including advertisements, games, and videos]. Just click on the link (above), or the picture (below), and go see for yourselves.

If you'd like to compare the Jack-0-Lantern in the photo above with his predecessors from last year, please check out either of last year's Halloween videos (Writing Studio Blog, Welcome Home Hallows, 2007.10.31).

[106 words excluding the block quotation]

Revised 2008.11.06
[+10 words]

"The Machine is Us/ing Us" (Wesch, 2007)

Offering an illuminating perspective on writing for the 20th century, this TeacherTube version of Michael Wesch's video introduces "'Web 2.0' in just under five minutes" (2007). Please take a look, then share your feelings about it, or reflect a bit about blogging for your writing courses, in comments on this post.



Reference

Wesch, Michael. (2007.03.08). The Machine is Us/ing Us (Final Version). Retrieved June 19, 2008 from http://youtube.com/watch?v=NLlGopyXT_g

[74 words]

Winter holidays in the UK?

Did you ever wonder how folks spend winter holidays in the UK? Though I didn't go there during winter vacation, here's a Quia website where you can find out:

• Happy New Year -
  
• Podcast by Peter Carter; and
  
• Follow-up activity by Renée Maufroid.
• Thanks to Renée for promoting this site via the Learning with Computers group (message 3944; January 6, 2008)!
  

The author of the podcast on that site shows and tells how folks celebrate in England and Scotland, and what else they do. When you've finished listening to and viewing the podcast there, you can check your listening comprehension and cultural knowledge with the gap-fill activity that follows the podcast.

If you don't get all of the answers right the first time, don't worry! I got many wrong, because I was doing other things while I was listening. I didn't see all of the slides in the presentation, or catch all of the details. The answer-checker requires precise wording, and accurate spelling, too.