ESL Blogs

My favorite punctuation is a question mark. It's love at first sight, the first time I learnt the punctuations, I fell in love with it. As for the reasons, I can blurt out at least 3.

First, it is the cutest punctuation! Dont you think it looks like a part of our body? Yes, it is like our ear! Looking at your eye, nose and your mouth in the mirror, they also form a ? shape.

Second, it is one of the most common used punctuations. It's like a hook, intriguing your curiosity and make you think.

Third,

While I was in the main chat room yesterday, a fellow EC member asked me to bring up a topic. I told him in jest: “Okay, how about my criminal mind?” He replied with another question: “Why do people kill…commit murder?” In answer, I typed the words “greed”, “power”, “lust”. His next question shocked me. “Will you have the heart to do it?” Whoa! I almost fell off the chair. I was about to answer again when all of a sudden other members entered the chat room and then all I could see were “hi”, “he

Record music and voice >>

“Ma-ma, what's that?"
"That's a tractor!"
"A tractor, oh, tractor, tractor..."
"Baby [小宝], pick that bottle up!"
"O-k" Baby was excited and happy, just like an innocent little kid.
"Rumble, rumble, rumble..." All of a sudden, a train screamed by. As the rumbling and whoosh of the train speeded through the countryside, some farmers witnessed the accident and called the hospital as soon as possible. Before the ambulance arrived, however, the woman had died.
"Ma-ma, that tractor, that tractor, just pass

Be optimistic think about the other smile to them laugh as u like and give the others peace you will find your happyness

That day we met each other for the first time. You were talkative, and I was silent. You asked me if I was ok, and I was curious why you were so brave. In the evening we had our first dinner on our campus together, and we first took a walk.  I remembered you made me blush by asking if I had a boyfriend. And I don't know where my courage came from that I joked back by telling you I had many, actually none.

The second day when I borrowed a poem book from the library, you teased me I was a bookish g

My wife and I decided that we would attend the TESOL Arabia meetings last month.  It was over 6,000 km of driving and two weeks of our hard earned vacation, but we also got to see Dubai and Oman for the first time.

Arriving in Dubai we had an impressive view (in the dark) of this very modern and very clean city. I took this photo two days later.

We missed the first day of TESOL because the people responsible for getting our exit visas took five days getting our papers so we could leave Saudi Arabi

I have left my homeland for 15 years since I graduated from high school and studied at law school. Upon leaving lecture room then becoming a lawyer, I have not returned place where I grew up but stayed in city to live and work so far. Several times per year coming back there to visit roothome to satisfy the so called "nostalgia" then returning city to cover mind with tons of work, sometime, I almost forget the very immense green fields where I would run through with friends.

I do reproach myself

Today this beggar learnt some new stuff from the kind teacher, here:

prolific, productive, fruitful and feracious

prolific: abundant growth, generation. <a prolific composer>

          It can mean fruitful but one can be prolific and have bad material (not fruitful)

productive: usually means good results. 

fruitful: So creates lots of good stuff = fruitful

feracious: Unabridged Dictionary (means it is very rarely used), producing abundantly : prolific, fruitful <a world so feracious, teeming with endl

Tonight, I have many thinking..I don't know what I 'm thinking. Maybe, I'm single, I'm alone for a long times. I don't have so much friends...Maybe, it seem I didn't care anyone. Life has many things that I must worry.There are many "people" who come with me and bring for me many plesants, many things suprise, but it's a short time, as the result, they also leaft me forever. Sometime, I forget myself...I don't know, why I can't open, why I like live alone...Hopeful, dream,waiting...yes, I had do

Domestic blindness describes the situation that when you are trying to look for something in your house, but you can't find it, so you ask your spouse or parents for help. Upon asking someone for help, he/she points to the item that you were looking for, which is usually standing right in front of your face.

Have you shared a similar experiece like that? To be honest, I have the memory of a goldfish. One day I was looking for my cellphone the whole morning, I asked all the friends I could ask for

Did you know that our exposure to light can have an effect on our mood?  Sometimes this can be strong enough to make people depressed and tired all of the time. When a person is more strongly affected and feels depressed (especially in the Winter) they might have SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder).

Now that the days are beginning to get longer in the Northern Hemisphere, many people with SAD may notice an improvement in their moods.  This is even more likely the further North you live.

Lighting in

These are what this English beggar has learnt this morning. 【I am not sure if I have digested them, but they are already in my stomach though, grinning!】 Now let me share them with you.

Double Entendres

Briefly speaking, when something has a double meaning. One obvious, one less obvious. No not all have surface and hidden meanings though; just two possible varying meanings.

Teacher's Example: 1. Children make nutritious snacks. Two meanings in it, one unintended. Children create some snacks which a

Did you know that lighting can affect the mood and behavior of students in a classroom the same as it can affect adults at their work?  Now there is some experimental work which shows that school lighting can be changed at different times of the day to help students learn.

On a bright sunny morning we may feel very much awake and want to be more active than at other times.  When a day is dark and dreary we may not feel like doing much. We all know that it is difficult to read or study when the li

Corruption at present becomes a headache making problem in most of nations, not only in the developing countries, but also in the first world countries. It is believed that this matter is a reason making discontent in society and germs for instability of one nation. Should a state cannot find out a effective solution to limit this issue, it is easy to lead to a stand from laymen affecting its existence.

To trace the reason of this social matter, firstly I think corruption originate from greed of

Recently I was reading a book about how to enrich your (one’s) vocabulary , how to make it better in all aspects (in pronunciation, spelling, etc) and some ideas /thoughts came into my mind, as if I have thought about them long ago but couldn’t find the proper words to express them, now I think I’m ready to share some of them with you. Please write your comments on whatever mistakes you’ll find here, or on anything else you think right to express yourself in my blog!

 Treat a new word as a new bo

A father should be his son's first hero, and his daughters’ first love...

If you are asked; with whom you prefer to share your daily stories with, mother or father? For me, it would be mother; because mother is more like a friend for me. Then, what about a father? For me father is the guardian of the whole family.

My father is a teacher, math teacher. When you look at my father with his short curly hair, sharp eyes and his goatee, you may think that my father is a killer math teacher. But no, my f

Hey EC friends,

I wanted to write a blog about British and American spelling, there are some differences, most are subtle.

Many words ending in 'our' in British English, are simplified to 'or' in American English, for example colour(British) becomes color(American).

Then there is 're' and 'er' at the ends of words, centre and center for example.

Sometimes it can be more complicated, like where 'ae' 'oe' and 'oeu' are found in British English, they are often replaced simply by 'e' 'o' or 'eu' in Amer

Narcist!  

The word glared at me from my computer screen as I was chatting.  How should I respond to such an exclamation?  Should I be angry?  Demand that the person be tarred and feathered and run out of EC on a rail?  Should I demand they be given a thousand lashes with a wet noodle?  Should I laugh and ask if they know what the word narcist means?

90+ % of the people who chat at EC do not speak natively fluent English.  In any group of people trying to use a foreign tongue, whether here or else

A question haunts me for a long while, just like a hard bone, not that easy for me to digest. <。)#)))≦

First of all, allow me to tell a story, and my questions will follow.

It happened during the Culture Revolution period (1966-1976). It was a crazy period, a sad time. An artist, who was often kind and helped people around him, fell into a plight.  He asked two men he believed to help him, one was the man he used to help a lot. the other was an American priest who helped him once. With the help of