ESL Blogs

In my 13 years of teaching English to speakers of other languages, Reading Explorer by National Geographic is the best tool I have discovered to build reading skills.

The image to the left is from China's Taobao.  In China, Reading Explorer comes as a set of 6 books divided into levels starting at Foundation and going up to Level 5.

In Hong Kong, the set I bought was just 4 levels - Beginner, Elementary, Intermediate and Advanced.  The 4 books contained more or less the same material as the 6 book

In life, we find strange things. Along the way, we meet people. Good ones and bad ones, too. Our thoughts and beliefs are made about them. Our judgment is formed about them, and it is not necessarily based on fact or knowledge. Anger and hostility may arise later. The most important thing is, we meet those people face to face and we know them personally.  This is natural.  

The most difficult thing to understand or rather the most confusing thing is the people you know by the pen. That writing i

These days, people are becoming more and more interested on science, technology and business rather than arts. There are man reasons behind that. For me the following two reasons are most important among them

Firstly, nowadays due to technological revolution computer games and social media have taken the place of arts. Earlier people went to concert or art gallery to spend leisure-time but now, people are not interested on fine arts or classical music.

Secondly, it is required sophesticated mind t

Arts is an important part of our culture. It represents the history and the heritage of a nation. Governments usually spent a lot of money on the promotion and development of the arts. Some people believe spending this extravagant amount of money is unnecessary and could be spent on the development of the economy and technology. I strongly oppose their opinion.

First of all, despite little tangible value, Arts have a huge emotional impact on our everyday lives. It motivates people and encourages

It's a bit chili today (pun intended).

Some fresh Carolina Reapers and Red Ghost to dry;

40+ dried Carolina Reapers ground with seeds;

Brasilian Malaguetas used to make a new bottle of pepper sauce (not shown).  But 

These are some of my existing Southern Pepper Sauce of various spice levels.  Just combine chiles / chilies / chillis (Spelled a variety of ways) with 5% vinegar and a little salt in a glass bottle.  If you want it spicier, cook the chiles in a little oil before adding the vinegar.  Pun

Improve your reading and English with a Kindle

I love reading.  I love to read physical books but also to read electronic books or ebooks.  To read an ebook, you need a device since the words are not printed on paper but designed to be read on an electronic device.  The one I am most familiar with because I use it is the Kindle from Amazon.  Other e-readers may have similar features.

So how can a Kindle help you improve your reading and your English?

When you are reading, you don’t want to stop ev

Hi

It's has been a while,  Do you miss me?   I wonder... 

I have been away for 2 months.  I stop using social media.   I didn't post much on my social media.  I don't know why, but it feels kinda depressed.  It's like I am thinking so many things and yet it's empty.  

I have been listening to music, reading online ebooks, and watching drama.   I have been searching for a happy ending. 

Daily routine the same tho.  Work from home and office.  I got a new laptop from the company, which is good because

Hackers steal your personal information. Hackers embedded security database server. Hackers may try to steal your data and many other messages like that. We find these things on the internet. The people who do that are programmers or genius people. They might be even philosophers of their time.  They do technical things that hinder us from accessing our accounts. they get illegal access to our computers. It becomes complicated, or even difficult to access our accounts.  

 Of course, we heard th

Former U.S. president Donald Trump entered into a peace agreement with Islamic Fundamentalism, Taliban, last year. U.S. president Joe Biden followed the agreement and decided that the U.S. army would withdraw from Afghanistan by 31th August in 2021.

Taliban gained control of many cities in Afghanistan while the U.S. army was leaving Afghanistan, and surrounded the capital city of Afghanistan, Capul. Joe Biden didn't change his decision to leave Afghanistan even after this scenario unfolded. He s

   There will be always moments  . You feel in them that you are standing all alone . 

    But this doesn't  mean that you are sad due to your loneliness  .

    Maybe your friends are in a very long vacation,  or maybe we are just moments  in each other lives . 

     But our journey is an individual one  in the most horrible way  , that we did never imagine  to be .

  No matter how hard we have tried to make interventions or calls for help  , by dragging  our families,  friends and love ones  .

Tomorrow is the tenth of Almuharram, the month of the first Islamic calendar. This date marks the day that Prophet Musa (peace be upon him) was chased by Pharaoh. When they reached the sea, the followers of Prophet Musa were desperate and they told him that Pharaoh would eliminate them. God told Musa to hit the sea with his stick and it was divided into two divisions. They were like two great hills. A path was made between them, and the followers of Prophet Musa passed.

When Pharaoh came in try

inner life=

gentle beauty=

abstract formlessness=

subtle charm=

foggy painting=

faltering lines=

insecure distances=

Can you find the meanings of these pairs of adjectives and nouns?

How does the poet feel in this poem?

The 2020 Tokyo Olympics was closed a week ago. It was postponed until this year because the coronavirus infection started spreading all over the world last year. However, the spread of infection hadn't stopped even after a year, so some media of the world and even Japan opposed the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

The Japanese prime minister, Suga, said "It was easier to stop the Olympics, but we want to prove and give the hope that Olympics can be held in a pandemic with strict infection control measures."

 The Pride of Indus River

A rare species of dolphin is in the Indus River. That is the pride of Indus. According to Nazeer Virani (the guardian of Dolphins) about 200 kilometers area near Sukur Barrage, there are 30 Dolphins. In another area of the river, there are nearly 1800 to 2000. Unfortunately, these Dolphins are blind because the water of the river is so polluted that light can’t reach underwater. So, it’s impossible to see. That makes Dolphins blind. But they have adjusted themselve

Can you spot (find) the reason I took this photo?

Happy hunting :)

Hello dear MyEC friends,

I'm glad to see many of you sound and active on MyEC. I'm sorry for making you worry. Alhamdulillah, I'm very well now. :)

It's true that I had been through the hard day last month. But it's not really bad. I'd thought the worst thing but then I focused on the recovery. If you would like to know, here is the story.

It starts from Saturday, 17th July, 2021. I had a fever and catched a cold, fair pain. I consumed honey every morning, but in three days, no much effect. Tempera

Silent love

After taking a deep breath, I stood up on my toes, and dived, passing through the cool air, my fingers touched the base of the stream, then swam up back to the surface, looked here and there, no sign of the bouquet. The flow of water was fast. I dived again and swam blindly. After a while, I saw a bouquet that was far away. I had to swim carefully to avoid hitting myself with stones. I swam up back to the surface and took a deep breath. Once again, I dived and after swimming for a

100 Stories that shaped the World

1 Odyssey - Homer

2  Uncle Tom’s cabin Harriet Beecher Stowe

3 Frankenstein Mary Shelley

4 1984 George Orwell

5. Things Fall Apart (Chinua Achebe, 1958)

6. One Thousand and One Nights (various authors, 8th-18th Centuries)

7. Don Quixote (Miguel de Cervantes, 1605-1615)

8. Hamlet (William Shakespeare, 1603)

9. One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel García Márquez, 1967)

10. The Iliad (Homer, 8th Century BC)

11. Beloved (Toni Morrison, 1987)

12. The Divine Comedy (Dante Aligh