Group items tagged

"No matter whether you're a new hire or a veteran professional, at some point you're going to have to initiate a 'difficult conversation' with a boss, co-worker or colleague. This conversation could be between you and one person, or it could be between you and an entire group of people."

"Changes in word use are normal and not unique to any language. But English does enjoy a privileged status as the world's lingua franca. That began with the British, but has been maintained by the Americans. It's difficult to predict how English will next evolve, but the one certainty is it will."

Even though this is an .com site it's written by someone who has experience in this matter and it's really interesting because it basically tells you what to do. And when the author did this, he got into a really good school.

This website has many well-written examples of sample college essays. The only problem with these is that they are not categorized into either well written, or really long. How to conceive, create, and perfect it essay is right because it is very difficult to start your essay. Basically this essay is talking about how this person got writer's block, and how she overcame it.

This article talked about different ways to handle a difficult situation, particularly on Thanksgiving. The reason for it being Thanksgiving, is because the midterm elections just happened recently, making the possibility of conversations to be about politics very likely. This article dove into why some people may want to converse about this, and why it's very hard to deal with tough conversations, particularly on a day where it's all about family and thankfulness.

"Non-native accents make speech somewhat more difficult for native speakers to parse and thereby reduces "cognitive fluency" - i.e., the ease with which the brain processes stimuli. And this, they found, causes people to doubt the accuracy of what is said. "...[However,] several recent studies suggest that modest disruptions of cognitive fluency - cases of cognitive "disfluency," if you will - prompt people to think critically."

This article answers the question of why sarcasm is hard to detect in texting and email conversations. It depends on things like context of the person like the relationship you have with the person you are using sarcasm with. Also, with texting, you can't convey your emotions with facial expressions like you do in face-to-face conversation. Emojis help a little bit with that, but it isn't the same as a face-to-face interaction.

David Moser, of the University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies and a L1= English speaker, reflects on his adult language learning struggles with Chinese, his L2. His takeaways as to why the language is so difficult, even for L1= Chinese speakers: 1. Because the writing system is ridiculous: need to recognize a whole lot of characters to be literate, specifically 7-8 years to recognize and write 3000 characters. 2. Because the language doesn't have the common sense to use an alphabet, which would make learning the components of words more simple. 3. Because the writing system just ain't very phonetic. 4. Because you can't cheat by using cognates. 5. Because even looking up a word in the dictionary is complicated. 6. Then there's classical Chinese (wenyanwen 文言文). 7. Because there are too many romanization methods and they all suck. 8. Because tonal languages are weird. 9. Because east is east and west is west, and the twain have only recently met. When you consider all the above-mentioned things a learner of Chinese has to acquire -- ability to use a dictionary, familiarity with two or three romanization methods, a grasp of principles involved in writing characters (both simplified and traditional) -- it adds up to an awful lot of down time while one is "learning to learn" Chinese.

This is an article about the experiences, inner thoughts, and struggles of a girl who is deaf. From this article, I learned and realized many things such as how difficult lipreading can be. Originally, I was amazed at how deaf people could read lips and thought they could understand every word someone said. However, I learned from this article that that is NOT true and things such as accents and a lack of expression can make it difficult for one to decipher what is being said.

The critical period hypothesis is one of the reasons that some adults are hesitant to take on learning their heritage language. The theory essentially argues that there's a biological window where language learning is the most automatic, somewhere between the age of 2 and puberty. This theory has entered our popular consciousness as a rule that you can't learn a second-language fluently when you're older. However, scientists disagree with this notion because although it will take more conscious effort, it is still possible to become fluent in another language past the "critical window." Specifically, second language acquisition becomes more difficult with age because it requires rewiring your brain to break certain habits that relate to language learning. For example, pronunciation and accent requires breaking habits related to the way you move your mouth to speak, making it more difficult to have native-level pronunciation as you grow older. Beyond neuroscience, though, research has shown that other factors, such as exposure and education influence language learning.

Learning a second language is usually difficult and often when we speak it, we cannot disguise our origin or accent. However, there are important differences between individuals with regard to the degree to which a second language is mastered, even for people who have lived in a bilingual environment since childhood. Members of the Cognitive Neuroscience Research Group (GRNC) linked to the Barcelona Science Park, have studied these differences. By comparing people who are able to perceive a second language as if they were native speakers of that language with people who find it very difficult to do so, they have observed that the former group is also better at distinguishing the sounds of their own native language. The study results show that there is a positive correlation between specific speech discrimination abilities and the ability to learn a second language, which means that the individual ability to distinguish the specific phonemes of the language, both in the case of the mother tongue and in the case of other languages, is, without a doubt, a decisive factor in the learning process, and the ability to speak and master other languages."

Modern language learning strategies such as in class explanations, drills, and "role playing" exercises can be ineffective for some people. These approaches can come across as stressful. It can becomes difficult to understand the explanation or remember the rules of the language. Here are five language learning skills that may help.

The BBC is helping English learners understand the news. Each article is in a "mad lib" format where people learn idioms and difficult vocab by matching up the words in a sentence.

" by: 29th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment | . published: September 21, 2016 AIBANO TRAINING AREA, Japan -- U.S. Soldiers participating in Orient Shield 2016 went through the Japanese chemical decontamination process Sept. 14-15 by following the direction of Japan Ground Self-Defense Force members. About 1,600 U.S. " Soldiers were able to get the job done and work with their counterparts by learning and pushing past the language barrier. Without learning the decon, the job would have been much more difficult. So this was very beneficial for both sides.

"Talking or texting on a phone while walking can make it difficult to stay on course and may interfere with memory recall ... Moreover, participants who were texting while walking veered off course demonstrating a 61 percent increase in lateral deviation and 13 percent increase in distance traveled."

"Tweenage girls who spend endless hours watching videos and multitasking with digital devices tend to be less successful with social and emotional development ... The girls' answers showed that multitasking and spending many hours watching videos and using online communication were statistically associated with a series of negative experiences: feeling less social success, not feeling normal, having more friends whom parents perceive as bad influences and sleeping less. ... The survey findings are bad news, given that the 8 to 12 age range is critical for the social and emotional development of girls, and because children are becoming active media consumers at an ever-younger age. ... Higher levels of face-to-face communication were associated with greater social success, greater feelings of normalcy, more sleep and fewer friends whom parents judged to be bad influences. Children learn the difficult task of interpreting emotions by watching the faces of other people, Pea said. ... For the negative effects of online gorging, "There seems to be a pretty powerful cure, a pretty powerful inoculant, and that is face-to-face communication," Nass said."

Dan Jurafsky's book, The Language of Food: A Linguist Reads the Menu, explores the history and origin of common food terms like "ketchup." Jurafsky also contemplates how menu wording can reflect the relative upscaleness of a restaurant. "Expensive restaurants are 15 times more likely to tell you where the food comes from - to mention the grass-fed things or the name of the farm or greenmarket cucumbers, but expensive restaurants also use fancy, difficult words like tonarelli, or choclo [large-kernaled corn] or pastilla," Jurafsky says. But they are also generally shorter in length. The really long menus, which he says are "stuffed with adjectives like fresh, rich, mild, crisp, tender and golden brown," are found at the middle-priced restaurants. And the cheapest restaurants use "positive but vague words - 'delicious,' 'tasty,' 'savory,' " he says. If an expensive restaurant used words like "fresh" and "delicious," that "implies you have to be convinced." Cheaper restaurants are also likely to say that the food should be served "your way." "The more expensive the restaurant, the more it's all about the chef," he says.

It is said that music is used in studying more often in college because it helps calm and relieve stress. College students use music the most because it's more difficult to stay on task and focused in a different surrounding.

I think the starting off small (like the questions and fill in the blanks during class) is the best way to find a deep and meaningful topic because it opens your mind to think freely and as you narrow your topic, you'll find a topic that really means something to you. Also, the "Going Beyond Cliché", I think that's going to be hard for me because I'm so used to trying to write the typical 5 paragraph papers that are set up as guidelines during school with topic sentence and 3 supporting details. So, trying to find my own outline might make things a little more difficult for me.

While reading this article, I realized i had already looked past one of the most important factors while choosing my own topic to write about. Before reading the article, I was simply searching for a memory of a time that shaped me into the person I am today, or an instance that would impress a college admissions officer, showing them im the type of student that would fit in perfectly at their school. Then in reading the article, i came across: "What do you think college admissions officers are looking for when they read student essays." Even though this may seem like an obvious task, sometimes, it is easy to get caught up in making yourself look good, and completely forget that you're writing must be interesting enough to stand out to an admissions officer more than others. I don't know if my thought process is easy to understand from an outsider's point of view, but this article showed me that it is important to remember that you're writing to not just impress an audience, but also to show them the real 'you'!

This article is especially helpful because it gives easy to read bullet points to make sure people don't fall into the cliché trap. It's easy to write about something that would be commonly seen in college essays, such as a time someone volunteered at some homeless shelter and they say they're grateful for not being homeless. This article says you should go into more depth other than concluding with a cliché concept.