Better @ English

This is what I found out during our blogsession in class:

"The English Blog; For Learners and Teachers of English" seems to be a fantastic ESL learning blog with loads of things to explore! You all have to visit this one!

It's a perfect site created for non-native speakers to help them improve their English. What you can find here are numerous links, tips and advice for English learners.

The first link on this blog is http://www.betteratenglish.com/. Explore this great homepage first cause you can get free English lessons to help you learn English vocabulary, idioms, slang, grammar, and more! It's you who decides about the degree of difficulty (;-) not the teacher), plus you can choose between diverse topics and categories such as: Phrasal Verbs, British vs. American, Business English, Grammar and usage, Idioms and slang, Vocabulary, Listening, Writing skills, General silliness, etc.

I tried out some listening activieties about British vs. American/ Real English Conversations: You can not only understand it very easily, but they give you a view suggestions to think about or maybe write about, plus they provide you with the full transcript and vocabulary list on the website. Doesn't that sound really useful and fun? By the way...the guy has a nice voice ;-)

I enjoy exploring cultural differences most! That's really fun, interseting and educational.

Check it out- betteratenglish.com I mean and since I kind of fell in love with this site I'll keep posting about my further experience with it but will also try to write about the blog I initially started to write about.

Okay, that's enough for now...I have to go get some "accessory" that I need to be able to engage in my hobby/ passion ;-)

BBC

Are you such a big fan of BBC as I am? If so, you have to be friends with "bbc.co.uk" ! I not only love to watch BBC Prime whenever I'm at home in Vienna (especially BBC learning, sitcoms, Eddie Izzard, Three Non Blonds, etc.) but I especially like this link. Apart from having the opportunity to read the news in 33 languages, the bbc homepage provides you with various topics that might tickle your fancy, has a special "learning area" that covers nearly all the topics we need to study (grammar, vocab, listening, watching, fun quizzes) but the best thing I found out recently is the BBC Learning English Blogs! There's a student blog as well as a teacher blog which gives the students advice on what they write and suggestions for improving their writing. The fun thing is that you can also be a student blogger! So give it a try! For me personally, the teacher blog is the better one because it provides the students with really useful advice (e.g. about leraning grammar, study habits, etc). Also the teacher highlights important phrases that are worth remembering. At the end of his entries he usually writes down the highlighted phrases and explains them in English. So, take a look at it, have fun and tell me what you think!

"On the Backside, Please!"

I accidently found this book on "insider's-english.de" , a nice link where I eventually signed up, not only because I wanted to subscribe to OWAD (One Word A Day) but also because it's full of quite funny and useful stuff that especially helps you enrich your vocabulary. You can do tests here, as well, and even order file cards, books and book semiars, trainings. But enough about this link...I actually wanted to talk about the book I ordered from insider's english.
Although this book doesn't seem to be really helpful to improve our English, mainly because it's written in English and German and because it rather targets other people other than language learners, it's hilarious. "On the Backside, Please" is mainly about typical German speaking people's mistakes (translation errors) but it also contains quizzes that you have to do while reading, a list of tricky words, Pseudo-English, Instant English plus tips how to study words best.
It's a nice and fun book that might not be as demanding as our Orange Book but learning a language should be fun too and this one for sure makes you laugh and you'll also learn a few things (even if it's "just" avoiding typical mistakes made by German speaking people ;-)

My Home

This is the dorm I'm living in! The whole building consist of 3 blocks A-B-C, each of which has 5 floors with room for 16 people. A floor can be considered a big flat with a lot of bedrooms and one kitchen-cum-living room. We're 15 people on our floor (A3) right know and we hold together like a big family. Our living together works out very well for each of us and we're proud of having managed to create such a harmonic living community. I'm very happy to live here because the people here support me a lot and I often feel more understood than at home in Vienna. After all, we're all in the same boat. But enough about that, here are some pictures of those people who I really like: Tina, Karin, Rene, Hannes, Martina, Christian & Kathi