A Coruña Ich zeige euch ein Foto von „Plaza de Pontevedra“ in A Coruña. A Coruña ist eine herrliche Stadt im Western von Spanien. Ich habe dort elf Jahre gewohnt. https://goo.gl/images/VpDCH7 Dieser kleine Platz ist im Stadtzentrum gelegen. Im Vordergrund kann man einen Mann mit einem Regenschirm. Ich weiß nicht, wenn das Foto gemacht wurde, denn es regnet immer in meine Region. Ich übertreibe leider nicht. Hinten sehen wir ein großes Gebäude, das eine Schule ist. Daneben gibt es andere Gebäude, die Hotels und Wohnungen sind. Ganz links, sehen wir eine Bushaltestelle. Vor der Schule sind einige Bäumen. In die Mitte Platzes befinden sich kleine Springbrunnen.

Un podcast intéressant pour ceux qui apprennent l’anglais. «The Why Factor » est une émission radio diffusée chaque vendredi sur la station BBC World Service. Pendant presque vingt minutes le présentateur Mike Williams met en lumière les histoires extraordinaires se cachant derrière des actions et des objets quotidiens afin d’éclaircir nos modes de vie. « Pourquoi la minceur nous obsède-t-elle tant? » ou « Le gout musical, d’où vient-il? » sont des exemples de sujets abordés dans l’émission. Le récit de Mike Williams est soutenu par de nombreux témoignages tant d’experts que de citoyens lambda. En ce qui concerne l’apprentissage de l’anglais, ça marche à merveille. Le registre soutenu et le registre courant s’alternent ainsi que les nombreux accents existant dans les pays anglo-saxons. Nous pouvons écouter, par exemple, les pensées d’un chercheur de New York et tout de suite, l’argot indéchiffrable d’un ado de Sidney. Ça fait un peu ringard de nos jours mais j’adore la radio. J’essaie d’en profiter pour donner un coup de pouce aux langues que j’apprends.

Interesting Podcast for Those Learning French “Ça va pas la tête” – if I am not mistaken, could be translated as “Are you nuts?” - is a radio program from Radio France Inter. It’s broadcast on weekdays during the summer and lasts about 50 minutes. I stumbled upon it by chance, looking for some interesting content to boost my French skills. The program deals with a wide variety of topics from a philosophical and psychological point of view. It may appear kind of heavy-going but from the very first minute you are taken with the enjoyable and funny way the subjects are addressed. As far as French learning goes, it works wonders. People take part in the debate alternating formal and informal speech, so you can get used to a variety of accents and registers. Some songs and little extracts from TV shows or films are featured in order to better illustrate the subject. That provides us with a good chance to discover cool movies from French speaking countries.

Gründe weshalb Ich Deutsch lerne. Erster Grund: Ich möchte viele Städte in Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz besichtigen. Wenn ich ein wenig Deutsch spreche, genieße ich mehr meine Reise. Außerdem kann ich neue Leute während der Reise kennenlernen. Zweiter Grund: Ich möchte die Bundesliga sehen und verstehen was die Spieles in den Interviews sagen. Ich stehe auf Fussball. Dritter Grund: Ich bin ein Bücherwurm und ich möchte Bücher im Original lesen. Die übersetzungen sind machmal ungenau.

My Experience with TV Shows and Language Learning. After passing my B1 test in English which placed me at a comfortable intermediate level, I was willing to take my skills to an advanced level. At that time, I was able to deal with content aimed at students but native material was still beyond my abilities. That summer I met a Slovenian girl with a near-native proficiency in Spanish claiming that she had learnt everything from soap operas. I was a bit skeptical about someone reaching such an impressive level with soap operas alone but that fact motivated me in a certain way. As we spend ridiculous amounts of time binge-watching TV series, I decided to give it a go and added it to my language learning routine. I first tried watching TV shows with Spanish subtitles but I realized that I was only reading in Spanish. It happened pretty much the same when I switched to English subtitles. I wasn’t really paying attention to what they were saying because I was focused on reading. When I switched off the subtitles I was utterly at sea. I started to watch TV shows that I already watched without subtitles. That way, it was easier to follow the plot and draw a parallel between what you were listening and what you recall from the Spanish version. Listening comprehension is still my Achilles’ heel but it dramatically improved since I started to do that. So far I’ve successfully watched Breaking Bad and Sons of Anarchy in Spanish, English and French, which has boost my listening skills and, no less important, provided me with some vocabulary about gangs, criminality, money laundering, mafias and so forth. It may come in handy if I decide to start up an international drug empire :D

Top 5 Spanish Spelling Mistakes (Made by Native Speakers). Imperative. You are a hell of a lot more likely to be crushed by a meteor on your way back home after learning that you have won the lottery twice in a row than see a Spanish native speaker using properly the second-person plural of the imperative. Let’s take the example of the verb “mirar”. People often say “mirar” instead of “miraD”. As far as I’m concerned, nearly all spelling mistakes are related to the lack of reading habits. Even if you don’t know the spelling rules and you think that a dictionary is something dangerous which it’s better to stay away from, reading plays a critical role. As well as presenting the words within a context so that you can recognize them, it can help you establish patterns to figure out when “b” or “v” are used, for example. I couldn’t help laughing when I read an article about the possible causes of the misuse of the imperative in Spanish. The first one was about the influence of signs like “Prohibido fumar” or “Consumir antes de”. Ok, it makes sense. The second one was a little absurd. The author said that, when it comes to speaking, it’s easier to pronounce “r” than “d” because the latter is a labiodental consonant. I think we idle Spaniards are taking laziness too far.

Little dialogue to practice some vocabulary + I’ve been told that you changed jobs last week. How is it going so far? - Well, you know that I was fed up with sticking behind a desk and I found myself thinking about knocking off every single afternoon. So I tried to find something more glamorous with some prospect of promotion. Everything is OK so far but I think my boss should cut some me some slack. The other day we had to meet a deadline and the workload was so heavy I spent two sleepless nights catching up on some backlog. We ended up missing the deadline and my opposite number in the Madrid’s office accused me of not pulling my weight. My boss looked at me with a face that could curdle milk and gave me a good telling-off. + That reminds me of my old job working for a magazine. I was the new guy and my boss hit the roof every time I made a mistake. My first week there was horrible and I thought that they didn’t need a layout artist but a scapegoat. I remember one of my workmates handing in a shoddy work and my boss only folded his arms, scowled at me and told me to revise that. Things started to fall into place after a few months and I really appreciate that experience. So, don’t dwell on what went wrong, just focus on giving it your best shot the next time.

The importance of Mathematics Mathematics doesn’t enjoy popularity among students and population in general. I remember myself at school straining to grasp anything from a blackboard full of formulae. My then teacher used the typical theoretical approach in her lessons and that didn’t help to take any interest in the subject. For instance, learning off by heart the definition of a derivative and a limit is not the best way to make it appealing to a 13-14 year old classroom and these words went straight in one hear and out the other at the best of times. However, my lack of interest came to an end when I was at university and started to apply those abstract concepts to specific and real contexts – a differential equation is not that bad if you realize that that bunch of symbols explain how the market fluctuates or why Cristiano Ronaldo’s failed to score a free kick. It’s said that every human being is hard-wired to use mathematical language because our brains work that way. For example, if you want to go from A to B, you automatically estimate how long it will take , thus you are linking space and time and getting a result from it. In addition, the decisions and choices we make are merely an analysis of the different options we have. We have to cope with ambiguity and think on our feet and that’s simply logic.

Une conférence La semaine dernière j’ai assisté à une conférence au sujet de la façon dont la technologie et le numerique façonnent nos vies. C’est évident que notre quotidien a beaucoup changé au fil de la dénommée ère numérique. Rien ne peut échapper au progrès technologique, l’enseignement, le travail, la santé, les rapports sociaux... On peut trouver des changements partout. En termes de bien-ètre, les avantages qu’offrent de nos jours les nouvelles technologies se comptent par milliards, toutefois, ce que j’ai trouvé le plus intéressant, c’est le côté négatif du sujet abordé, surtout au niveau comportamental. Par exemple, l’idée de l’isolement de l’individu a été évoqué à maintes reprises lors de la conférence. C’est un peu paradoxal quand même, étant donné que la technologie en général et les réseaux sociaux en particulier nous fournissent de multiples opportunités de socialiser d’une manière instantanée. D’autres aspects traités ont été le développement de l’impatience et la manque d’attention à cause de l’accoutumance à l’instáneité et à la gigantesque quantité d’información à laquelle nous sommes exposés regulièrement. La conférence a tiré à sa fin avec un appel à l’usage rationnel et responsable des outils multimedia et d’Internet afin d'éviter des éventuels problèmes.