italki seems almost like a real classroom, with a few exceptions.
1.) There is no talking
2.) Students give themselves assignments
3.) Students correct each other's work
4.) The teacher is mostly out of the room
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Would real school be better if it was like italki?
To become a legitimate part of English, new words don't need to be useful, necessary or appropriate. They only need to be popular. As a result, sometimes words we don't need become accepted.
In the 60s, hippies used the word "do" to refer to consuming drugs. "I did a joint" or "Let's do a pipe" were common expressions. The word became so common that by the early 90s, a new government anti-drug campaign said "Do sports, not drugs!" Since my education was traditional, I've never used the word as it is used today. We play baseball or football. We swim or run. We do not "do sports."
"Into" is another hippie slang word that never went away. "I like" or "I take an interest in" would have said the same thing, but to target a youthful reader or listener I might say into instead. "I'm not really into vegetables."
The lexicographers at the OED are the ones who select new words for inclusion in the Dictionary. Their decisions are based on usage, not on need or value. The dictionary is invaluable, but judgement is also needed. Using old hippie slang at a business meeting might not get the results you want.
A proofreader checks for spelling, punctuation, capitalization and grammar errors. An editor makes changes in your sentence and paragraph structure to improve the quality of your writing. Neither a proofreader nor an editor teaches you anything. They only make corrections.
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A teacher helps you learn spelling, punctuation, capitalization and grammar so that you can write correctly in the future. A teacher helps you learn to improve the quality of your own writing. Only a teacher can explain the reasons for the corrections. If you don't learn the reasons, you will make the same mistakes over and over.
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Don't expect to learn much by asking others to make corrections.
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I began seeing "softwares" after the programming industry was offshored, around 20 years ago. It's an indication of a non-native speaker.
Just say <em>software</em>, same as you would say <em>hardware</em>.
If you are learning English, use judgement in choosing who to listen to. If someone claims to be a native speaker, but writes using broken English, you might not want to accept their advice.
Broken English includes using no capitalization and no punctuation. You will see many examples of this here. Do not imitate it.
Good luck.
Here are 15, but dozens of others exist:
<a href="http://www.ititranslates.com/blog/top-15-translation-blunders-across-globe">http://www.ititranslates.com/blog/top-15-translation-blunders-across-globe</a>
Marketing people often make serious translation errors when translating advertising from English into other languages. For example, "Come Alive! Join the Pepsi Generation" translated into Chinese as "It will bring your ancestors back to life."
Follow the link and laugh! :-D
This is a list of <a href="http://www.missiontolearn.com/2009/08/free-online-collaboration/" target="_blank">15 Free Online Collaborative Learning tools</a>. All are new to me. Has anyone here tried any of them? Do any of them look more useful than the others? Any look worse than the others? Tell me what you think.
I'll be trying them out myself. If I like them, I'll tell about them here.
Thanks.
There are three circumstances when using an abbreviation is appropriate:
<ul> <li>When you are running out of time</li> <li>When you are running out of paper</li> <li>When the abbreviation is more easily understood than the whole word</li> </ul>The rest of the time, do your reader a favor and write the whole word.
