Learn These Words First: November 2016

Friday, November 25, 2016

You can use Microsoft Translator (www.bing.com/translator) to translate sentences to and from English.

Think about how you would translate a sentence to or from English. Then use Microsoft Translator to check your understanding of English vocabulary and grammar.
Type a sentence in English and see it translated to your choice of 53 other languages. Or type a sentence in one of these other languages and see it translated to English. (Note that computer translations sometimes contain mistakes.)
Click a word in either language to highlight the translated word in the other language. This can help you see where the two languages arrange word order differently.
Clicking a word also lists alternative translations for the word.
You can listen to the pronunciation of sentences in English (and in some other languages).
Microsoft Translator is also available as a mobile-phone application.

El Book (at fluenz.org) is a very basic English self-learning course for Spanish speakers.

The downloadable course includes a printable book (pdf) and audio recordings (mp3).
The book has eight short chapters that use Spanish to teach 50 words and phrases of essential English. These lessons include written exercises.
The eight audio recordings use Spanish to explain the English vocabulary from the book and help with pronunciation.

Duolingo (www.duolingo.com) is a free online language course that can help you learn English (or several other languages).

English word meanings and grammar are explained in 21 languages: Arabic, Chinese, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese.
More than a thousand English words are taught in more than one hundred short lessons.
The lessons are presented as games in which you practise reading, writing, listening and speaking.
You can use flashcards to review the words you have learned.
Duolingo is also available as a mobile-phone application.