Sep 26, 2012

Happy Birthday to novelist Bill Coulton

Today is Bill Coulton's birthday. In addition to being my father, he's one of my favorite novelists.

If you haven't read any of his books yet, I really recommend them Also, he has some recent new releases! They're all beautifully written, full of adventure and memorable characters. To check out Bill Coulton's novels, click here.

When I was growing up, it was traditional to bake my father a chocolate cake for his birthday, with chocolate frosting. I don't know what he has planned for today, but I hope it includes something delicious...

Sep 25, 2012

Improve your English by reading!

Are you trying to improve your English?

It may surprise you, but one of the best ways to improve is to read.

Reading helps you to learn new words and expressions, and to internalize the structures of English.

Even if you only read for a short time, several times a week, you will get some benefits!

And the best part is that if you read something you find interesting, you'll enjoy it so much that you won't even realize how much you're learning!

One interesting option for you might be a reader. These are short books which are written especially for different levels of English. Here's one example, Penguin Readers.

Of course, reading blogs is wonderful, but having a book or ebook makes it easy to read something longer, wherever you are. When you read a chapter, your mind has the chance to really focus, and if you make this a practice you'll notice that you know things you didn't even realize you had learned!

Expression: For the time being

For the time being means for now, for this time in general, until something changes.  Here are a few examples:

For the time being, we'll continue meeting on Wednesdays, even though Jeremy can't come.

They've decided not to move for the time being, in order to save money.

Although we realize that a lot of people aren't satisfied with the current system, we'll maintain it for the time being, until we find something better.

Sep 18, 2012

Review or revise?

To review something is to look at it, read it, or talk about it again. You can review a lesson  to be sure you understand it. You can review the things you talked about in a meeting to be sure that everyone knows what they need to do. You can review a document to be sure there aren't any mistakes.

To revise something is to make changes or corrections. You can revise any written document: a manuscript, a report, a presentation.

You can also revise things related to financial information, like budgets and quarterly reports, in order to correct or update the information.

These verbs are obviously closely related, and we often review a document and then revise it.

Here are some examples of the usage of these two verbs:

"Could you review my sales report? I want to be sure there aren't any errors."

When the phone rang, James was revising his manuscript.

There were a lot of mistakes in the report, which showed that the manager hadn't reviewed it.

We revised the sales forecasts for the fourth quarter after reviewing the results of the third quarter.

Note: You can also use the word review as a noun or verb to talk about a written opinion about a film, book, restaurant or work of art. For example: Bob writes restaurant reviews for The New York Times. Or, Bob reviews restaurants for The New York Times. As you can see, when we use review as a noun, we usually put the another noun before it to explain the focus: movie review, book review, theatre review, etc.

Sep 10, 2012

TED online education talk: Coursera

If you haven't seen it yet, I really recommend this talk by Daphne Koller, one of the founders of Coursera.

Sep 3, 2012

Expression: Night owl

An owl is the kind of bird you see here. Owls are usually active at night, when they come out to hunt for food. They have specially-designed eyes which allow them to see well when many animals are not able to do so.

A night owl is a person who likes to stay awake late at night (sometimes all night) to work or play; in essence, someone who's more active at night than during the day.

We often talk about ourselves as morning people or night people. Personally, I'm more of a night person. How about you?

The opposite expression, for people who are very active in the morning, is early bird.