3 ways to improve your English

1. Read. This can be anything from a book or article to glancing at the headlines on the internet. The more you read, the more you internalize the structures of English while improving your vocabulary. Need some ideas? I would be happy to recommend something especially for you if you don't find anything you like in the links here...

2. Listen. The BBC world service has news bulletins continuously throughout the day. This is great practice for listening because you get to hear a lot of different accents. Something else to try is NPR (National Public Radio), which has a lot of different programs. Finally, songs in English are another great way to learn! Just be aware that sometimes when the lyrics don't make sense, it's because they really DON'T!

3. Watch. From "Friends" to TED, to news videos and films, you can learn a huge amount this way and have fun at the same time. Start with subtitles in Spanish or Catalan, move to English subtitles, then try without any...

More thoughts on "making sense"

Here's a thought provoking post from guest blogger Leo Corchia:

Reading the posts of this blog and its “Make” series, it came up to my mind quite spontaneously the expression “make sense”.
And more or less quickly I thought about the difference of this expression between English and French or Spanish.
In French and in Spanish, we don’t say “make sense” but “have sense”.
And obviously it leads you to think about this difference in a conceptual or philosophical way.
I mean that if something makes sense to you, it seems like that thing is active because it makes. And many times when you say “it makes sense” or “it makes sense to me” it sounds like something quite relative, a part of the whole thing that lead you to say that “it makes sense” or “it makes sense to me”. Additionally, I’d say that if it’s possible in English that something makes sense to you, it means that you brought your own part of reasoning to get to the conclusion that this thing makes sense even if it’s by itself or as a part of something more global, doesn’t it?
In French and Spanish, things HAVE sense. What a difference! It sounds like it’s not related to the way you feel or see things because this thing has sense by itself in an absolute way.
And I was thinking about the possible parallel with the different kind of managements.
Is it possible that assuming that things can “make sense” when those things are the result of someone’s work is appreciating the quality of this work or at least the quality of the work that has made it possible for this thing to “make sense”?
And is it possible that thinking that things “have sense” is a way to evaluate your capability to reveal the sense things have?
I could speak about this difference a very long time and be much more boring but I’d like to conclude with this parallel: Make sense/Have sense: same difference as Creative/Scientist?

Many thanks to Leo for these thoughts!