How can Social Media help my English?
Oh the irony! As I try to write this article, I am distracted by social media! Whether we like it or not – Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and others, are here to stay. There are...
Tagged: Spanish
New Year. New habits. Language learning habits.
A habit is a routine or behaviour that we practise so often that it is almost subconscious. Habits can be good or bad. The amount of caffeine that I put away probably isn’t a...
Things you can’t learn from a coursebook
A good coursebook can give a great framework to learning a second language. By following a programme, students can gradually build on what they know, to create a good base of a second language....
Words added to the dictionary in the 21st century
All languages are constantly evolving. In fact, English spoken 500 years ago would not even be understood by English speakers today. However, the rise of the internet and social media has probably...
How to choose what to read in English
A hundred years ago, choosing what to read wasn’t much of a problem. If you were lucky, you had more than one newspaper to choose from and could select books from the local...
The Present Perfect tense; the Argentinian problem
When I arrived in Argentina, my Spanish was already quite advanced, as I had lived in Spain for a year, and studied the language quite a lot. Of course, I noticed a lot...
Chicxs! The ease of gender-neutral language in English compared to Spanish
Disclaimer: I am not a gender specialist – I am an English teacher who was asked by some students to address this popular issue. So here I go. The first thing that comes...
Monday to domingo; naming the days of the week
The seven-day week is so completely accepted by us that it is easy to forget that it is a human invention. It is thought that people began to use a set of...
“Alfajores de dulce de leche” and other untranslatable words
Somewhere in Western India, I bought some fried food from a man on the street. He spoke enough English to have a basic conversation. As I was going to pay him, he said...
Differences between having English and Spanish as your mother tongue
Maybe you are thinking “How can someone compare having two different mother tongues?” After all, people have only one mother tongue, right? Well, there are some people, like my father, who grew up...
