EnglishisEasy/Elinglésesfácil

This is one of the best films of this year, maybe not as good as The Dark Knight but exciting nonetheless (with even a little humor). There are several things to comment about this film, the last of the trilogy Christopher Nolan began with Batman Begins (2005), and here are some of them: Chris Bale: He plays a decent Bruce Wayne. His Batman never convinced me entirely, however, if there is one actor who can work with the psychological side of a character  is him. He has done so in the past and has not disappointed. The scenes where Wayne is shown   working hard to find a way to reach his goal, those are his best. Whenever Bale played the millionaire I felt he needed a bit more of "glamour". We know that Wayne, the playboy, is only a facade but still is an important part of the Batman mythos and should be treated carefully every time. Gary Oldman: The best actor in that movie is him. His Jim Gordon is definitive. Every time Gordon appeared in a Batman movie or show it w...

This is one of the greatest lies ever said. Science does not deny the existence of God. In fact it never has. Lots of people, among them several (not all ) scientists, have denied the existence of God and therefore every other possible divine manifestation. But that was them and then. They do not necessarily represent what Science says and to make matters more interesting, there are and have been scientists that are fervent believers such as Albert Einstein, for instance,whose most famous quote on the matter is: "I am convinced that He (God) does not play dice." Perhaps the problem is in this conviction that in order to worship a god we have to be members of a religious community in particular. Those groups may be dangerous in terms that they become obssessed with the idea that they exist as the result of a divine design and therefore have power of conscience over their followers who naively accept and believe whatever they say just because "they are God's represe...

Here is an example of a word that is slowly disappearing. In the past SHALL was used after I and We while WILL was used with all the other subject pronouns. It was, in other words, a modal verb used to talk about the future. This is no longer the case since WILL has replaced SHALL in this context entirely. Is then SHALL gone for good? Not quite. This modal is still being used essentially with two purposes. The first is in legal documents to express determination or obligation: "The board of judges shall have the final word in this matter." The second is in formal invitations (perhaps its most popular usage, so to speak): "Shall we go now?" Shall we Dance? is a 2004 film that is really a remake of a Japanese movie  (which is better) about ballroom dancing and a group of people who leave their inhitions behind when they dance. It's also a story of ambiguous love starred in the American version by none other than Jennifer López and Richard Gere. In this one...

"Ready to deceive my next victim. Will I ever be deceived myself?" W ell, here is another example of a false cognate or, as they also call them, a False Friend. Deception has no connection with DECEPCIÓN as we understand it in Spanish. For us, that means Disappointment, but in English, it means something else entirely.  The word Deception comes from the verb Deceive which means  to   confuse  by  giving  a   false   appearance   or   statement. A deception then is something else and not what you see; therefore in English, you don't "have deceptions" or "suffer deceptions", which are common expressions in Spanish. You are just DECEIVED.  It has been said that human beings are deceivers by nature. If that is correct then you and I are deceivers. Do you think this is true?

It's been a month already since the demise of the most well-known animal in Ecuador ( it died on June 24th this year). The last of his kind (hence the name), George was always a symbol of what mankind is doing to the other living beings of the world. They are either hunted down, kept as pets, or their habitats are being tresspassed, altered or simply destroyed beyond repair. George could have reproduced but science still has not evolved enough to make that possible. Thus, he died peacefully and his place is now an empty lot that no other animal can fill. Literally.   And he was not a turtle, but a tortoise. While in Spanish that distinction is not made (we only call them TORTUGAS); in English chelonians are all called "Turtles" but if they dwell in land and they have elephant-like feet, they are Tortoises. If they live mainly in the sea and they have flippers instead of legs then they are Turtles.  So George was a tortoise not a turtle.           ...

- This is an old question many students ask: "which one is better?" Really what they mean is which one is more "convenient" to learn. There are good points and bad points in each one and to some extent there is no real way to say which one is a better. What students should worry about is which one out of those two they will be in contact with. If you're going to travel or study in Great Briatain then you should get acquainted with British English. If you are going to do the same in the American soil then you should learn American English.  Ecuador is within the area where America is much more influential so Ecuadorians perhaps should take that as indication of what language they shoud study or perhaps what they can hope to study: in Ecuador, more specifically Guayaquil, there are not many British and only a handful are here to teach. There are not many Americans but their number is significantly bigger and several of them are teaching. I always thought of t...

El Batman que aparece en “Silencio” no es el Batman unidimensional que protagonizó Adam West el siglo pasado. Este es un individuo mucho más complejo con una obsesión que es toda su motivación, una guerra continua en contra de los criminales que asolan su ciudad, una búsqueda eterna de la justicia para la cual no duda en usar sus recursos de millonario. Por ello mismo sus historias son mucho más interesantes pues tienen un componente sicológico del cual carecen las historias de otros héroes. Además esta trama es un buen punto para revisitar este personaje y de alguna manera descubrir su verdadera esencia y saber por qué Batman ocupa entre los superhéroes el lugar preferencial que siempre ha ocupado a más de que este es el año de Batman Rises , la película que completa la trilogía comenzada con Batman Begins y continuada por The Dark Knight . Aquí has diez razones para leer Silencio (Hush) 1. Es una buena historia: Si hay algo de lo que se puede preciar Batman es de las histori...

Perhaps, one of the most important learning events to consider when teaching English is Interlanguage. But, what is Interlanguage? Back in 1972 Selinker came up with this concept when he noted that utterances by L2 learners differed from those native speakers would have produced in similar situations. From then on plenty of books have been written on the topic and yet Interlanguage remains in many ways an undiscovered country. Interlanguage is essentially something that reflects students' cultural heritage, their social background and even their personalities; in sum their identity as individuals. That is why Interlanguage happens differently to every person since we are all different. This distinction is another manifestation of how English learners assimilate English. To understand this we need to envision this phenomenon as a bridge that learners build unconsciously between their mother language and the target language. This "hybrid" construction takes elements...

The question I had in mind before I saw this movie was: "Can it get any crazier than the first one?" And the answer is yes, a lot, even messed up and grotesque at some points but fun in the end. It's intended for adults more than any other age group.  What is the reason behind the success of the Hangover series? (it's a series since there is another sequel coming next year) I think that the idea is basically original. A group of friends that get so drunk, thanks to what one of them has the others drink, that they end up forgetting everything the did while they were drunk. There is also the fact that they did things that do not even match their personalities, terrible things. It is like their wild side were given freedom. It is said the plot of the first movie was based on real events, but I prefer to think that this is the story of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde written by a comedian. The location, and the occasion, picked for these hangovers to happen was importan...

A billion is not un billón , but a million is un millón. What is the meaning of this? It’s all about culture. Let’s start by saying that commas and periods have different functions in English and Spanish when we are dealing with numbers. Here is an example. In Spanish this is how one thousand is expressed in numerical form: 1.000 In English it is expressed like this: 1,000. If we are dealing with decimals then it is the opposite. In Spanish this is how we do it: 2,5    3,7    20,4    7,6 In English they don’t use commas: 2.5    3.7     20.4    7.6 So in English they use commas where we use periods and viceversa. The differences do not stop there. Here is another case:                                    ...

How do you say emborracharse in English? Well, you can't, not at least in a single word. The same goes for perderse, marearse or  inscribirse. In order to say those things we need the assistance of one of the most useful and versatile verbs in English, the verb GET. We just need to decide the Grammar tense to be used and we add another word conferring the meaning we want to express. So if we want to say:   EMBORRACHARSE   we say      GET DRUNK       PERDERSE               we say      GET LOST       MAREARSE              we say      GET DIZZY       INSCRIBIRSE           we say      GET REGISTERED And the most common:       CASARSE                                 GET MARR...

The greatest patriot wants to defend his country during one of its direst hours but is deemed unfit for military service so instead he volunteers to be the test subject in a revolutionary experiment. The result: Steve Rogers is no longer a pushover but a powerhouse armed with a shield of the strongest metal. His codename is Captain America and he's in for a fight with the greatest villains of all time: the Nazis. This is the story we know, but there is another one. Steve Rogers was not the only one to be used as a test subject of the Super Soldier serum, Isaiah Bradley was too. He was an African American sodlier, the only one, out of three hundred others, that survived. It was apparently easier for the U.S. government to spare his African-American soldiers than the Caucasian ones. Because the real serum was destroyed the day Steve Rogers became Captain America what Bradley received was a somewhat closer thing and he fully developed all his potential though he was heroic and ...

Did you enjoy Lethal Weapon (all of them)? Do you remember Mad Max ? What about Braveheart? If you are capable to find what all those films have in common it is because you like Mel Gibson. During the best part of his career Mel Gibson tried to get rid of that image of tough guy who could only star action movies and often tried roles where he could show his talent as a real actor (he even played Hamlet once). But it seems the audiences will forever link him to the image of crazy and tough as nails cop of the Lethal Weapon series. Wanna see him doing that again? Then you should see Get the Gringo, a movie where he is …a gringo. In fact he is an American con man that after being chased by the U.S. Police he accidentally crosses the border and ends up on the Mexican side where corrupt Mexican cops find he is carrying money, lots of them, so instead of giving him back they keep the criminal and put into a prison called El Pueblito to retain the money. But the “gringo” soon reveals to b...

This is one common example of a misuse of the definite article THE in connection with days:  I go to church THE Sunday . By the time L2 learners are capable to put together words to form sentences in L2, even a short one as in the example, they have usually been taught that in English we use the preposition ON with days. It is one of the very first things covered in most English teaching methods. This is, of course, another example of MTI (Mother Tongue Interference) since in Spanish we use the definite article THE to refer to days: Voy a la iglesia LOS Sábados.   Unless we take action it will keep on happening because this little mistake happens at a subconscious level which is where MTI usually appears.What can we do to neutralize the action of MTI  in this case? Practice as usual, create the opportunities for students to use ON connected with days, have them see the need to do this correctly.

True, Batman is a father. In fact he has fathered more than one child. Officially Bruce Wayne is still a millionaire playboy that has remained single and has no children, but that's Bruce. Batman is another story. It all began in a graphic novel called Batman: Son of the Demon where Batman faced one of his most intriguing foes, a man called Ra's al ghul (the same of Batman Begins ). Ra is a terrorist of sorts that believes the planet faces a great threat and that threat is called mankind. So in other words Ra has assumed the task to save the planet but once and again "The Detective" as he calls Batman has stopped him. Ra is a difficult adversary for many reasons: he has a lot of followers and wealth is not a problem either besides he has The Lazarus Pit which is a special pool that can rejuvenate individuals and  even resurrect the Dead. More importantly Ra knows Batman's secret identity. To make matters worse Ra has a dauhter called Thalia who happens to be a...

Let's start by clarifying what a house is and what a home is according to the perspective of English speakers. "Home is where the heart is..." says a popular expression. Here is another: "Home is where you hang your hat..." Plain a simple home is the place a person occupy day in and day out, but truly it is much more than that. Home is essentially where you long to be, where you can find those who love you and who you love, where you can go quietly and wait for the next day without having to worry about anything else.  A house on the other side is only a building, the one you inhabit perhaps. Thus, a house can be a person's home but not always. You can live in a certain place but if  your thoughts keep flying to another site then you're not home. The problem therefore is for Spanish-speakers. In Spanish we do have the same conception of home as in English, but for us if you live in a place and take care of it, that is your home (HOGAR), and if you ow...

]Who is he? Well, he is Who. All the eleven guys in the picture are actually the same guy. It happens that the character they interpret is called The Doctor, an alien that is also a Time Lord of sorts who can "regenerate"when in state of near death. So every time the lead actor is going to become unavailable for some reason the writers of the series called "Dr. Who" simply create a story where the good doctor ends up in great need "to regenerate" and thus a new actor steps in and a new incarnation of The Doctor is with us (the current incarnation is the eleventh).  Doctor Who is a sci-fi character created by the very British BBC (which explains the Doctor's preference for Britain when visiting Earth) in 1963 and has been out in series, specials and numerous revivals. As I mentioned the Doctor is a Time Lord who in order to travel through time and space uses The Tardis, a spaceship that in the outside looks like a blue Police box but it's much ...

Today is Bastille Day, truly an important day in History and of course in France. Though separate by a great distance there are amazingly some connections between France and Ecuador. Most of these ties are tenous at best. We don't know each other well. We know France is in Europe and that Paris is the capital city but that's all. Do they know more about us than we do about them? Probably not, but History shows us that used to be different in the past. This is so true that there are places in Quito with French names (La Condamine is certainly not a Spanish name). What happened? I can't tell but if we look hard we will find proofs that the French used to have a more active interest in our country than they do now, so to speak. And here is my own testimony: somewhere in Guayas, the province I live in, there is this small city called Vinces. A quiet place most of the time and not very different from the many other little towns and villages that populate the Ecuadorian countr...

Well, the question should be: "What is happening in Smallville?" It happens that the story of Clark Kent does not stop when he dons the supersuit, and perhaps we don't get to see that on TV but DC comics (the company that owns the rights to publish Superman) is offering the answer to that question with an eleventh season that presents Clark's adventures when he is already Superman and no longer The Blur. Each chapter is offered in the format of a digital comic book which you can access once you pay 99 cents so a credit card is needed. Many things (logical things) did not happen in the series for commercial reasons such as Clark Kent meeting a young Bruce Wayne  before he became Batman or a recently arrived princess Diana of Themiscyra before she adopted her Wonder Woman persona. There were also loose ends such as what ever happened to Lana Lang or Supergirl after we last saw them. What about the Martian Manhunter or Zatanna? Where did Doomsday end up really? And th...

The next installment of the Batman franchise is due just a few weeks from now and apparently there are some goodies in store for fans of the character. There are rumors that we will get to see Liam Neeson reprising his role, perhaps briefly, as the immortal Ra's al Ghul. They also say that we will get to see appearances by the deceased Heath Ledger as the Joker with unused footage from The Dark Knight, though this has been officially denied. Cillian Murphy as The Scarecrow is likely to be included and we know already that Anna Hathaway as Catwoman is in the movie (as an antagonist or a collaborator?). And of course there will be Bane played by Tom Hardy. Just like Ra, Bane is different from other Batman's villains because he is not crazy. In the movie he is a terrorist of sorts with power enough to destroy Gotham city, one foe that can counter Batman not only physically but also mentally. In fact, as you can see in the picture, Bane once managed to break Batman's back. ...

For almost nineteen years no American writer has been awarded a Nobel prize in Literature (the last one was Toni Morrison in 1993). This is a somewhat unsettling figure if we consider that the United States has traditionally being home of great writers such as William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway or Isaac Bashevis Singer.  Is it that we are witnessing a declination of the literature of The United States? It is not that there is a lack of writers who tell great stories. As an example we have Stephen King and Stephanie Meyers who have amazing stories to tell and easily sell thousands of books (meaning also that there are still many avid readers waiting for a good story to put their hands on). However, it's also true that though their books are best sellers that does not mean they are great examples of literature. They offer a good reading. That's all. There are of course gifted writers out there, but  they are doing something else, not necessarily writing good books. They c...

Ecuadorians love foreign names, especially English names. This is so true that for example our greatest athlete was named JEFFERSON Pérez. My wife´s name is Eileen and my nephew's name is Joseph and mi niece is called Alexis. Shirley, Vanessa, Ronald, Anthony, Emily, Alex are part of a long list of English names that have become common among us perhaps even more so than regular Spanish names such as Carlos or Mercedes. This idea that foreign names are more fashionable than Spanish names is something that is difficult to eradicate even with rules that prohibit the adoption of foreign names for their children. But surely it is a rule that is not really enforced for I know somebody whose first boy was named Ethan. When is this going to stop?

Anything does not mean NADA. It never has. The real meaning of anything is ALGO just like Somehing (which explains why they are synonyms). The fact that anything is used in negative sentences does not mean is a negative word. It is just a word used in negative sentences but its meaning remains untouched. In other words, when you say "I don't have anything...! You are really saying YO NO TENGO ALGO and not YO NO TENGO NADA.  Does it make sense? Of course it does. This way the expression in English is not redundant. We know that Redundancy is the presentations of some idea offering more information than it's really necessary. In Spanish we have several cases of redundancy that are allowed and commonly accepted. Here are some: NO HAY NADIE NO SÉ NADA NO PUEDO VER NADA Really this all comes from the fact that whether we like it or not we are more different than similar and we say and do things differently because our cultures are different. And that's precisely the ...

A sexist palindrome! What's a Palindrome ?  Well, it is not a word but a group of words that together have a special quality: palindromes are groups of words that can be read either way and at the same time retain their meanings, and here are some examples. Never odd or even Madam, I´m Adam Do geese see God? A nut for a jar of tuna Air an aria There are also shorter examples: Racecar Avid diva Bird rib Even some names are palindromes such as Bob, Eve Elle, or Ann. Do we have palindromes in Spanish? Sure but not as many as in English and perhaps the most famous of them all is the following: "Dábale arroz a la zorra el abad." I´ve always wondered why the abad would do such a thing.

This is another conversation out of the many I have with my students, day in and day out. S: Mister... T: Y please, don't call me mister. S: Sorry, teacher... T: Yes? S: I can go to the bathroom? T: You're telling me or you're asking me permission? S: I'm asking... T: Then you should say: "May I go to the restroom?" Is it clear, Y? S: Yes, mister eh...teacher. T: Ok then. Ask the right way. S: May I go to the restroom, teacher? Please? T: No. S: What? But why not? T: You know the rules, Y. The recess is for that. Now, please go back to your seat and continue working. S: But mister, no...I need to go... T: Y, you're a big girl already.  S: But mister...it's important. T: No Y, and that's my last word. S: Mister, I really need to go. T: What part of the word NO is not clear? S: Teacher...I just began menstruating and I need to go to the bathroom. T: What the...? Why didn't you say so before? Eh...of...