EnglishisEasy/Elinglésesfácil

Simply put, there are more words in English. Is it that English is older than Spanish? Not really. It is difficult to date exactly the origin of a language, but English as we know it, probably was already in use in the 16th century whereas modern Spanish was already being used (due to the fact that Spain consolidated as a major power decades before than England did). But for some reason English ended up having more words than Spanish and other languages as well (around 240,000 words aside technical terms).  Why is this? Perhaps one reason is that English is much more dynamic since there is no institution around that regulates its development. There is a Real Academia de la Lengua Española that officially admits new words into Spanish and discards the ones that, after exhaustive studies, are deemed to be no longer in use. If you want to know if a word has "officially" been admitted into English then you have to consult the most important dictionaries such as the Merriam-W...

Smile means Sonrisa and Grin also means Sonrisa. What is the difference then?  A grin is a really a broad  smile, one in which you show your teeth. A smile with your lips closed is only that, a smile. Another difference is that when you grin you may not do it out of happiness necessarily. You may grin if you feel anxiety in which case this expression is called a Grimace. Sometimes, we humans use these facial expresssions to threat as for example animals would do. When this happens a smile is accompanied by a movement of the upper lip and of course is not a sign of happiness but of repressed violence and if such is the case we call that expression a Snarl. Again the problem is in Spanish since for us all of those are smiles (though we would say a Snarl is "una mueca agresiva" and a Grimace we would be called "una expresión de ansiedad"). Famous grinners are the Chesire Cat of Alice in Wonderland;  Joker, Batman's nemesis, and also any model appearing in...

The Backward Design is a framework proposed to redefine the traditional way we teach in class. It  is a method   in which we set our educational goals first and then we choose what techniques we will use to give instruction and also the way we will evaluate our students. The Backward Design of curriculum has three sections. We should begin by identifying what results we want to obtain. Next we have to ask ourselves what levels of evidence would indicate that learning has taken place and if such learning has been successful or not. Last but not least we have to decide the strategies and activities to be used in order to reach the results we want.

Is there a place where you can find Ernest Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein all together? Obviously not since they are all dead, but if there were one that place would be, and was in fact, Paris. Of course, only if you have some knowledge of American Literature you know we are talking about some of the greatest writers ever. To have the opportunity of meeting them would be any aspiring writer’s dream, and that is what happens to Gil Pender (Owen Wilson) who is visiting Paris with his fiancée and her parents. Gil’s life is at a crossroads and he is unsure about what to do. He wants to pursue his career as a writer and at the same time he wants to marry his beautiful fiancée who simply does not share his interests. One night a confused Gil gets lost and tired and in despair he just sits down on a sidewalk when suddenly a classic car stops by and some people from inside invites him to get in. An even more confused Gil mechanically accepts and magically he gets transporte...

This entry is not about that great novel by Jane Austen ( Sense and Sensibility) . It's about the problems Spanish speakers experience related to the use of the words  Sensible and Sensitive which are not the same.   Something that is Sensible makes sense or someone who is Sensible shows good judgment and someone that is Sensitive has very “vulnerable” feelings and can easily get depressed. The problem is in Spanish   since the word Sensible means Sensitive. "¡ No seas tan sensible!" would be " Don't be so Sensitive !" The word Sensible has then an entirely different meaning in Spanish. Sensible  would be Sensato whereas Sense would be Sensatez.  Definitely Sense is a quality quite uncommon in most human beings (myself included) but it is worse not to demonstrate any Sensitivity at all.

Neil Armstrong died on August 25, 2012 at age 82. When you think of it it is impossible not to consider that one of our most precious primary sources is gone. The things he lived through probably can not be documented as they should. How many men can say they have actually been on the moon and returned? How many have seen the Earth from a perspective similar to the one we use to observe the Moon? How many can say that they have been in two different worlds literally? Among  the members of that very select group, Neil stands out because he was a man with no ambitions to exploit his image and become another celebrity.  The fact that he was an astronaut by itself shows how extraordinary he was. Armstrong never came back to the dead and silent world we call Luna, but he did not  need to since he did not go there as a tourist in the first place but as  the best man for the job. Now Neil  Armstrong is dead and  he  is in a realm that is in many ways n...

One other situation English learners (who are also Spanish speakers) must confront when learning the target language is the fact that some English nouns lack a plural form while in spanish the same word is usually pluralized. That happens with some nouns that are Countable in Spanish and therefore have a plural form while in English those nouns are Uncountable. Here are some examples:                                                                                                                                                                  SPANISH           ...

Who else but Lucille Ball? This actress was one of those few people that brought so much happiness to so many people by doing what she loved the most: acting. And no one can compare to her since for some reason pretty women do not step into comedy the same way she did. Lucy was a queen of physical comedy (her sequence with Harpo is amazing!) and she could make gestures with her face that surely make Jim Carrey pale with envy every time he sees them. Yes, it was her time during the "I Love Lucy" series that was her best and not much of the productions she starred before or after that is remembered by fans, but still that alone is more than enough to guarantee her place among all the other Hollywood stars past and present. And this is my favorite sequence: Lucy always wanted to appear on TV but her husband, who was in the showbiz, always avoided giving her any chance because she had no talent at all. One day she gets wind that her husband needs a girl for a commercial in the...

They do exist but there is nothing paranormal about them. Ghost words are terms that become part of the bank of words of alanguage only accidentally. So is the case of SYLLABUS which was actually a case of misspelling. True, originally Syllabus had a different  meaning:  Table of Contents  and it was spelled  sylltabos.  It was a servant's (back then in the Roman empire) mistake that allowed SYLLABUS to be a word used these days as one of those basic terms used by teachers in particular. SYLLABUS  is not the only case, other famous cases such as:  Dord, Scapegoat   and even   Okay. Unbelievable as it may sound my last name may be considered a Ghost Word of some kind  since it is spelled BERMUDES when it should be BERMUDEZ. All thanks to some inefficient secretary of the Ecuadorian Civil Registration Office.                                   ...

  Recently DC Comics, the comics that owns Superman and Batman deicded it was time to revamp all their titles starting them all with number 1s issues. The meaning of that is that in some cases they were looking for a new approach in some heroes with established storylines but for others that meant significant changes in their lives and perhaps the one that came out the most affected, or at least the one whose changes received the most exposure, was Superman. And  here is proof of that: Superman is no longer married to Lois Lane who in turn has another love interest, another man who is not Clark Kent with whom she lives in the same apartment. But Superman is no far behind that line either since as the picture that accompanies this article clearly demonstrates he also has a love interest and that is Wonder Woman herself. Does it make sense? It does. Lois and Clark were destined to never have any children for a simple reason (commercial really but anyway...) and that was ...

There are poems and poems. Most talk about love, some address other human feelings, some even tell us stories of heroic deeds, or holy events or just the simple life. Some are long and drag on forever and some barely have an extension of three lines; but for me, there is no poem like “The Road not Taken” by Robert Frost. It is not the most beautiful poem I have ever read though it is one of the most transcendental. It is not about love or hate. It is a mirror image that shows us accurately who we are and what we are by adopting the figure of a traveler who has already spent most of his life by the time he talks to us and tells us about that moment when he made a decision and took one of two roads in front of him. He went through the one that was not what most people took. And that was it, that decision literally defined his life from then on. Does he have any regrets? None apparently, but then again…what if he had taken the other one? Remember the title:  The Road not Taken. ...

True. That is not the way you say Mis Padres in English. Though English students do know the word PARENTS they tend to assume that  parents is some sort of irregular plural for father and mother when actually is a genderless noun.  To use FATHERS as PADRES (meaning father and mother)  is not correct: the plural of father is fathers and the plural of mother is mothers. PARENTS is the plural form of parent. This word means either father or mother. We don't have anything like that in Spanish since the word to use in that situation is PADRES. So for example UN PADRE SOLTERO or UNA MADRE SOLTERA is in English a single parent.  Does this lead to confusion? It does. It is pretty common that learners say My Fathers when they should say My Parents (yet another case of Mother Tongue Interference). And the confusion grows higher now that gay marriages are becoming more and more common. All things considered English learners (the Spanish speakers) should be aware of this ...

What is wrong with this statement? Nothing and  everything... Men (straight men) do not wear perfume, women do. It is a simple convention, one that exists in English and not in Spanish (not Ecuadorian Spanish at least) which dictates that men wear Eau de Cologne, or cologne for short, while it is women the ones who wear perfume.  I remember that not so long ago it was not like that and in Ecuador men used to wear cologne and women would wear perfume, just as the conventions dictate in English. Something at some point changed that custom, and the problem is that change occurred only in Ecuador while in English that situation remained  unaffected.  Then again Ecuadorian men might not be so wrong since colognes are usually described as being some kind of perfume.                    

Construction workers after scaffolding a new building. Sadly there's no budget for the walls. What's Scaffolding to begin with? An architect would say it is the temporary structure used by construction workers to move around a building that is being repaired or when construction is being built. A teacher would say something else. Instructional Scaffolding (that's the complete term) is the group of instructional strategies implemented to help a learner or a group of learners to reach deeper comprehension so they can grasp successfully the target content intended for them. Scaffolding is connected to the concept of Constructivism which is about giving the learner knowledge that can be tested and thus is also reliable. Scaffolding is more than anything about training the learner to do his/her own learning. Little by little the learner is left alone so he or she can devise his/her own learning strategies and in the end, becomes an independent learner. Scaffolding is a fa...

Lex Luthor has always been considered Superman's greatest villain, but is this right? Perhaps the whole problem comes with what we call "great". Usually defined as "being such in an extreme or notable degree" this adjective in superlative form may not be th right one to define Luthor as a Superman villain. He is the most recurrent , the most logical, the one that despises Superman the most but that does not make him the greatest. Lex is a brilliant man with a tremendous flaw: he has an oversized ego. This trait in his personality is what makes him find intolerant there is someone greater than him so he uses every resource at his disposal to destroy "the alien" as he calls Superman. He doesn't need any more wealth or power because he has as much of that as he needs (in his current version Luthor is a billionaire and has even been president of the U.S.). What he needs is to be on top alone, a position he does not want to share with anyone, least o...

Some will say CLOCK and others will say WATCH. Both are correct, however, there is a  slight difference between one and the other. Take the Big Ben for example which appears in the pic. It is perhaps the most famous clock in the world (it even has a nickname of its own), but it's definitely not a watch. Citizen is a company famous for the watches they produce because they are elegant, practical, stylish; and still you would never put one of them on one of the walls of your living room. Is size the difference then? No. There are clocks of all sizes, many of them smaller than a standard watch. Now, most watches have similar sizes. There are no watches larger than a fist unless they have some promotional objective. The difference is in the purpose. The only purpose of a clock is to tell time which is why they are made large and are usually placed in prominent places so eveyone can see them at all times. Watches are also used to tell time but they are considered part of our...

"Teacher, can you tell me my note?" This is one common request students of foreign language make whenever they want to know the score they obtained after a quiz or exam.  There are two possible definitions for the word NOTE in English. One, a music note as the ones used in music sheets, the ones that help us sing or play a musical instrument. The other and most common is a short message written in a small piece of paper like the Thank you note in the picture. Those are notes in English. Again the problem is that in Spanish the two things described before are called NOTAS and a grade or a score is also a NOTA. Learners make a wrong assumption (yet anothet case of Mother Tongue Interference) and that explains the origin of the problem. So asking a teacher for "a note" is wrong unless you receive in a small piece of paper this message in return: "Sorry, you flunked the test!" 

There will be several impressions left once you finish watching this movie. First and foremost, this is not a family movie. Though those scenes are not really seen because the camera conveniently does not show them, to watch an adolescent killing another is definitely a no-no, at least for me.  This is a film for adolescents precisely, and adults, and as I said, there are no scenes including bloodshed, or sex or gory elements; but, the implicit violence and the reasons for it prevent this production from being something you would like to watch with your kids. The story goes like this. At some point in the future, North America has become Panem, a  country that is made up by twelve very poor districts and a rich central sector called The Capitol. Once in the past of this country there were thirteen, not twelve districts, that rebelled against The Capitol resulting in a war that destroyed district 13 and the institution of the Hunger Games. The Games is an annual competition...

While most names in English have a somewhat similar version in Spanish the same cannot be said about all names. Robert is Roberto or Ruperto, Charles is Carlos, Elizabeth is Isabel, Fred is Federico and so on. But there is a name in English that can be translated into not one but four different names in Spanish and that is none other than JAMES. Believe it or not, James can be translated into JAIME, JACOBO, DIEGO and SANTIAGO. Of course, Jacobo is most likely translated into Jacob and Jaime into James but those are not the only possibilities. It happens that originally there was only the Latin name Iacobus, which is the origen of the name Jacob, however, later on Iacobus derived into Iacomus, the most likely predecessor of James. James derived into Jaimein Spanish  as years passed by. James also had an old Spanish/Portuguese form: Yago. One of the earliest Christian saints was named James, that is Saint James which in Spanish would be SAN YAGO. That was obviously the ori...

Maybe I should have written "Latin American" style in the title of this entry. Probably, the problem we have is also a problem in other Spanish-speaking countries, but I can't really tell for sure (never heard any Guatemalan singing Happy Birthday, anyway). It happens that in Ecuador we celebrate birthdays by singing "Happy Birthday" and after that "Feliz Cumpleaños". First in English then in Spanish. Just like in the movies we gather around a birthday cake and sing to whoever has turned a year older that day. It's a tradition, but that doesn't mean we do it the right way. The problem is most people mispronounce the TH in BIRTHDAY, so what we actually say is HAPPY BIRD DAY.  Another variation is HAPPY BEAR DAY. Once somewhere, on some occasion I would like to forget, I heard somebody singing HAPPY BABY! (I can assure you there was no baby around then and there). Surely, we do these things inadvertently, but they are also an indicator that ...

Why are English names so popular? Because we are being alienated in so many different ways that they have become part of our lives already or because they truly sound better? This thing of preferring English names over Spanish names, in my country at least, has led to a point that officially some foreign names are accepted because of their popularity and also for their having been used for quite a long time already (as an example, the only Ecuadorian who has ever won a gold medal is JEFFERSON Pérez).  What I can say is that truly some names do sound better in English and here are some examples:                                                Spanish                  English                                       ...

Perhaps the answer is simple: he is not a real villain. In many ways Magneto was a victim who was used by people who wanted to use him, or better said his power for their own synister purposes. Those manipulations led Eric Lensherr to lose things and people that were valuable to him and eventually develop this hatred for normal humans and also come to the belief that powerless humans were an inferior species. Mutants were Nature's next step in evolution and therefore should be considered a new species with a name of their own, Homo Superior. This new species needs a space of its own which is why Eric, seeing himself as mutants' natural leader, believes that space is being occupied by regular humans. Does this make him a psycho? Perhaps and then again perhaps not. Laboring for what you believe in cannot be called wrong; however, that innocents suffer because of your actions cannot be called right either. If Magneto considers it right he will modify the axis of Earth or invers...

Perhaps it is. But before anything else let's remember that English is a language that has received contributions from other languages, in particular Latin and French. Britannia (as the island of Great Britain used to be called) was occupied by the Romans since  AD 43 until AD 410. Then the Normans, who ruled France, invaded the British isles in 1066 making an even more lasting impression that modified Old English by adding a lot of new words and names. One of the many results of this cultural mixture was the formation of two word groups. One is made up  by units taken from French and Latin (hence the similarity of several words in English with some Spanish words) and the other group comes from the Anglo-Saxon, the official language in England by the time the Normans invaded the Isles. How do you distinguish one from the other? Well, the words taken from Saxon and Frech are usually long such as proprietaire or obligation  while short words such as woman, can , or...

Where was the Joker during the events of the Dark knight Rises ? Well, he was dead, in a way. We know what happened to Heath Ledger the actor that played the Joker in The Dark Knight , but that does not necessarily mean the Joker also had to be absent from TDKR. It is known there was some footage unused from TDK and some of that material could have been used in the third movie. Technology operates "miracles" these days, we know that.  Many fans waited eagerly to see scenes somehow adapted so the Joker could make a surprise appearance in TDKR. It would have been a great addition to an already great film, but for one reason or another, Christopher Nolan, the film director,did not want to go into that. To the dismay of many Batman fans, the Joker was not in the last film though he survived his last encounter with Batman. I know it sounds cold but Heath Ledger was the one who was dead not the Joker. I know putting the Joker there would have perhaps been considered a lack o...

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) is one of the most remarkable British writers ever and was also the author of The Picture  of Dorian Gray, a work that by itself would have granted him a ticket to posterity. He was one of the most representattive personalities of the society of his time, what people used to call a dandy. H e was elegant in his clothes and his words. His sayings reveal a keen and brilliant personality. " Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much" was one of the many clever statements that have lost neither relevance nor brilliance after all these years. Several plays, short stories and poems are also part of a great literary production that Wilde left to posterity. But perhaps one of the most remarkable aspects of his life is precisely the series of sad events that led to his early death at age 46. Though he was married, apparently he also had homosexual inclinations that eventually were cause of accusation by the father of one of his friends. The c...

Thinking in English is something that can happen to a learner in two different ways. The first implies a natural occurrence: after a long time of being learning English (or if you're lucky, a short time) one day the learner finds himself/herself thinking in English without any conscious effort. It is ideal that a learner thinks in English "naturally", but it won't happen soon or after a few weeks of beginning learning a foreign language. In my own experience it happened all of a sudden, but after a long while. And I was constantly exposed to English. The second makes more sense than just waiting by idly. We have to make a conscious effort "to think in English". It is really simple. Quite often natives do not have thinking processes unlike ours, meaning that if they are hungry that's what they have in their minds: "I'm hungry..." or "I need to take a break..." Simple thoughts that we can easily have in our own minds in the targ...