EnglishisEasy/Elinglésesfácil

Please has never meant Por favor and it never will. That simple. They may have the same function, but do not mean the same. POR FAVOR really means "as a favor to me". Of course, that is never explained to us when we are taught the use of this expression of courtesy that as such has lost its original meaning. It is just two words we have to say kindly if we want to obtain something from others.  But if this appeal to generosity is not enough then let's examine its English equivalent: PLEASE. This word comes from the verb To Please which means "to give satisfaction" but it has also lost its original meaning to become a polite way to soften requests and indications (hence the expression "Please, please me!") The fact that PLEASE is not POR FAVOR can also be proved the following way: in English you can say, "Do me a favor, please!", but not in Spanish because then you are being redundant if you say "¡Házme un favor, por favor!" S...

Peripheral Learning is perhaps the Cinderella among the many ways thanks to which you can learn a language. There is the perception that PL is only a supporting tool of Language Acquisition and not another way of learning, but this may not be necessarily true.  Isaac Asimov, who was born in the time when Russia was becoming the U.S.S.R., came to the U.S. when he was only three. Eager to learn (he taught himself to read), he was constantly looking for sources that couild help him improve his learning. In one of his many books he mentioned that on his way back home he used to see the same street ad over and over until one day he just understood what the message in the ad was. In other words, Asimov was helped by Peripheral Learning. It is not that  he learnt English that way but it was one part of his learning process.  Whenever a teacher creates material like the poster in the picture that accompanies this article or uses visual material of other kinds he or she is ...

They say that the moment you start dreaming in a foreign language that event is the best indicator that you have internalized such language. It is an moment that marks an L2 learner's learning process, but perhaps its importance has been overstated too much. I myself have dreamed in English several times, however, I´m not convinced this is real proof one has learnt a language. Why is dreaming considered real proof that you have learnt an L2? It's all about the fact that dreaming happens involuntarily since it's a manifestation of our subsconcious mind. That is precisely the problem with dreaming: you cannot control it just as you cannot control your heart beating. How can we call the language produced in such circumstances a manifestation of true learning when it is perhaps only a mirror image of the act of learning? Still many more studies and research should be conducted on the matter. As it is right now the data remains insufficient.

Well, yes it is and it isn't. The problem with FAST is that it can be dfferent parts of speech. A part of speech refers to the function of a certain word in a certain context, meaning that words can be different things according to how they are used. For example:  I have a fast car.                     Things happen really fast here. In the first example FAST is working as an adjective while in the second is an adverb. In both the meaning remains very similar. What happens when we use FAST as a verb? Then the change is a bit more drastic since even the meaning is different. True: in the sentence: "Muslims fast during Ramandan" what we mean is Muslims do not eat during the day (Ramadan is a special time of the Muslim year when all muslims fast during the day and eat only a little something after dusk). So what muslims do is AYUNAR. The most interesting thing is that most L2 learners already know this word because it is one o...

Who has the reason? Politicians? Religious leaders? Scientists? Hoobastank? (a music band that sings "The Reason"). Well, none of them because to have the reason is an impossible thing to do. The Reason as such doesn't exist. The fact that in Spanish it is possible to say TENER LA RAZON  doesn't mean it is possible in Englsih as well. In this context Have is quite physical in meaning, so you must be able to show what you say. If you're going to say TENGO HAMBRE, don´t say: "I HAVE HUNGER" because you cannot possibly show your hunger. You feel it, that's all. Therefore the correct expression is "I'm hungry". That explains why we have to say I'm thirsty or I´m sleepy or the correct expression of what we are seeing today: TO BE RIGHT

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...