EnglishisEasy/Elinglésesfácil

"If THRIFTY means feeding me of course it is cool!" It all depends. If we call someone THRIFTY, and we do it as a compliment, it means AHORRATIVO. If we call someone THRIFTY and our approach is negative then it means TACAÑO.  If we call something THRIFTY in a positive way it means ECONOMICO. If we call something THRIFTY in a negative way it means LIMITADO (in terms of money). Possible antonyms are Generous (Generoso) or Wasteful (Despilfarrador).

Does it look like that backpack you lost long ago? That little time you stay in one place is a SOJOURN. It might be that you're traveling or visiting somebody; and the time you spend there would be defined as a SOJOURN. e.g. It was during one o my SOJOURNS to London that I had the privilege to interview Stephen Hawking. Synonyms of SOJOURN are visit or stay. It is a bit difficult to find a good translation for SOJOURN.  If we had to translate SOJOURN we could say something like a  CORTA ESTADIA or a CORTA VISITA. 

"Very funny! Just your index fingers won't hold the chart!" Most Earthquakes (Terremotos in Spanish) do not come alone, so to speak. An area that has experienced a quake recently is likely to experience several more the following days or the same day until the moment earth stops shaking and stabilizes completely and things go back to normal again. The good news, if we can call it good news, is that usually those successive quakes are of a lesser magnitude. Those "less intense" quakes are called AFTERSHOCKS or MINOR SHOCKS whereas in Spanish they are called REPLICAS.

Jim Carrey's expressions say it all. Double Personality? It's a possibility but not the most common term to describe this problem. It is defined as a condition that causes a person to behave in different ways at different times as though there were two or three people (in some cases even more) inhabiting the same body.  In Spanish we call it "complejo de doble personalidad" which is not accurate since a person with this disease may have more than two personalities. In fact, there are cases of people having up to one hundred different personalities.   The most common way to refer to this problem in English is SPLIT PERSONALITY. It is also called Multiple Personality disorder but apparently the right way to refer to it is Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). The cause of this disorder: child abuse, sadly a fact common to all those who suffer DID. 

This one is not so easy to translate because a LEGHORN is chicken but not any kind of chicken. This specific breed comes originally from Italy and was imported in the XIX century to The United States. Soon, farmers there began breeding them because LEGHORNS were and are good layers. The chicken commonly found in Ecuador is not the same as in the U.S.. To start with LEGHORNS mostly lay white eggs whereas our chicken lay light brown eggs. In spite of their  shell color eggs taste the same. LEGHORN eggs can only be found in certain markets because their introduction in this part of the world happened only recently and so they are not as widespread.

This is one bird that won't be flying to the South. Not Badminton Ball for sure.  In English it is not called a Ball because it is not one. In Spanish we call this object a PELOTA (ball) perhaps for lack of a better term. It is obvious to us, Spanish speakers, that it is not a Ball but, then again Badminton is not that popular in our countries.  The name is BADMINTON BIRD. Standard BADMINTON BIRDS include feathers as part of their structure (that section is called Skirt) which helps the object move through the air differently from regular balls of racket sports. The use of feathers explains why the object is called a BIRD or BIRDIE. A more professional name is SHUTTLECOCK.These days the skirts of SHUTTLECOCKS are no longer made of feathers which are perhaps harder to obtain and also more fragile and other light materials, such as plastic, are preferred.

Quite often we find that most students feel Reading and Writing a boring class, and it is if we cannot come up with ways to make it entertaining for them. One way to do it is by giving the whole thing a "sense of purpose: we read and then we write because we are going to do something with it.  Here is an idea (that is not mine, BTW). This activity is about creating movie posters based on the stories your students are reading. Of course you need stories that have not been translated into movies but have the potential.  Tell your students that by the time they finish reading this or that story they have to create a movie poster based on that particular tale. They have to do the casting that is looking for the actors that are right for the roles in the story. They have to explain those decisions in an exposition to the class and next they must elaborate the art concept for the movie poster which should include one of those catchy sentences to hook the audience. The beau...