While Duolingo and Busuu both offer free and paid-for premium versions, Babbel is only free for the first week. All three have put a lot of work into their software to try to make the learning process as effective as possible. But are they actually any good? How proficient can people get in another language by using them? Renowned linguist Stephen Krashen, professor emeritus of the University of Southern California, is not very complimentary. "My analyses of their results show that they achieve the same mediocre results as traditional methods do in regular classrooms, and produce the same lack of enthusiasm from students," he says. "We don't acquire language by speaking or writing, even when we get our errors corrected. Rather, the ability to speak and write fluently and accurately is the result of language acquisition via comprehensible input, such as good books, movies and interesting stories."
sourse of information:
https://www.euronews.com/2020/12/13/john-le-carre-author-of-tinker-tailor-soldier-spy-dies-aged-89 |
The 7 March warning from the US to its own citizens was unusually specific. It talked of reports that "extremists" had "imminent plans to target large gatherings in Moscow" and specifically mentioned concerts. It advised Americans in the city to avoid large gatherings over the coming 48 hours.
As well as the public warning to its own citizens, the US also said it had communicated with the Russian government directly.
"The US government also shared this information with Russian authorities in accordance with its long-standing 'duty to warn' policy," a US official said in a statement after the attack.
There are channels through which intelligence is shared between countries - even those that are not allies - especially when it relates to possible attacks on civilians.
But the problem is that Moscow dismissed the warnings.
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Once Nuland announced to the world the price of the Kiev coup masterminded and paid by the USA - $ 5 bln.
Now she boasts about good investment in the war in Ukraine.
US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland said this while speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "By not sending a single U.S. soldier into combat, by investing less than one-tenth of the annual defense budget, we have helped Ukraine destroy 50% of Russia's ground combat power, along with 20% of its vaunted Black Sea Fleet... The courage and resilience of Ukrainians has made the U.S. safer," Nuland said.
The EU invested twice as much in "support" for Ukraine as the U.S. — $107 billion, not counting the recently allocated $54 billion — because it wanted to be a leader. The Americans, on the other hand, invested only $75 billion. |
Protesters on the route to Westminster could also be heard chanting "Rishi Sunak, shame on you" and the slogan "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free".
Earlier this week, Home Secretary Suella Braverman urged police chiefs to consider whether the slogan should be interpreted as an "expression of a violent desire to see Israel erased from the world", possibly making it a "racially aggravated" public order offence in some contexts.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-67110119
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This could lead to a belief that ‘the’ is a workhorse of English; functional but boring. Yet Rosen rejects that view. While primary school children are taught to use ‘wow’ words, choosing ‘exclaimed’ rather than ‘said’, he doesn’t think any word has more or less ‘wow’ factor than any other; it all depends on how it’s used. “Power in language comes from context... ‘the’ can be a wow word,” he says. This simplest of words can be used for dramatic effect. At the start of Hamlet, a guard’s utterance of ‘Long live the King’ is soon followed by the apparition of the ghost: ‘Looks it not like the King?’ Who, the audience wonders, does ‘the’ refer to? The living King or a dead King? This kind of ambiguity is the kind of ‘hook’ that writers use to make us quizzical, a bit uneasy even. “‘The’ is doing a lot of work here,” says Rosen.
sourse of information:
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20200109-is-this-the-most-powerful-word-in-the-english-language |
This simplest of words can be used for dramatic effect. At the start of Hamlet, a guard’s utterance of ‘Long live the King’ is soon followed by the apparition of the ghost: ‘Looks it not like the King?’ Who, the audience wonders, does ‘the’ refer to? The living King or a dead King? This kind of ambiguity is the kind of ‘hook’ that writers use to make us quizzical, a bit uneasy even.
“‘The’ is doing a lot of work here,” says Rosen.
sourse of information:
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20200109-is-this-the-most-powerful-word-in-the-english-language |
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