always hated this style of web presentation.
How the words we teach English language learners changed
31–40 of 210 posts
Re: How the words we teach English language learners changed
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a native English speaker, keen feels like a very 1950s TV word. Don't know if that's actually true but feels like that way. I expect you're more likely to hear like cool today are some more contemporary word.
Brits still use the word somewhat frequently, though I haven’t bumped into many of them in the last ten years.
Right, as far as live exposure, I associate its usage with UK/AU/NZ expats in my western US, academic R&D microcosm.
Re: How the words we teach English language learners changed
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a native English speaker, keen feels like a very 1950s TV word. Don't know if that's actually true but feels like that way. I expect you're more likely to hear like cool today are some more contemporary word.
Brits still use the word somewhat frequently, though I haven’t bumped into many of them in the last ten years.
Yeah, I guess I can also see it as more of a Britishism (etc.) currently.
Re: How the words we teach English language learners changed
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting one if you look at Google Ngram Viewer – usage dropped off massively to 70s/80s, and it's picked back up since but not to 1953 or earlier levels, so even that doesn't explain it. Must just be the combination of that increase as well as other words decreasing in usage I suppose. E.g. perhaps we're a bit less keen, but also much less passionate, so keen ends up making the cut.
As a native English speaker, keen feels like a very 1950s TV word. Don't know if that's actually true but feels like that way. I expect you're more likely to hear like cool today are some more contemporary word.
I'm also a native English speaker, sounds perfectly normal & commonplace to me.
Re: How the words we teach English language learners changed
#35I tried to organize vocab by difficulty level for an English language-learning app once. It shocked me how there is absolutely no "right" answer. If you are teaching English for travel, then you're prioritizing a lot of stuff around bathrooms, transportation, menu items, etc. If it's for understanding TV, it's a lot of words like "murder", etc. Depending on which TV shows you want to understand. If it's for reading t…
There is also a whole different language used to talk to toddlers and small children that native speakers know but very few adult learners ever pick up. And slang used among teenagers and young adults that often times not even their parents understand fully.
Re: How the words we teach English language learners changed
#36I tried to organize vocab by difficulty level for an English language-learning app once. It shocked me how there is absolutely no "right" answer. If you are teaching English for travel, then you're prioritizing a lot of stuff around bathrooms, transportation, menu items, etc. If it's for understanding TV, it's a lot of words like "murder", etc. Depending on which TV shows you want to understand. If it's for reading t…
I think a lot about this. It's funny how there are certain domains of language, familiar to all native speakers, but that you are simply not likely to learn as an adult language learner, at least not without diligent and focused study. I live and work in a foreign country, and have a modest but functional grasp of the language here. Which is to say, I know how to say 'sustainability', 'union-negotiated collective agr…
When you're a foreigner learning a language your experience is mostly from reading. There are words, however, that are much more common at home and in spoken language. So you'll probably never learn the words that a 10 year old kid knows.
Re: How the words we teach English language learners changed
#37Trying to read this article by paging through it with the spacebar is ... absolutely impossible.
I'm not going to finger-scroll or down-arrow the whole thing.
Don't break scrolling. Please.
Re: How the words we teach English language learners changed
#38I tried to organize vocab by difficulty level for an English language-learning app once. It shocked me how there is absolutely no "right" answer. If you are teaching English for travel, then you're prioritizing a lot of stuff around bathrooms, transportation, menu items, etc. If it's for understanding TV, it's a lot of words like "murder", etc. Depending on which TV shows you want to understand. If it's for reading t…
I think a lot about this. It's funny how there are certain domains of language, familiar to all native speakers, but that you are simply not likely to learn as an adult language learner, at least not without diligent and focused study. I live and work in a foreign country, and have a modest but functional grasp of the language here. Which is to say, I know how to say 'sustainability', 'union-negotiated collective agr…
It's kinda funny. My life switched to English when I was around 18 and, while my family still speaks my native language exclusively, everything I've learned since then I don't know how to say it in my native language.
Just earlier I was talking to them, trying to say "when life gives you lemons" and being unable to find an equivalent phrase. I hope they understood my lemons reference regardless.
Re: How the words we teach English language learners changed
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a native English speaker, keen feels like a very 1950s TV word. Don't know if that's actually true but feels like that way. I expect you're more likely to hear like cool today are some more contemporary word.
“It offers fewer words for the people directly around you, but more for belonging at a distance” - the further I get into this article the more it just seems like sampling bias as a narrative.
It's a wordy (/AI?) way to say it, but I took it to be commenting on our lives being more 'abstract'/digital than they were, so naturally a lot of our language is less physical.
Oughtn't really affect emotive language like 'keen', though.
Re: How the words we teach English language learners changed
#40[flagged]