dorannmwin

My daughter is going to be starting sixth grade in the fall. When I was her age I had already learned and perfected cursive writing. She, on the other hand, doesn't have the slightest inclination to even signing her name.

I believe that cursive writing is something that is losing it's emphasis in the digital world. It is becoming much less important for people to be able to know how to write.

Actually, I think that I would say that it is quite the opposite. I think that English is one of the most difficult languages to learn. There are a lot of different rules in English that make learning the language hard. In addition to that, there are also a lot of words that have different spellings and different meanings like to/two or their/there, etc.

How about instead of doing a dead languages forum there could be a forum that would be suited to all different languages that aren't included elsewhere. There are so many different languages in the world that it would be impossible to include them all but having a space for everything else would give people an opportunity to talk about any language that they were interested in.

Wow, you certainly are an accomplished linguist and I wish you the best of luck with learning Arabic and Greek.

I would absolutely love to have the opportunity to learn ASL but I've not found anywhere in my area that offers courses in it.

I've never even heard of this app before but it certainly does sound like something that would be a lot of fun. I'm going to have to look for it because it would be a fun way to pass time when I'm bored and have nothing else going on.

Honestly, when I realize that I'm having a really hard time concentrating, I will take a break. I find that walking away from the things that are bothering me for a short period of time helps me to clear my mind and then when I come back to the work I am better able to concentrate on it.

My first thought when I look at this question is that I have some problems with the words where As and Es sound pretty much the same.

Now with the second one I bet a lot of people will laugh at me. I tend to have problems with i before e except after c or when sounded as a as in neighbor or weigh. Whenever I'm spelling a word with an ie combination, I have to think of the little poem.

I don't know that I would say that it is different kinds of English but rather the different accents that people have. Even within the United States, there are different accents from all over. I'm from the south and I know that I have a southern accent. When I travel up north people act like I don't speak the same language as them because my accent and pronounciation is much different from theirs.

I've been known to do this quite a bit. I can't say that I'm fluent in any second language other than English, but when I'm working on studying Spanish then I start to get in a Spanish mindset and I'll be having a conversation with another person and without thinking about it I will start throwing in Spanish words.

Depending on what kind of free or paid apps you have, I think that any Kindle, Android or apple product can be a very good learning tool. The thing is, in it's factory state without and kind of apps added then I really don't think they can be used as a learning tool.

In my life I don't even think that I've ever gone a full day without using verbal communication. I am constantly talking to someone on the phone and of course I talk to my family when they are home. I don't think it would serve me very well to not have someone to talk to.

If it is something that someone is doing in a traditional letter or in an email it really drives me crazy. However, when someone is using shortened words for a text message or twitter message I understand it because you are trying to convey a message in as few characters as possible.

On your first sentence where you used the semi-colon, that wasn't right. That clearly should have been two different sentences. However, with the last sentence that you wrote, the use of the semi-colon was good.

I'll tell you one thing, the semi-colon is the one punctuation mark that I find I rarely use.

Honestly, it's been years since I took the SATs and when I did it was only out of a possible 1600.

That said, one of the things that I found that helped me improve my English portion of the test was the study of words. There were a lot of "hot" words that I never knew before so getting a list of those and studying those helped me a whole lot.

Another tip is to not spend too much time thinking about a question. If you can't figure out the answer pretty quickly, skip over it and come back to it later. It is better to have skipped a few questions throughout the test than to have a whole section that you weren't able to get to.

In general I have to say that I do get a kick out of puns and also double entendres. However, I don't know that I can think of a way that they would be a good tool to help you learn a new language. I would love to see some examples of what you are talking about.

I think that this is something that happens to all of us from time to time. I know sometimes when I am talking about something I will lose the word that I'm looking for in English and I will have to describe the word and it will eventually come back to me.

I've never seen any sites where you can get a five minute lesson, but I do like that you can take just a few minutes a day to work on a new language. For me, one of the things that I like to do is to open up a book and read aloud for 5 - 10 minutes at a time. When I come across a word that I don't know, I will look that word up.

I really don't know that it is possible to learn an accent without being exposed to it on a regular basis. I find that for me I pick up different accents depending on the people that I am around.

My son has learned Spanish from native speakers and yet even his Spanish doesn't have an authentic accent.

Our local school districts facebook page is a continual page of humor during the winter when kids are begging for school to be called off. They miss almost every grammar rule when they are making their posts.

If that says anything about how well the kids are being taught, they definitely don't need days off during the winter and they don't need the summer off either. An example "Please cancel skool tomorrow."

For me, it really depends on the kind of discussion that I am having. When I'm having a pretty professional type of conversation then I will never use smileys. However, when I'm chatting with friends and family members, I will throw in a smiley occasionally.

I particularly think this one is cute:  :wacky:

Granted it was years ago when I was in school, but when I was, if we had a cell phone in the classroom and were caught with it, it was confiscated.

Perhaps you could get a basket and on test or quiz days pass that around and offer some kind of a small bonus (one point perhaps) for each student that places their device in the basket. They can then pick them up when they are leaving the classroom at the end of the period.

And of course if they are caught with a device that they didn't turn in during the test/quiz, they would automatically fail that days work.

The worst habit that I find that I have when I'm talking is that when I am really excited about something I start to talk way too fast and when I do that, I end up running all of my words together.

On the one hand, you might have some issues with pronunciation when it comes to new languages that you are learning. However, I would definitely say not to let your speech difficulties discourage you from learning another language.

With practice you will be able to pick up on the nuances, it just might be something that will take you longer than it will take some other people.

When I was in college I decided that I was going to try to learn French. It really only lasted one semester for me. The reason that I choose to not continue with it was because it was difficult for me to remember the rules of French when I had spent so many years of my life learning the rules and mechanics of Spanish.

I don't know if it is completely proper, but the only way that I've ever heard anyone say it is "take a shower" or "take a bath." The only time that I've ever heard "have" in context with bathing would be "I have to shower/bathe."