Mshel

I always encourage people to follow their hearts and do what is best for their lives.  At the same time, looking at the situation from a practical and realistic standpoint is very important.  Any student majoring in linguistics should have a full understanding of the prospects for getting a job in that field.  The last thing anyone wants to do is earn a degree and not get a decent paying  job (in the career field) after the fact.  I've been there and done that!

Well, I dated a man from Central America for a few weeks.  His English speaking skills were limited but he managed to pick up on many English idioms and some slang in the first six months of living in the U.S.  Our friendship worked out good.  I helped him practice his English and he helped me to understand more about Spanish.

The translator is confusing because it provides literal, word for word translations.  In order to get the correct translation, the sentence or expression that you want translated, should be placed in the correct cultural context.  You're better off asking a native Spanish speaker for a translation.

El mundo means "the world" in English. 

I always second guess myself when it comes to spelling simple words like "receive" and "believe".  Sometimes I run into trouble when I spell English words adopted from foreign languages like "bourgeoisie". 

This is tricky, because we are conditioned that the apostrophe is used for possessives in the English language.  I frequently have to remind myself that "it's" stands for "it is" or "it has" and "its" is a neuter possessor.

Examples:

It's the middle of June.

Its paw prints were left in the mud.

Most of the time I use complete sentences, proper grammar, spelling and punctuation when I text.  It is really a habit. This is very unusual in my social circle, since my friends and family use shortcuts when they text.  If I am in a rush then I use shortcuts.  I don't do it very often, because I don't want to embarrass myself.

I only use this when I am sending a text message or communicating on the internet through social media or a blog.  It is not something I use very often because it is very informal.

I think that audio books are great for learning while traveling or commuting to work.  They are so convenient, since they can be downloaded and saved to an MP3 player, phone or iPod. You can listen to them while you are doing your chores. 

Some people learn better through listening, instead of reading. I get great result when I read a book and then listen to the audio book version over and over. Audio books come in very useful for people who don't have much time to sit down and read books.