IELTS, ESP, EAP and CALL

Over a bottle of vodka and a traditional Russian salad of pickles, sausage and potatoes tossed in mayonnaise, a group of friends raised their glasses and wished Igor Irtenyev and his family a happy journey to Israel.

 

My regional class has been learning about Russia this week and when I first started teaching a few years ago, I would teach that Russia had a population of 145 million.  Today it is 141 million and part of that is due to migrants leaving a country that they see as lacking in economic opportunities and political freedoms (another part of the story is that birth rates plummeted after the collapse of the Soviet Union in what demographers have called the "Russian Cross").  In the last few years the population appears to have stabilized, but there are still many who do not see a vibrant future from themselves within Russia.  

 

Tags: Russia, migration, Demographics, immigration, unit 2 population.

Via Nathan Parrish

"If you can pronounce correctly every word in this poem, you will be speaking English better than 90% of the native English speakers in the world.

After trying the verses, a Frenchman said he’d prefer six months of hard labour to reading six lines aloud."

 

This is the darndest poem and shows how truly complex English pronounciation really is (while also showing how spatially contingent the very idea of 'correct pronunciation' actually can be). 

As both a concept and a continent, the area known as Europe has shifted over time.

 

Many see Europe (as a physical landmass) as not a discrete continent, but a peninsula on the Eurasian landmass.  Culturally though, the idea of Europe as distinctly bracketed of from Asia, is a powerful idea is not in the Western World.  Where is Europe?  What is Europe?  This article would provide good information for a lesson on regions and how we conceptualize the world within that regional framework. 

This site houses several good maps, especially this one of the 'core' and 'periphery' of Europe. This map corresponds with maps that show the first places to be industrialized. The map on the formal culture regions is also useful for understanding cultural barriers to diffusion.  What's the connection between the branches of Christianity and Indo-European language families?  

"The AFRITERRA Foundation is a non-profit Cartographic Library and Archive assembling and preserving the original rare maps of Africa in a definitive place for education and interpretation.  This unique cartographic galleries links art, technology, and history."  The Afriterra Foundation connects people to the land, history, heritage and legacy of Africa.