¿Por qué aprender inglés?

Las razones para estudiar inglés son muchas y variadas. Aquí te queremos ofrecer las más importantes, aparte de un poco de información sobre el idioma, y una lista con consejos prácticos con los que podrás aprender inglés de una forma mucho más rápida y eficaz.

1. Para trabajar

Tal vez la razón fundamental por qué estudiar inglés es tan importante es porque el inglés es fundamental a la hora de encontrar trabajo. El inglés nos dará acceso a una mejor educación y por lo tanta a la posibilidad de un mejor puesto de trabajo. 

2. Educación e información

Otra importante razón para aprender inglés es que podremos acceder a una educación mejor, sin limitarnos a las universidades o centros de formación de nuestro propio país. Además nos dará acceso a información más actual y completa, conoceremos los últimos avances y podremos acceder a la mayoría de textos científicos, académicos y tecnológicos, escritos en inglés. 

3. Vacaciones

Un viaje de idiomas al extranjero es la mejor forma de aprender el inglés, de conocer una nueva cultura y gente interesante, de visitar lugares increíbles y disfrutar en general de unas vacaciones inolvidables. 

4.  Conocer otras culturas

Estudiar inglés es importante porque te mostrará otras culturas, estilos de vida y diferentes formas de pensar.

5. Para viajar

Hablar inglés te permitirá viajar alrededor de todo el mundo y darte a entender. Podrás disfrutar de tu viaje plenamente ya que el inglés se habla en los cinco continentes, y te evitará situaciones estresantes causadas por la barrera del idioma. 

6. Es el idioma más aprendido

El inglés es el idioma más aprendido como segunda lengua. Si bien el número de nativos que hablan inglés son entre 300 y 400 millones, el número de personas que lo aprenden como una segunda lengua es el mismo, superando al resto de los idiomas. 

7. Superación personal

Aprender inglés es más fácil de lo que piensas, y el orgullo que sentirás cuando lo hayas hecho es indescriptible. Recuerda que se hace camino al andar, y una vez superado el primer paso (decidir que quieres aprender inglés), el resto viene seguido. A medida que vayan aumentando tus conocimientos y vocabulario; cada vez que notes que entiendes mejor, tu confianza en tí mismo también irá aumentando. Perderás todos los miedos y te soltarás a hablar en inglés sin pensarlo. ¡Supérate a ti mismo aprendiendo inglés! 

8. Arte y literatura

Sabiendo inglés podrás disfrutar del humor británico, de la literatura, el cine y el teatro anglosajón, y de la cultura en inglés en general. Con el inglés podrás apreciar mejor los juegos de palabras, las bromas, las metáforas y todos los matices que se pierden en las traducciones. Podrás ver películas en versión original, entender la letra de las canciones anglófonas o apreciar las historias y enredos de tus videojuegos favoritos. 

9. Porque es el idioma universal

El inglés es el idioma de la comunicación internacional, del comercio y las finanzas. El inglés es una lengua franca en muchos rincones del planeta y el idioma oficial de muchas Organizaciones Internacionales como la Unión Europea, Naciones Unidas o la Unesco. Esto se debe a razones históricas y políticas, debido a la importancia que tuvo el Imperio Británico en el pasado, cuando extendió su lengua por todos los continentes, y a la importancia como potencia actual de Estados Unidos.

ENLACES

1. Sprachcaffe, languages plus. ¿Por qué estudiar inglés? Recuperado de: https://www.sprachcaffe.com/espanol/porque-estudiar-ingles.htm

2.  5 VENTAJAS DE APRENDER INGLÉS | Andres en Ingles. Recuperado de: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0qPA-IAHIc

Así trabaja el pensamiento

Cuando nos enfrentamos a un problema, en nuestra cabeza se desarrollan una serie de procesos para llevarnos a alguna respuesta. Muchas veces pueden existir diferentes soluciones y hay que hacer una distinción entre la mejor en base a tiempo, facilidad para ejecutarla y posibilidades para hacerlo. Todo este recorrido se conoce como proceso de pensamiento.

‘Who’ or ‘whom’?

There’s a continuing debate in English usage about when you should use who and when to use whom. According to the rules of formal grammar, who should be used in the subject position in a sentence, while whom should be used in the object position, and also after a preposition. For example:

Who made this decision? [here, who is the subject of the sentence]

Whom do you think we should support? [here, whom is the object of support]

To whom do you wish to speak? [here, whom is following the preposition to]

Some people do still follow these rules but there are many more who never use whom at all. Common practice in current English is to use who in all contexts, i.e.:

Who do you think we should support?

Who do you wish to speak to?

You can read more about the rules and guidelines about when to use who and when to use whom on the Oxford Dictionaries blog. Here you will find tips on using who and whom as relative pronouns and useful tips on how to get it right in writing and in speech.

Exercises

 1) Which of the following is correct?

	To whom do I write to complain?
	To who do I write to complain?

 2) Which of the following is correct?

	To who do you refer?
	To whom do you refer?

3) Which of the following is correct?

	He was a man whom everyone respected.
	He was a man who everyone respected.

What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains

By Nicholas Carr. Finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction; finalist for the 2011 PEN Center USA Literary Award; International bestseller; translated into 24 languages.

Is Google making us stupid? When Nicholas Carr posed that question in a celebrated Atlantic essay, he tapped into a well of anxiety about how the Internet is changing us. He also crystallized one of the most important debates of our time: As we enjoy the Net’s bounties, are we sacrificing our ability to read and think deeply?

Now Carr expands his argument into the most compelling exploration of the Internet’s intellectual and cultural consequences yet published. As he describes how human thought has been shaped through the centuries by “tools of the mind” — from the alphabet, to maps, to the printing press, the clock, and the computer — Carr interweaves a fascinating account of recent discoveries in neuroscience by such pioneers as Michael Merzenich and Eric Kandel. Our brains, the historical and scientific evidence reveals, change in response to our experiences. The technologies we use to find, store, and share information can literally reroute our neural pathways.

Building on the insights of thinkers from Plato to McLuhan, Carr makes a convincing case that every information technology carries an intellectual ethic — a set of assumptions about the nature of knowledge and intelligence. He explains how the printed book served to focus our attention, promoting deep and creative thought. In stark contrast, the Internet encourages the rapid, distracted sampling of small bits of information from many sources. Its ethic is the ethic of the industrialist, an ethic of speed and efficiency, of optimized production and consumption — and now the Net is remaking us in its own image. We are becoming ever more adept at scanning and skimming, but what we are losing is our capacity for concentration, contemplation, and reflection.

Part intellectual history, part popular science, and part cultural criticism, The Shallows sparkles with memorable vignettes — Friedrich Nietzsche wrestling with a typewriter, Sigmund Freud dissecting the brains of sea creatures, Nathaniel Hawthorne contemplating the thunderous approach of a steam locomotive — even as it plumbs profound questions about the state of our modern psyche. This is a book that will forever alter the way we think about media and our minds.

Reasons to Learn English

 

There are many reasons to learn English

1. English is the most commonly used language among foreign language speakers. Throughout the world, when people with different languages come together they commonly use English to communicate.

2. Why learn English when it is so difficult? Well, knowing English will make you bilingual and more employable in every country in the world.

3. Despite China, the United States is still a leader in technical innovation and economic development. English is used in the United States and in each of these fields.

 

4. English is commonly spoken throughout much of the world due to Great Britian’s expansion during the colonial age. People in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, parts of Africa, India, and many smaller island nations speak English. English is the commonly adopted second language in Germany, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands. Speaking English opens these countries and cultures up to you.

5. Another reason why English is so important is that it is the language of science. To excel in science you need to know English.

6. English is based on an alphabet  and, compared to Chinese, it can be learned fairly quickly.

 

7. English is also the language of the Film Industry and English means you no longer have to rely on subtitles.

8. In the United States, speaking English immediately opens up opportunities regardless of your ethnicity, color, or background.

 

9. Learn English and you can then teach your children English — or if they are already learning, you can now communicate with them in English.

10. English speakers in the United States earn more money than non-English speakers. Learning English will open your job prospects and increase your standard of living.

The history of English

Five Events that Shaped the History of English

Philip Durkin, Principal Etymologist at the Oxford English Dictionary, chooses five events that shaped the English Language.

1. The Anglo-Saxon Settlement

It's never easy to pinpoint exactly when a specific language began, but in the case of English we can at least say that there is little sense in speaking of the English language as a separate entity before the Anglo-Saxons came to Britain. Little is known of this period with any certainty, but we do know that Germanic invaders came and settled in Britain from the north-western coastline of continental Europe in the fifth and sixth centuries. The invaders all spoke a language that was Germanic (related to what emerged as Dutch, Frisian, German and the Scandinavian languages, and to Gothic), but we'll probably never know how different their speech was from that of their continental neighbours. However it is fairly certain that many of the settlers would have spoken in exactly the same way as some of their north European neighbours, and that not all of the settlers would have spoken in the same way.

2. The Scandinavian Settlements

The next invaders were the Norsemen. From the middle of the ninth century large numbers of Norse invaders settled in Britain, particularly in northern and eastern areas, and in the eleventh century the whole of England had a Danish king, Canute. The distinct North Germanic speech of the Norsemen had great influence on English, most obviously seen in the words that English has borrowed from this source. These include some very basic words such as take and even grammatical words such as they. The common Germanic base of the two languages meant that there were still many similarities between Old English and the language of the invaders. Some words, for example give, perhaps show a kind of hybridization with some spellings going back to Old English and others being Norse in origin.

3. 1066 and after

The centuries after the Norman Conquest witnessed enormous changes in the English language. In the course of what is called the Middle English period, the fairly rich inflectional system of Old English broke down. It was replaced by what is broadly speaking, the same system English has today, which unlike Old English makes very little use of distinctive word endings in the grammar of the language. The vocabulary of English also changed enormously, with tremendous numbers of borrowings from French and Latin, in addition to the Scandinavian loanwords already mentioned, which were slowly starting to appear in the written language.

4. Standardization

The late medieval and early modern periods saw a fairly steady process of standardization in English south of the Scottish border. The written and spoken language of London continued to evolve and gradually began to have a greater influence in the country at large. For most of the Middle English period a dialect was simply what was spoken in a particular area, which would normally be more or less represented in writing - although where and from whom the writer had learnt how to write were also important. It was only when the broadly London standard began to dominate, especially through the new technology of printing, that the other regional varieties of the language began to be seen as different in kind. As the London standard became used more widely, especially in more formal contexts and particularly amongst the more elevated members of society, the other regional varieties came to be stigmatized, as lacking social prestige and indicating a lack of education.

5. Colonization and Globalization

During the medieval and early modern periods the influence of English spread throughout the British Isles, and from the early seventeenth century onwards its influence began to be felt throughout the world. The complex processes of exploration, colonization and overseas trade that characterized Britain’s external relations for several centuries led to significant change in English. Words were absorbed from all over the world, often via the languages of other trading and imperial nations such as Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands. At the same time, new varieties of English emerged, each with their own nuances of vocabulary and grammar and their own distinct pronunciations. More recently still, English has become a lingua franca, a global language, regularly used and understood by many nations for whom English is not their first language. The eventual effects on the English language of both of these developments can only be guessed at today, but there can be little doubt that they will be as important as anything that has happened to English in the past sixteen hundred years.

Read more here: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/words/the-history-of-english