Immigration to the US, 1820-2007

Fascinating Visualization of Immigration to the USA over the past 167 years.


Immigration to the US, 1820-2007 v2 from Ian Stevenson on Vimeo.

(from http://vimeo.com/2424744)

\(^_^)/ = Hurrah for Emoticons!

Emoticon: the combination of keyboard characters representing an emotion, such as : ) for "happy", : ( for "sad." The word is a combination of the words "emotion" and "icon."

I recently learned that, in Asia, ^^ equals :-). It was explained to me that ^^ represents the shape your eyes make when you are smiling. I love it! I now find myself using ^^ on a regular basis in emails, even to other Westerners who have no idea what it means.

Some of my favorites from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoticons

d(^_^)b = thumbs up (not ears)


\(^_^)/ = cheers, hurrah

(*^^*) = shyness (*s represent blushing cheeks!)


(<.<) = shifty, suspicious

v(^_^)v = victory


(>^_^)> <(^_^<) = hugging each other

Please send me your favorites to post!


MICASE Spoken Academic English Resource

(Michigan Corpus of Spoken Academic English) is a online search engine where you can enter words or phrases and see them as they are used in authentic academic speech. I highly recommend this site for those of you struggling with academic phrases in English and when and how to use them.

Below I have pasted 3 of the 66 results in MICASE for the phrase "on the other hand" to give you a sense of how this works.

"...formed by western by notions of form, sound quality and harmony. Jarrett the improvising solo pianist, on the other hand, applies principles of formal construction, remarkably similar to North Indian raga performance..."

"... it's a picture of weeds it's a painting of weeds, she set her easel up and painted some weeds uh, on the other hand you can just ignore that title and and, think of it, as pure design this is, uh this is the, that kind..."

"...is a very strong strand of voluntarism in the scriptural tradition, that they're coming out of. Um, on the other hand, there are also things in that scriptural tradition which seem to be pointing in a somewhat differe

I also recommend the MICASE English Self Study page which features sound files and interactive quizzes and such for the advanced English learner.

Online LISTENING PRACTICE!

Voice of America's Special English page offers free downloads of audio broadcasts along with written transcripts of the broadcasts which you can read along as you listen.

This is a GREAT way to improve your listening skills in English because you can use the transcript to catch unfamiliar or hard to hear words and you can listen to the broadcasts as many times as you like.


http://www.voanews.com/specialenglish/index.cfm