Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book

One of the great things about the Internet is how people use it to present ideas in a different way. Neil Gaimen writes books for teenagers and is using his website to read the book to the public:

Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book

Watch Neil Gaiman read The Graveyard Book on a 9-city video tour. At each stop on the tour, Neil will read one chapter from The Graveyard Book. Beginning on October 1st, we will post the video readings daily. By the end of the tour, on October 9th, you will be able to watch the master storyteller himself read The Graveyard Book in its entirety right here.

Welcome back!

We hope you have had a fabulous summer and  are ready to start practising English again. There's going to be a lot of new things happening at VirtualLingua this year, but let's get started with another great video from commoncraft which will explain how to make searching for information on the Web a little easier.

This version is without subtitles

subtitled version

Read the transcript here

Summer tips no.4 - Summer dictionary

Here's a great way to carry a whole lot of dictionaries with you - so if you are going on holiday to different countries and you don't want to fill your suitcase with heavy books, put this site in your browser favourites and don't fill your laptop with big files either.

Check out WordReference.com here

Summer tips no.3 - Summer listening

Podictionary is a short, free podcast with a transcription available daily or weekly.

Charles Hodgson, creator of Podictionary says,

“Every day podictionary delivers a new short story about the history of a common word to thousands of subscribed listeners.

Not only is podictionary an audio word-a-day, but as the number of words grows in the podictionary archive the website is becoming an on-line audio etymology reference of sorts.

It’s all for fun, so please enjoy.”

Check out Podictionary

Summer tips no.2 - Summer research

The Internet Public Library is a public service organization and a learning/teaching environment founded at the University of Michigan School of Information and hosted by Drexel University's College of Information Science & Technology.

Check it out here.

Summer tips no.1 - Summer reading

This week I'm going to post some resources you can use to continue practising English over the summer. The first of these is a List of Online Archives for Free Unabridged Books Online posted at Diploma Guide.

Now there is no excuse for not having something to read in English this summer...

How to nap

The Bsoton Globe has published a really useful guide to napping. Read it here