ON THE MOVE!!! Come visit us at our new website!

Well, as most of you will have noticed, things have been a little quiet around here lately. But there's a good reason why...

I have finally gotten off my butt and created a new and improved website...please stop by to visit it!

http://www.de2a2.com

This is where you'll be able to find the "new" version of Stop Spanglish, called De2a2 Language Services.

Why the change?

• I love my Spanish students, but some people (who weren't Spanish) thought that the classes were only for Spanish speakers. (Fair enough. Plus the name is kind of negative, when you think about it - and I wanted a company name that focused on growth, communication and opportunity.)
• In the past year, the business has REALLY expanded to include other services, besides classes. I'm now doing virtual assistant work, and a LOT more translation.....which was hard to include in this blog, which is mostly about learning English.
• I don't have any criticisms of Blogger as a platform - it's great for blogs. However, the new website will allow you to book classes directly from the website (as well as sign up for courses), submit requests and work orders, and do a lot of administrative stuff that I just couldn't do on this blog.

Once again, thanks to everyone for their continued support of Stop Spanglish, and I look forward to helping and serving you over at De2a2! 

Storing links on Storify

Just a quick note for those of you who are doing set classes this year (rather than conversation classes)...

I know it's hard to organize all the links that we talk about and use in class, especially if we're talking about extra reading or radio broadcasts that are related to the topics that we cover. So I've started an account with Storify.com, which helps people organize links around topics. (I know Pinterest does it, too, but I found Pinterest wasn't as good with YouTube videos, and was just .) So here goes! 

• For those of you who are studying for the Cambridge First, here are links that are connected to "The Perfect Storm", which is this year's set text for First, Advanced and Proficiency.
• For those of you who are doing Proficiency for Professionals, here is the story that contains links on culture in the work place. (This one is a little short, but will continue to grow as the course grows. Be sure to check back in to check out new links as they come up.)

Evernote and Business English: A cool idea

I know I drive a lot of you crazy by talking about useful Evernote is for organizing vocabulary. Well, I just saw another excellent idea that help you if you need to write a lot of e-mails in English:

1. Open Evernote. On the left-hand side of the screen, you'll see two lists: One is for notebooks, and the other is for individual notes. 

2. Create a Notebook called "Business English" or "Business Correspondence" (or something like that).

3. Once you've created the notebook, create a new note (or more than one) that focuses on the language you want to keep, and to refer to, more frequently. Some ideas might be: Phrasal verbs for business, Nice ways to ask for difficult things, Language for describing options and possibilities, things like that.

4. Every time you read (or hear) something useful or cool or funny or effective, be sure to open the note and write it down!

Yes, this method is a bit more work in the beginning. The reward, however, is that you'll save a lot of time and wasted brainpower trying to remember (or, worse, think of) specific language for specific situations.

Youcan learn more about Evernote at www.evernote.com (www.evernote.es in Spain.)

Thanks to FastCompany.com for the tip!

No time is no excuse.

I love this quote (and I hope I can get away with a little bit of copyright infringement by sharing it:)

No time is no excuse: squeeze out a few extra hours of every week. When you want something bad enough, you make the time – regardless of your other obligations. The truth is most people just don’t want it bad enough. Then they protect their ego with the excuse of time. Don’t let yourself off the hook with excuses. It’s entirely your responsibility to make your dreams come true. Besides, the perfect time never arrives. You’re always too young or old or busy or broke or something else. If you constantly fret about timing things perfectly, they’ll never happen.

(Taken from the 37signals blog.)

Smarter Learning (again): Why virtue doesn't work.

The start of a new school year is always a good time to reflect on your past learning experiences and to think about what has (and hasn't worked.)

This post ("Why Virtue Doesn't Work") dates back to 2010, but I still think it's equally relevant today...

Efficient Learning: The seven questions you should ask yourself

I'm taking a course on teaching with Coursera, and I just saw something I'd like to share with you (I will admit here that I actually didn't secure permission to share this, but I imagine it's not proprietary).

As you plan for your English learning this year, ask yourself these seven questions.

Cambridge Exams: Key Sentence Transformation Videos

I just wanted to let everybody know that there are now two Key Sentence Transformation videos available on YouTube.

The first one is a general overview of how Key Sentence Transformation works.
The second one focuses specifically on how to do Key Sentence Transformation with one-word verbs and phrasal verbs (and vice-versa.)

I'll be working on more videos this summer, especially the Key Sentence Transformation videos.

It's not easy for us, either!

So last night, I was looking around Twitter (as you do, when it's Sunday night and there's nothing good on TV), and I found this blog....

http://30daysofspanish.wordpress.com

It's the story of a guy named James, who shares an apartment in Seattle with a guy named Luis. James has decided that he's going to try learning Spanish. For thirty days, there's no English allowed in their apartment: it's all Spanish.

I think that most of you will be able to relate to what James is going through. I know that when I moved to Spain, I was at about this level...

Don't miss the video where they watch the soap opera together - it's classic.

What are your English practice plans this summer?

So....this week is the week when most people go on holidays. When we think of holidays, we don't think about work; the most that we want to do is, well, nothing.

When did you English classes end? How much have you planned to practice your English over the summer?

If you think that practice isn't important, I'd like to ask you to reflect on a post that I wrote last year. You are the only person who can control how much you learn. You attitude is everything!

So how have you planned to review and practice your English over the summer? How are you guarantee that you don't go back over the summer? Please feel free to leave your ideas in the Comments section below....

English: The (new) official language of Le Tour?

There's a thought-provoking article over at The New York Times: English has become the language for riders, teams and organizers at the Tour de France.