Multimedia English

Learning English can be intensive, costly, and time-consuming. With the advent of educational technology-based resources (CD-ROMs, the Internet, Web pages, etc.), millions of language learners are getting interested in flexible and creative learning methodologies.

In multimedia systems several media of communication such as animation, music, text, and image combine in conjunction with computer technology and give the users as ‘interactive players’ the opportunity to control the flow and direction of the text by navigating through it.

The use of language-learning multimedia technologies must be supported because they are necessary for keeping English-learning relevant to the information age. Self-study English-learning multimedia resources, actually, have become more affordable and ubiquitous than before.

Considering all these things, I have put here the links to three web sites that are based on teaching English through different modes of communication. You can resort to such materials with the ease of the mind for both teaching and learning English, surely.

Multimedia English Classroom
Bell English Online
ESL Galaxy

Blending/Portmanteau Words

There are several and nearly fixed ways, which give new words a chance to live along with old ones in every language. One of these ways is "blending". In blending, two or more function words blend to form a new word. The new word, thus, is called a portmanteau.

I have chosen this topic intentionally because I want to share some new and somehow odd blending examples with you. If you try to memorize them, you can add some new pieces of information to your wordrobe. What does "wordrobe" mean? It means a person's vocabulary [blend of word and wardrobe].

My next example is "fantabulous" [Blend of fantastic and fabulous]. The idea of creating and developing podcats was fantabulous.

To me, "carjacking" is as dangerous as hijacking. "Carjacking" is a noun describing an incident by which a usually armed individual coerces the driver of an automobile to give up his vehicle or drive it and the assailant to some specified location.

I hate "baggravation". I do not want to feel it my life. Never ever. Baggravation [Blend of bag and aggravation] is a feeling of annoyance and anger one endures at the airport when his/her bags have not arrived at the baggage carousel but everyone else's bags have.

When something is extremely large, it is "ginormous". This word is the blend form of gigantic and enormous.

Remember when you hear an accident occur and later give a report on what you heard; you are an "earwitness" not an eyewitness.

Finally, I like to add that portmanteaux or portmanteaus are the plural forms of portmanteau.

All around Robin Hood's barn

I am sure you do remember Robin Hood, a man who lived as an outlaw in Sherwood Forest in central England. He is famous in stories for robbing rich and giving to the needy.

His name is used to describe a situation in which money is taken from well-off people and given to those who are badly off.

Example: A new higher-rate tax that will have a "Robin Hood effect" on income distribution.

Clearly, Robin Hood's house was the Sherwood Forest. The roof of his house was leaves and branches. He did not have a barn and in fact did not need a barn. The phrase simply means a circuitous roundabout route all over a place.

Now, you no longer need to go all around Robin Hood's barn to discover the meaning of this phrase.

distemper, dis-temper, or this temper

I love translation, but I seldom immerse myself in it. But when I decide to translate an article, I translate it with vim and vigor.To be honest, our translation classes at university were awful. Let me tell you a real story about our oral translation class.

One day our instructor brought a tape with herself and asked us to transcribe and then translate it. I listened to the tape and put down everything on my notebook. Something was wrong with a line in that text. The line, which knocked me for a loop, was this:

Her cat had been given its distemper shot.

Unaware of the real meaning of "distemper" and being lazy enough to look the word up in a dictionary, my instructor and classmates translated the word incorrectly. They thought the word meant "behaving badly". Do you get what I mean?

No one in the class paid heed to this mistranslation. During listening to the tape again and reviewing my notes for the exam, a question came to my head. Was it distemper, dis-temper, or this temper? The first one, of course, seemed to be the answer. And my trusty dictionary approved that.

Distemper: a serious infectious disease that affects animals.

Oscar Wilde once said it is always a very dangerous thing to tell a story with a moral. I cannot give the moral of this story a miss, however. Some translators, no matter where they come from or what their native language is, do not take translation very seriously. They do not want to thrash the problems of translation out. Please add the number of some students of translation and their teachers to the list.

Regards,

Zahra