Smile :)

When do we smile? When we are happy, when we see a friend, when we are on a road trip enjoying the sunshine and the landscape. What we always think of as a simple smile turns out to be a lot more than that. Enjoy the article More to a Smile Than Lips and Teeth [...]

Does college make you smarter? – NY Times

The good, the bad, and the discussion about American college in the NY Times Opinion Pages: Does College Make You Smarter? Reading the opinion pages of newspaper is a great way to improve your English and writing style. Enjoy this double dips where you can also learn about American colleges. On the other hand, what [...]

Happy birthday to Jeff and hello to ESL Podcast blog

I am late for 2 days, so Happy belated birthday to Jeff in ESL Podcast!!! (He is one of my favorite podcasters!) (For intermediate and advanced learners) We have learned about ESL Podcast a while ago. Do you know that they also have a blog, the ESL Podcast blog? Apart from some posts with detail [...]

The secret power of Youtube and of yourself

So I came across this article from CNN about an interesting TEDtalk: “The secret power of YouTube”. You might still remember that we mentioned about TEDTalk a while ago in this post, and you can always visit their website for more talks at http://www.ted.com/. Please note that the talks there are more suitable for advanced [...]

Reading towards writing – Part 2

In this post I will explain a little more about how to read effectively. We usually read for information, to answer test questions or just for fun, but forget about many other interesting detail about language from the passage. What I have learned from my junior high and high-school French classes are, always prepare some [...]

Reading towards writing

Does it sound strange? It should not, at least for me . It sounds like “Listening towards speaking”, when I listen to others speaking English, most of the time I’ll try to capture what expressions they are using, such as “roll up and deal with it”, or “Down the hall then take your right” (what [...]

Good Morning, Vietnam … er, Oklahoma

While checking my old emails I saw this interesting article from The NYTimes that anh Phú sent us long time ago. If you found this article difficult to read here, you may follow the link above to go to the original page and use the auto look-up of the NYTimes that I mentioned on previous [...]

Tony Phillips’ Take on Math in the Media – A monthly survey of math news

This month’s topics from Math in the Media from the AMS. Too good at math? Mathematical patterns in songs Curvature and the growth of cells Too good at math? According to Slate Magazine‘s Fred Kaplan (posting updated May 18, 2007), Paul Wolfowitz’s problem is that “He’s too good at math.” Wolfowitz, the former Deputy Secretary [...]

I couldn’t give a monkey’s!

Vietnam coach Alfred Riedl’s response to being called a national hero is brutally honest: “I couldn’t give a monkey’s!” The Austrian was a little over 10 minutes away from going down in Vietnamese folklore before Qatar rescued a 1-1 draw in Thursday’s Asian Cup Group B game in Hanoi. Co-hosts Vietnam, playing in the tournament [...]

Harry Potter Grows Older and Darker

(From Time) Deep into the new movie Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, our teen wizard (Daniel Radcliffe) finds the strength to face down the dark lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) — and the wisdom to pity him. “You can never know love or friendship,” Harry tells the noxious, noseless one. “And I feel [...]

Mars and Venus in the workplace

by John Gray Imagine that Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. A long time ago, we got together, fell in love, and decided to live together on Earth. At that time, we were really much different than we are today. Men nurtured the family by working outside the home and women nurtured the [...]

American history book.

johnson-paul-a-history-of-the-american-people.pdf