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January 5th is Make Plans Day!

It has been 5 days since the New Year began.  How many resolutions have you broken?  Don’t worry!  That’s why I invented Make Plans Day – the optimistic version of New Year’s Resolutions.

Resolutions take time, and if you work through some time management today, you’re more likely to keep those promises of saving money, losing weight, and being more active.  It’s January 5th, and you (by you I mean I) have already eaten too many sweets, been to the gym once, and watched more TV than you’d hoped.  Today is the day to plan your life so you can keep those resolutions.

You might have also noticed that stylistically, planning is more closely related to the future tense.  I’m planning to has a close meaning to I will or I’m going to.   When you make plans, you’re designing the route of action you will take.  Resolving to do something is closer to the hope or desire to do something.  I resolve to is more similar to I hope to.

I’ve always thought that resolutions are really just a fun way of putting goals on paper, but who (besides me) wants to spend their vacation filling out a calendar?  You’ve had 5 days to recover from a long break.  Now, it’s time to buckle down and make some plans!

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Tags: Holidays, Student Life Hacks, Time Management, Vocabulary by Debra
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Commenters’ Corrections

Sometimes it’s spelling.  It might also be punctuation.  It might be style; it might be verb tense.

I’m not saying I’m perfect, but I thought it would be fun, since I’m on You Tube anyway, to pull out a few comments here and there for you to analyze for their errors.  The errors will be posted on Fridays.  The answers will be posted on Mondays.

Here are a few to get started…

  1. MY EARS ARE BURNING AND MY EYES TO.
  2. Thumb’s up
  3. Anyone noticed Drake in the video?
  4. fal
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Tags: Critical Thinking, ESL Quick Lessons, Grammar, Reading, Writing by Debra
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Mastering English in 10,000 Hours

From kindergarten to the 12th grade, we spend around 15,000 hours in school.  Certainly we don’t spend that time learning how to become expert students.  From the age children begin to strengthen reading, around 7, to the time they are ready to face the “real world” at 18, they are developing expertise in literacy. Mastering literacy involves more than just the ability to read. It involves being able to analyze and intelligently discuss a piece of literature whether it’s a classic novel or a political campaign sign…or even a commercial or logo.

Similarly, learning English isn’t just about knowing the grammar rules and some key vocabulary and phrases.  It’s about being able to analyze and intelligently discuss a topic whether it’s noticing the subtleties of innuendo made by one’s tone or the intensity of one’s statement as illustrated by their body language.

In his book, Outliers, Gladwell revealed the number of hours required to be good at something:  10,000 hours is what it takes to become an expert at a particular job, talent, or task.

Where are you in your 10,000 of English practice?  Have you spent 500 hours yet?  Has it been 7000 hours of active practice?  Towards the end of this video, Malcolm Gladwell asks, “How can we as a society build institutions that provide opportunities to work hard?”  It might take 5 or 10 years to get to the point of expertise, and maybe the right type of institutions could help some, but there is the notion of personal responsibility.  So, let me ask you this:  How are you as a student building opportunities in your daily life to do the work required to master English?

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Tags: Critical Thinking, How To, Time Management by Debra
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