This blog is for learners of English.
I Talk You Talk Press staff blog about many different topics – life, study, language, work, travel, books, music, film, culture, cooking, and many more, all in easy English!
We had our first snowfall the other day. I went out early, before the town awoke, and took some photographs. The morning after a night of heavy snowfall is very peaceful. The town is quiet, and the air is crisp and fresh.
Winter, like the other seasons, inspired the famous haiku master, Matsuo Basho, to create haiku. Here is one of his most famous winter haiku (translated by R. Hass).
Winter solitude*-
in a world of one colour
the sound of wind.
(*solitude = being alone/loneliness)
When a new year starts, many people decide to learn new skills. Others try to improve skills they already have, such as improving their English ability.
How about you? Have you decided to learn any new skills this year?
A good way to learn something new and improve your English ability at the same time, is to learn something new through English.
Nowadays, we can learn many things on the Internet for free. For example, the website Coursera* offers free university courses in many languages. You can study the courses in English, or maybe in your own language.
Here is the link to the site: Coursera
(*We don’t have any connection to Coursera. We just enjoy taking their courses!)
We found an interesting post about learning new skills in the new year. In this post, the writer lists 24 skills you can learn in English for free. Some examples are learning a new language, improving your public speaking skills, and learning about basic psychology.
Here is the post:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/summeranne/24-invaluable-skills-to-learn-for-free-online-this-year
How about learning a new skill through English this year? 🙂
I Talk You Talk Press wishes you a very happy new year!
We thank you for visiting this site in 2013. We hope you enjoyed the posts and quizzes on this site, and we hope you will visit again in 2014.
I Talk You Talk Press is nearly 1-year-old. We are very grateful to all our readers around the world who read our books in 2013. We promise to continue writing and publishing graded readers for you to enjoy in 2014. Thank you! 🙂
We hope you have a peaceful and prosperous 2014!
From everyone at I Talk You Talk Press
It’s nearly New Year! Are you making any “New Year’s resolutions”?
A New Year resolution is a promise you make to yourself on January 1st, or a goal you set for the year.
Here are some popular New Year’s Resolutions.
I will go on a diet.
I will stop drinking alcohol.
I will stop smoking.
I will save money.
I will study a new language.
I will study English harder.
I will start a new business.
I will try to enjoy life more.
And many more!
My New Year’s resolution is to study French more. Recently I haven’t been studying very hard. >< I also want to exercise more. I’m going to try to exercise every day! (These were my New Year’s resolutions last year too…)
How about you? What is your New Year’s resolution? 🙂
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Have you ever heard of Harajuku? It is an area of Tokyo famous for its street fashion.
In this short video, Japanese ladies in Harajuku talk about their street fashion in English!
Click on the link below to see the video.
http://www.theguardian.com/travel/video/2013/dec/10/tokyo-harajuku-street-fashion-video-guide
Recently, I have been hearing these phrases a lot. “Time flies!” “It’s already December!” “It’s nearly the end of the year!” “Where has the year gone?!” People are starting to plan and attend bonenkai (bonenkai 忘年会 = end-of-year party in Japanese).
Every year, it seems like time passes by faster than the year before. Many people here say that spring and autumn are getting shorter, and summer and winter are getting longer every year. I think they are right. I felt that time in August passed by very slowly. August, and it’s heat and humidity, seemed to last forever!
Then, in early October, when it started to get cooler, time started to fly by. (fly by=pass by very quickly) And now that it is starting to get colder, I think time will start to slow down again.
I went for a walk to enjoy the last of the autumn leaves this morning. I hope you enjoy the photographs. It won’t be long before these trees are bare, and the branches heavy with snow…
Autumn is my favourite season, so I like to go autumn leaf viewing. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to go autumn leaf viewing so much this year. I had a bad cold for a few weeks, then I had a busy few weeks, then it rained a lot and…now autumn is nearly over. (*to be over = to be finished)
I had some time today, and the weather was quite nice, so I went for a walk and took some photos. My last chance before winter comes…
Some trees were already quite bare. There are only a few leaves left on this tree! ↓
This tree catches the sun very well. ↓
This tree reminds me of holly and Christmas. ↓
I like green tea very much, so I often buy plastic bottles of it. Sometimes, the bottles I buy come with a free gift.
Usually, the free gifts are key rings, or other small things made of plastic. The other day, I was surprised to see that the gift wasn’t made of plastic. It was like cloth. I opened it, and was even more surprised to see that it was a sock!
My first thought was, “Why have they given me a sock? Why only one?”
Then I realised. It was a sock for the bottle!
The tea is stored in the fridge in the convenience store, so when it starts to warm up at room temperature, it gets wet. The sock keeps your hands dry while you drink it.
I don’t know if I’ll get into the habit of using the sock bottle regularly (probably not), but it’s a nice idea. 🙂
Cooking and Recipes in English
Pumpkin and Feta Salad
Since it’s Halloween, I’ve been thinking about pumpkin. Pumpkin is very good for you so finding ways to feed pumpkin to your family is a good idea. Not just at Halloween but all year round.
Everyone in my house likes pumpkin, and this salad is a family favourite.
It’s very quick and easy if you have left over roast pumpkin. However, it tastes so good, that’s its worth cooking pumpkin just for this salad.
If you have to cook the pumpkin, cut it into wedges. Leave the skin on but take the seeds out. Rub the pumpkin with a little olive oil and sprinkle it with salt and pepper. Heat the oven to 180C and cook the pumpkin until the orange flesh is soft. You’ll find it’s easy to take the skin off after it’s cooked.
Salad recipe
Thoughts and notes
This salad is best with pine nuts but I often don’t have any. They are expensive and they are not available in all supermarkets. So I sometimes make it with almonds.
If your family doesn’t like feta cheese, try the salad with cubes of cheddar cheese or cream cheese.
Almonds go very well with cheddar cheese and sesame seeds are very successful with cream cheese.
If you buy your feta cheese marinated in olive oil, don’t worry about the salad dressing. Just take a spoonful of the oil out of the jar and use that!
Happy eating!
Do you spend a lot of time looking at your computer, tablet, or mobile phone?
I do. Some days I spend over 12 hours looking at my computer screen. This is not good for my eyes.
Of course, I try to protect my eyes by turning the brightness down to “low”. I also take regular breaks. When I take a break, I look out of the window at something far away.
However, recently, my eyes have been feeling tired. I thought, “Maybe I need to do more…”
So, I bought some computer glasses. They have black frames and brown-tinted plastic lenses.
The package says that the glasses cut the amount of blue light reaching your eyes by 50%.
I never really thought about blue light before. We often hear about UV light, and how important it is to wear sunglasses on sunny days. But we don’t hear much about blue light. It seems that many fluorescent lights (often used in offices and shops) and TV screens also emit blue light.
So, I’ve started to wear the computer glasses when I watch TV, or when I’m in a room with bright lights.
I’ve only been wearing them for a week, so I haven’t noticed any changes yet. My eyes still feel tired, but I feel better knowing that the light reaching the back of my eyes is being filtered/reduced.
Nowadays, so many people spend a lot of time looking at screens. I think we have to be careful, and do what we can to protect our eyes. They are very important!
I Talk You Talk Press EXTRA 
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