Global Crisis by 2030

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Piracy 2009

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Pronuniciation of English Sounds

Here is a great application from the BBC Learning English website. It is a pronunciation chart that says the sounds when you click on them. You can download a PC or a Mac version.

But there is something strange about the chart. What are these weird symbols? You may have noticed them in a dictionary. e.g. Cat=

You should learn how these symbols represent a sound in English. Here is a good description from antimoon.com

A good dictionary must give phonetic transcription for every word. Phonetic transcription tells you how to pronounce a word. Ideally, the transcription should be based on the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), which is the standard phonetic alphabet used by linguists all over the world. Here is what IPA-based phonetic transcription looks like:

Here, the phonetic transcription is marked in yellow. It tells you that image is pronounced like this. (sound recording requires Flash)

The World is Flat 3.0

Watch the lecture and take notes.

You can see my notes here.

Behavioural Economics

Population and Water: An Australian Dilemma: Graeme Hugo ANU

The Trylingual Questionnaire

Speed Reading

To be an efficient university student, you must be able to read quickly. This will give you more time to do other things.

Try this exercise to practice your speed reading.
Press Start and read the passage.
Press Stop to find out your reading speed.
Then press Yes to take a short quiz on the text.
You can find out the answers by clicking Submit at the bottom of the page.

How long did it take you to read this?

Sentence Stress

Predicting Pandemics

Gordon Brown: The Internet and Global Good

Facebook: Meet the maker