How to pronounce the “th” without sticking your tongue out

“ze mozer of ziz boyz iz tirti-tri” A standard problem of English pronunciation: the English “th.” With a little help and practice, it actually is not that hard to master. (Note: For the first more technical article on “th” see my How I Teach the English “th” page.) Three Ways to Pronounce the “th” Contrary […]

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References

Why You Should Use a Reference Manager

The bane of most academic writing is the bibliography. You’re writing a paper, an assignment, a thesis and the tedious typing and retyping of references to articles, books, book chapters, papers, etc., comes back to haunt you! That’s when you need a reference manager. A reference manager will take care of most of the chores […]

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Using Videos in Your Presentations

You’ve seen it many times, you’ve probably done it too. Your speaker is going through a speech or a lesson. He or she knows that, used appropriately, a video can really enhance a presentation. So, here comes the clip. Suddenly, that’s when it all starts to go wrong. She clicks on the link on the […]

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Plalo Republic

Greek with XeTeX

One of my interests is ancient Greek. When I started using it used to be somewhat complicated to switch languages from whichever one I was using to Greek. It is now quite easy if you use XeTeX. This is the way I do it. The following instructions are specific for the Mac. If you use […]

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English Vowels

This semester I am substitute teaching again at the Institut Libre Marie Haps in Brussels. I am teaching two courses of English oral practice in Bachelor 1 and 2, applying the course of English phonetics the students have had before. I wanted to include the usual chart of English vowels in my slides. Since I […]

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Teaching Middle Ages

Public Speaking is not Public Reading

Though I have several opportunities to go to professional conferences every year, I don’t actually often attend them. One reason is that I have to pay for them. When you factor in travel, hotels, expenses, etc., it gets quite expensive. Another reason is that I sometimes wonder whether they are really worth the time and […]

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Tools of the Trade 2015

I frequently have conversations about which programs I use on a regular basis. Depending on what I am working on, I go back and forth between quite a few tools. I work on a Mac but also have Windows on Bootcamp. Since since I rarely work with windows at home I’ll limit this to Mac […]

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