Recommended Sites Assignment

Today I would like to tell you about some of my favourite Internet resources for practising and learning English. While there are many sites entirely devoted to teaching other people English, I will not be mentioning any of them, as their contents are more or less the same: plain language theory with occasional practical exercises and example sentences. Instead, I would like to focus on sites almost everybody knows and provide some advice on how they can be used to practise English and maybe some other languages.

The first site I would like to recommend is YouTube. It is one of the oldest video-sharing platforms, hosting videos belonging to many different categories and covering a wide array of topics. While used primarily as a source of entertainment, YouTube can also be a valuable tool for studying and learning languages. You can find many channels belonging to universities, professional educators and more, publishing videos of their lectures, smaller online-lessons and whatnot on many different subjects in your target language. There is also a small niche of (usually) non-professional enthusiasts who create long, detailed video-analyses of things they like, be it art, music, cinema, video games, history, languages or something else entirely. These video essays provide a great opportunity for learning more about your hobby in your target language, thus combining entertainment with education.

The second site I would like to recommend is Wikipedia. Wikipedia articles have been translated into many languages, letting you read about things you find interesting entirely in your target language. It also allows you to get acquainted with the formal format of the language and a number of useful set expressions along the way.

Reddit. It is a massive online platform for hosting smaller discussion boards where users can post and discuss various content. There is a total of 1.2 million subreddits (smaller discussion boards), with 138.000 currently being especially active. The topics being covered by various subreddits range from simple entertainment to more narrow topics, like the discussion and sharing of news on current scientific research in a particular field. Reddit is great for discovering new interesting content, learning about it in English and then discussing it with others in an informal way.

I really hope my post has been helpful and that I have managed to present some of the sites in a new light, so as to show their usefulness to us as language learners.

Blog Use Training Assignment

This is a picture of a salt mine. I have chosen it because my class was once taken to a salt mine near my home town as a part of an excursion. This salt mine began as a set of massive tunnels carved through layers of rock-salt, the ground was also covered in salt, salt was everywhere. They lead to a large, brightly lit hall with an elevated ceiling. It had many sculptures made of salt of various folk heroes, cartoon characters and famous people, ornaments carved in the walls and the like. From there it lead to an even larger hall that had an entire football field set up inside and a small two-story lounge area with a cafe. The places I've described are certainly not the entirety of this salt mine, but these are the places I was taken to and remember the best.

Video: If Junk Food Commercials Were Honest

This video is a part of "Honest Ads" series produced and published by the YouTube channel Cracked. I like this series because it is genuinely funny but also provides serious commentary on the advertisement industry and the products being advertised. The formula of these videos is to flip the usual advertisement upside down and instead "market" the downsides of the real life product. The main character and "advertiser" is Roger Horton, this character is supposed to be an archetype of a modern corporate executive: smooth-talking but cynical, affable but greedy. He condescendingly and blatantly inserts information about the many problems and schemes involved with the industry he represents or the product he advertises, because he knows he'll be able to get away with it.
This video series is unique in its presentation and content, which is why I like it.