In our schools: Keys to helping non-native speakers learn

This article is from pnj.com 

Neftali Martinez, 10, walks into the classroom and gets right to work.

He looks up the words "universe" and "biology" in the dictionary. He reads part of a story about outer space. He participates in a review session for the vocabulary test he will take in two days.

Sounds like a fairly typical third-grade reading class. But Neftali's class at Navy Point Elementary School has only three students, and those children aren't just learning about science and vocabulary words. They are still learning English.

ESL Lesson: Tenses (Part 2)

This blog entry is more about tenses in English. The verbs showed here in Lesson 1 are actually the exceptions. Most verbs are formed around certain rules based on tense and how they are spelled.

Consider the following verbs:
Play
In the present tense:
For plural nouns and pronouns (they/we/you/etc.) and “I”, the verb is play.
For singular nouns and pronouns (he/she/it), the verb is plays.
In the past tense, add -ed:
For plural nouns and pronouns (they/we/you/etc.), the verb is played.
For singular nouns and pronouns (he/she/it), the verb is played.
In the future tense, add the word will:
For plural nouns and pronouns (they/we/you/etc.), the verb is will play.
For singular nouns and pronouns (he/she/it), the verb is will play.
Clean
In the present tense:
For plural nouns and pronouns (they/we/you/etc.) and “I”, the verb is clean.
For singular nouns and pronouns (he/she/it), the verb is cleans.
In the past tense, add -ed:
For plural nouns and pronouns (they/we/you/etc.), the verb is cleaned.
For singular nouns and pronouns (he/she/it), the verb is cleaned.
In the future tense, add the word will:
For plural nouns and pronouns (they/we/you/etc.), the verb is will clean.
For singular nouns and pronouns (he/she/it), the verb is will clean.
Walk
In the present tense:
For plural nouns and pronouns (they/we/you/etc.) and “I”, the verb is walk.
For singular nouns and pronouns (he/she/it), the verb is walks.
In the past tense, add -ed:
For plural nouns and pronouns (they/we/you/etc.), the verb is walked.
For singular nouns and pronouns (he/she/it), the verb is walked.
In the future tense, add the word will:
For plural nouns and pronouns (they/we/you/etc.), the verb is will walk.
For singular nouns and pronouns (he/she/it), the verb is will walk
Try
In the present tense:
For plural nouns and pronouns (they/we/you/etc.) and “I”, the verb is try.
For singular nouns and pronouns (he/she/it), the verb is tries.
In the past tense, drop the y and add -ied:
For plural nouns and pronouns (they/we/you/etc.), the verb is tried.
For singular nouns and pronouns (he/she/it), the verb is tried.
In the future tense, add the word will:
For plural nouns and pronouns (they/we/you/etc.), the verb is will try.
For singular nouns and pronouns (he/she/it), the verb is will try.
Cry
In the present tense:
For plural nouns and pronouns (they/we/you/etc.) and “I”, the verb is cry.
For singular nouns and pronouns (he/she/it), the verb is cries.
In the past tense, drop the y and add -ied:
For plural nouns and pronouns (they/we/you/etc.), the verb is cried.
For singular nouns and pronouns (he/she/it), the verb is cried.
In the future tense, add the word will:
For plural nouns and pronouns (they/we/you/etc.), the verb is will cry.
For singular nouns and pronouns (he/she/it), the verb is will cry.

Do you have any questions or comments about this or any other ESL subject? Leave them in the comment section and we will answer them. Stay tuned for more free advice on this and other subjects as well as promotions and news! If you want individual tutoring and help in learning English, contact Kingston University USA today!!

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Linguamatics, Brandwatch and University of Sussex Announce Project to Enhance Language Processing of Big Data

This article  is from Market Watch The Wall Street Journal 

Linguamatics, Brandwatch and the University of Sussex are pleased to announce a joint project funded by the UK's Technology Strategy Board to address challenges faced by automated language processing software in harnessing diverse data sources. The project forms part of a broader Technology Strategy Board initiative focusing on enabling technologies to harness "big data" for economic growth.

The development will improve automatic extraction of information from scientific papers, news or social media for applications in research and development, marketing, and competitive intelligence. Dr David Milward, Linguamatics CTO, points out: "Good quality vocabularies are a key part of 'intelligent' text mining. This project will allow us to develop vocabularies much faster, and adapt them efficiently for new applications."

The current generation of language processing has had considerable success in extracting useful information from unstructured text, whether this is research literature or social media. However, adapting to a new domain is often a laborious process, with respect both to the type of data (e.g. newswire vs. patent literature) and to the terminology used in a given domain (e.g. in medical practice vs. pharmaceutical research). Humans can perform these tasks on small data sets, but face a huge challenge in the face of massively increasing amounts of electronic text. The EVOKES project, which stands for "Exploitation of Diverse Data via Automatic Adaptation of Knowledge Extraction Software" will exploit distributional similarity techniques developed by the University of Sussex. The project will run for 18 months.

Editors' notes:

About Linguamatics

Linguamatics is the leader in deploying natural language processing (NLP) based text mining for complex, high-value problem solving. Used by nine of the world's Top-10 pharmaceutical companies, and other prestigious commercial, academic and government organizations, Linguamatics operates globally, with offices in the UK and USA. 

About Brandwatch

Social networks and the rest of the Web have become massive indicators of consumer influence, market insight and brand reputation. Launched in 2007, Brandwatch provides one of the world's leading tools for monitoring, capturing and analyzing social media. 

About University of Sussex

The University was first in the new wave of UK universities founded in the 1960s and is now a leading teaching and research institution. Sussex research has been formally recognized as world leading, confirming the University among the leading research universities in the UK. 

About the Technology Strategy Board

The Technology Strategy Board is a business-led government body which works to create economic growth by ensuring that the UK is a global leader in innovation. Sponsored by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), the Technology Strategy Board brings together business, research and the public sector supporting and accelerating the development of innovative products and services to meet market needs, tackle major societal challenges and help build the future economy.