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 5 Speaking Rules you need to know! 1. Don't study grammar too much This rule might sound strange to many ESL students, but it is one of the most important rules. If you want to pass examinations, then study grammar. However, if you want to become fluent in English, then you should try to learn English without studying the grammar.  Studying grammar will only slow you down and confuse you. You will think about the rules when creating sentences instead of naturally saying a sentence like a native. Remember that only a small fraction of English speakers know more than 20% of all the grammar rules. Many ESL students know more grammar than native speakers. I can confidently say this with experience. I am a native English speaker, majored in English Literature, and have been teaching English for more than 10 years. However, many of my students know more details about English grammar than I do. I can easily look up the definition and apply it, but I don't know it off the top o...

  Glossary Buddha The founder of Buddhism, Siddhartha Gautama, after his enlightenment. It is a title which means the enlightened or awakened one. CE Common Era. chant Repeating religious phrases or quotations from sacred texts. conscience An inner sense (or 'voice') which communicates what is right or wrong in one's behaviour. Dhammapada The most famous of the Buddhist scriptures in the West, with 423 verses in the Pali canon. dharma This word has various meanings which have to be understood from the context in which it is used. It can mean religious duty. In Buddhism it is most widely used to mean the Buddha’s teaching. It can also mean ‘the truth’. enlightenment The realisation of the truth about life. In Buddhism it releases a person from the cycle of rebirth. founder The person who is regarded as founding or starting a religion, eg Jesus was the founder of Christianity; the Buddha was the founder of Buddhism. Jakata Tales (Jakata stories) A large collection of writings...

 Sutta Pitaka Vinaya Pitaka Abhidhammapitaka Sutta Pitaka It contains over 10 thousand suttas or sutras related to Buddha and his close companions. This also deals  with the first Buddhist council which was held shortly after Buddha’s death , dated by the majority of recent scholars around  400 BC, under the patronage of king Ajatasatru with the monk Mahakasyapa presiding, at Rajgir. Its sections are: Digha Nikaya:  Comprises the “long” discourses in 34 long sutras. Majjhima Nikaya:  Comprises the “middle-length” discourses in 152 sutras. Samyutta Nikaya : Comprises the “connected” discourses in over 2800 sutras. Anguttara Nikaya : Comprises the “numerical” discourses in over 9600sutras. Khuddaka Nikaya : Comprises the “minor collection” It has 15-17 booklets. (Thai 15. Sinhali 17 & Burmese 18 booklets). Vinaya Pitaka The subject matter of  Vinay Pitaka  is the monastic rules for monks and nuns. It can also be called as Book of Discipline. Suttavib...

  Specifically, all Buddhists live by five moral precepts, which prohibit: Killing living things Taking what is not given Sexual misconduct Lying Using drugs or alcohol

  Four Noble Truths The Four Noble Truths, which Buddha taught, are: The truth of suffering (dukkha) The truth of the cause of suffering (samudaya) The truth of the end of suffering (nirhodha) The truth of the path that frees us from suffering (magga) Collectively, these principles explain why humans hurt and how to overcome suffering.

  Eightfold Path The Buddha taught his followers that the end of suffering, as described in the fourth Noble Truths, could be achieved by following an Eightfold Path.  In no particular order, the Eightfold Path of Buddhism teaches the following ideals for ethical conduct, mental disciple, and achieving wisdom: Right understanding (Samma ditthi) Right thought (Samma sankappa) Right speech (Samma vaca) Right action (Samma kammanta) Right livelihood (Samma ajiva) Right effort (Samma vayama) Right mindfulness (Samma sati) Right concentration (Samma samadhi)

  Karma A fundamental aspect of Buddhism is the teaching that you are responsible for your own life and your future circumstances (as well as your future lives)—whether you experience happiness, misery, etc.—and that your actions and behavior can bring good or bad karma. If you are kind to others, the belief is that they will be kind in return, but more importantly, that means you will experience good karma in your present and next life. On the other hand, if you are not nice to others, you will get your just deserts in some form in the near or distant future as well as in the next life through bad karma. The point is to be careful about how you interact with others: everything you do decides what you have to contend with in transmigration. The word  karma  is from Sanskrit, where, fittingly, it refers to one's work as well as one's fate; it begins appearing in English writing in the early 1800s. Hippie generations adopted the philosophi...

  Nirvana English readers of religious philosophy were first enlightened on the Buddhist concept of  nirvana  in the early 19th century. The word is a borrowing from Sanskrit that means "the act of extinguishing" and, in Buddhism, it refers to a state in which desire and one's conscious attachment to things in secular life (or, in particular, the negative emotions these desires/attachments bring about) are extinguished through disciplined meditation. Once these things are vanquished, peace, tranquility, and enlightenment are said to be fully experienced; ignorance dissolves and the truth becomes fully known. In nirvana, a person also not only enters a transcendent state of freedom of all negativity but breaks free of the religion's beliefs in the continuous cycle of birth, death, and rebirth and the effects of karma—the force created by one's actions that is to determine what that person's next life will be like. A person who has gained ...

By Mark Nichol Some time ago, I posted some general guidelines for  writing for an online audience . Here are some specific time-tested tips for attracting and keeping site visitors with clean, clear writing: 1. Keyword Top Labels Use keywords for window titles and taglines, and keep them sharp and succinct. These labels are for helping Internet users get to your site because they typed them into a search engine and your site came up in the results, not for wowing visitors when they get there (assuming they get there, because you’re not using keywords to help searchers). 2. Keyword Display Copy Employ keywords, not clever words, to begin headings, headlines, and link names, and keep the display copy brief. Most Web site visitors scan just the first one or two words of display copy. In “Where to Go on Vacation This Summer,” the first keyword appears as the fifth word of seven. (Go isn’t a keyword, because you don’t yet know what kind of going is involved.) “Summer-Vacation Destinati...

By Mark Nichol The three types of essay most commonly assigned in school — the narrative essay, the persuasive essay, and the expository essay — conveniently correspond to those writing forms most frequently published online and in print. Your experience with these prose forms is ideal preparation for writing for publication. 1. The Narrative Essay This form, employed when reporting about an event or an incident, describing an experience, or telling a story, is the basic mode in journalistic writing. Practice in relating what happened when you witnessed an occurrence or writing about what you were told by someone who witnessed it, is good training for becoming a newspaper reporter. Writing your recollections of something that happened to you is the basis of travel writing and similar content. Meanwhile, effective storytelling is an essential skill for feature writing, which — as opposed to reporting, which is event-driven — focuses on a person, a place, or a thing, such as a company or...

By Mark Nichol I received the following email message recently. Actually, it went to my spam folder, but other recipients may not be so fortunate — or so discerning about its deceptive nature. But if you read carefully, you’ll find plenty of clues that the writer is not a native speaker of English, much less an FBI agent. My editorial interpolations are in brackets. Anti-Terrorist and Monitory Crime Division. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Daniel McMullen (Special Agent in Charge) Attn: , [Mac, you forgot to fill in my name, or a generic term.] This is to officially inform you that it has come to our notice and we have thoroughly investigated with the help of our Intelligence Monitoring Network System that you are having an illegal Transaction with Impostors. [The Intelligence Monitoring Network System could be a brand-name system meriting initial capitalization, but it also could be — and is, according to an online search — a phrase that comes up only in reference to its inclusion i...

By Mark Nichol Writing a speech and producing an essay have much in common, of course, because one is merely a spoken form of the other, but keep in mind the unique features that distinguish a presentation delivered with your voice and one that others read. 1.  Plan your speech according to the occasion, considering the event, the audience, the tone of the speech (somber, serious, informal, humorous, and so on), and its duration. 2.  Identify the message or theme of the speech, and how you will approach it. 3.  Craft an effective opening that gets your audience’s attention, employing an anecdote, a joke, a quotation, or a thought-provoking question or assertion. You should be able to express your introduction in about thirty seconds or less. 4.  Outline a handful of points to cover, just as you would when writing a persuasive or informative essay; after all, again, a speech is a spoken essay. 5.  Organize the points so that they support and build on each other, ...

By Mark Nichol An analytical or persuasive essay is a capsule thesis, and, like its more substantial analog, it requires a thesis statement. Here are some notes about how to develop that statement. A thesis statement is a sentence (or two) that encapsulates and introduces an analysis or argument. An essay benefits from a thesis statement by concisely expressing the writer’s argument and serving as a basis for developing and organizing it. If you are assigned to write an essay, whether in an academic or professional setting, the topic may or may not be given. If the topic is specified, you can produce the thesis statement by converting the explanation of the assignment into a question; your response to that question is the thesis statement. For example, if you are asked to write about feeding wild animals, you might pose the question “Why is feeding wild animals a bad idea?” You might reply, “Feeding wild animals disrupts natural habits in animals and endangers them and the people who f...