A classic American comic strip is Gary Trudeau’s Doonesbury. in circulation since 1970 and featuring such legendary charactes as Duke, whose exploits on the sketchiest fringes of the diplomatic world make for witty political satire; BD, the football star and army vet who never removes his helmet; and Alex, the daughter of the strip’s title character, “a true child of the media and searcher for the Killer App.”

Check it out, and if you have any questions about the vocabulary in the strip, let us know and we’ll help you out!

Avoid getting frustrated by the difficulty of the reading by following these steps:
1) First try to understand the general meaning of each paragraph and each sentence before trying to decipher the meanings of individual words.
2) Be selective about which words to examine more closely. Skip words that seem obscure, archaic, or unusually technical. (Of course, you have to go partly on intuition with this.)
3) Look up unfamiliar words in a dictionary. Read the definitions (usually there is more than one) and try to identify which meaning is correct in this context. Read the examples of how the word is used in a sentence. If you decide that it’s a particularly interesting or useful word (relying partly on intuition again), copy down not only the word but also the context – the phrase or the sentence that shows how the word is used with other words.
4) Don’t be surprised if it takes you half an hour to read only a few pages. That’s OK. It’s not a race. Getting more familiar with new words requires reading at a pace leisurely enough to allow for comfortable, relaxed, careful consideration of each new word and its environment.

Ivone, a current student at Acadia Center, is a talented chef, so not suprisingly she recommends Julie Powell‘s book Julie & Julia, which inspired the popular movie with Meryl Streep as the endearingly eccentric cookbook writer Julia Child.

Do you have a book in English to recommend? Tell us the title and author by leaving a comment on this post. And tell us briefly why you like the book!

Read business newspapers, magazines, and websites. Choose articles that interest you and are related to your business. If you work for a bank, read the latest news about banking. If you’re a stock broker, read about the stock market. If you work in information technology, read about the IT sector.

Maybe you are already in the habit of reading the business news in English every day. If you aren’t – and your excuse is that you’re too busy – consider this: you can make a big improvement with your English in just 10-15 minutes per day.

How do you improve your business English in the time it takes to drink a cup of coffee?

If you don’t have time to leisurely unfold the Wall Street Journal while sitting at an outdoor café, go to one of these websites:

The Economist – a venerable British magazine with a very global reach. In the online version of The Economist, Try: Business this week, a weekly summary of the main business stories; People, profiles of people in the news- a great way to learn both business and everyday vocabulary; and the Opinion section - whether you agree or disagree you’ll learn new words that will help you explain your position on the issue.

Slate - an exclusively online news magazine with elegantly-written and often witty articles and extensive links. Try: Today’s Business Press - Slate‘s daily business news highlights; Moneybox – Slate‘s commentary on business and finance; and Slate‘s Technology column on the latest tech news.

Bloomberg - offering lots of technical information on the business and financial world, and therefore a strong infusion of useful business terms.

Or you can just go to Google News (in English!), enter the name of your country, region, or business sector, and click on one of the many business articles that pop up.

Once you have chosen an article, follow these simple steps:

1) Read through the whole article and try to get a feel for the general meaning. Read the headline (title) and photo captions but don’t give up if they are hard to understand. To save space, headlines omit prepositions, articles (the, a, an), and auxiliary verbs and often use words that are less common just because they’re shorter (eg, vow instead of promise; vie instead of compete). Also, don’t give up if the first paragraph seems very hard. In the first paragraph, the writer is usually trying to catch your attention by saying things in a colorful way or by telling a story or even a joke. Keep reading to the end of the article and chances are it will get much easier to understand.

2) With the general meaning of the article in mind, now go back to the beginning of the article and start to read it again – this time slowly. Take notice of any new words or phrases that are unfamiliar to you. Try to guess at the meaning from context – how the word or phrase is used in the sentence. Look it up in an online dictionary. Because most words have more than one meaning, look for the meaning that best matches the context.

In 10 or 15 minutes, you may only have time to read one short article. But if you read it slowly and with care, and search for new words and phrases and look closely at how they’re used in context, in just a few weeks you’ll discover that the dictionary is becoming less and less necessary while you read. And you’ll be happy to find that it is a lot easier to participate in conversations on business topics.

If you have a business news website that you like, or a tip on learning business vocabulary in English, leave a comment here!

Clint Eastwood’s new film Invictus tells the story of Nelson Mandela’s first days as president of post-apartheid South Africa in 1994. Morgan Freeman’s moving (evoking strong feelings) portrayal of Mandela’s gentle humor, elegant, old-fashioned courtesy, and fierce intelligence makes for a fascinating (very interesting) behind-the-scenes (theater metaphor: occuring backstage or out of the view of the general public) look at the birth of a new era.

Freeman’s Mandela is continually surprising his advisors and security personnel with his indefatigability (never getting tired) – as he charges out of his house for his pre-dawn (before sunrise) constitutionals (walking for exercise) at the beginning of marathon workdays – as well as with his emphasis on reconciliation (making harmony with your opponents or enemies) rather than recrimination in dealing with white South Africans.

In this spirit, Mandela makes the surprising decision to throw his whole-hearted (full, passionate) support behind the Springboks, the nearly all-white national rugby team that had become a hated symbol of oppression to most black South Africans. And so begins a remarkable turnaround (reversal of fortunes) for a team that seemed destined to make a poor showing as hosts of  the 1995 Rugby World Cup.

If you’re watching the film to practice your English, Freeman’s stately (majestic), measured eloquence as Mandela will give you a sporting (good enough) chance to understand the vocabulary the first time around.

Matt Damon as the Springboks’ captain Francois Pienaar is also not too difficult to understand as he echoes the calm, thoughtful, resilient (able to recover from adversity) tone of Mandela.

The grunting exertions of the rugby scenes are not so lengthy that they risk boring non-sports fans, and the underdog (not expected to win) status of the Springboks makes for stirring drama as their startling (very surprising) success is celebrated with boyish enthusiasm by Mandela.

In a quietly moving scene Damon’s character and the Springboks team visit the tiny (very small) Robben Island prison cell where Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years as a political prisoner. The song 9,000 Days, the title of which refers to the length of time Mandela spent in prison, by the South African group Overtone with Yollande Nortjie, is featured in the soundtrack (the music in the film).

The title of the film – Latin for unconquered – is drawn from a poem by the 19th century poet William Ernest Henley that in the film Mandela gives to the Springboks’ captain for inspiration. In reality, Mandela did find inspiration in the poem while in prison but instead gave the Springboks’ captain a passage from a 1910 speech called The Man in the Arena by US president Teddy Roosevelt.

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Vocabulary from the poem:
fell (dreadful, cruel)
clutch (strong hold, grip)
winced (flinch, draw back from fear of pain)
bludgeonings (heavy blows or hits)
unbowed (not lowered)
wrath (anger)
looms (action to describe the taking shape of an impending event or the coming closer of something of impressive size)
menace (danger, threat)
strait (narrow – not the same as straight, which means without bend or curve)
scroll (list or roster)

If you see the film, let us know what you think of it!

Sometimes verb + preposition combinations are not idiomatic, as in the phrase listen to. To is simply the preposition that’s required after the verb listen if you want to say what it is you’re listening to, as in: She’s listening to the radio.

Sometimes a single phrasal verb can have both a literal, non-idiomatic meaning and one or more idiomatic or figurative meanings. For example, if you want to see the moon you have to look up at the sky. The word up here is used as a kind of adverb (adverb particle is the tehnical term) and it doesn’t really change the meaning of the verb look — it just tells us the direction you’re looking.

However, when you don’t know the meaning of a word and you look up the word in a dictionary, there’s nothing directional about the word up. Look in this phrase still means use your eyes, but the meaning of the phrase as a whole has a very specific focus – searching for information in a reference book or online.

There are some grammatical issues with phrasal verbs – can another word come between the verb and preposition or not? – but learning how to use phrasal verbs is best accomplished the same way that you go about learning any new vocabulary.

How to Learn Phrasal Verbs:

1. Read and listen. When you see or hear a phrasal verb you don’t know, write it down. But don’t just write down the verb and the preposition, copy the whole sentence. Understanding the context – how the phrase is used with the other words in the sentence – is what will make it possible for you to use the phrase yourself in the future.

2. Find out the meaning in that specific context. This is where a teacher or native English speaker can save you time, because there is often more than one meaning for each phrasal verb, but if you’re on your own, look it up in a dictionary and decide which definition fits best in context.

3. Practice it in conversation and/or writing. Get feedback from a teacher or native English speaker about whether or not you’re using it the way native speakers do.

4. Study your list of phrasal verbs and keep adding to the list. If you find a phrasal verb from your list used in a new way, write down the new example.

Why is learning phrasal verbs in context better than learning them from a dictionary or book about phrasal verbs? Four reasons.

1. You can be sure you’re learning the most common uses of the most common phrasal verbs first. You don’t want to waste your time learning the more obscure uses.

2. They will be easier to remember. Dictionary.com has 15 different phrasal verbs based on the verb set (set in, set off, set out, etc.) and 15 different meanings for just the single phrasal verb set up – and the meanings vary widely. If you try to learn them all together, it’ll be too difficult to remember each separate meaning. Take them one at at time, in context.

3. When you’re learning phrasal verbs in context, through reading and listening, you’re learning a lot of other things about English as well, including other vocabulary words and grammatical structures.

4. It’s much more interesting to learn from stories and conversation than from printed lists. And the fact that you’re interested in the context will make it much easier to remember the phrasal verb later.

If you have any questions about the meaning of specific phrasal verbs, or if you have your own tips on how to learn phrasal verbs, leave a comment here!

When you’re reading something difficult, first read through the whole article fairly quickly and try to get a general idea of the the topic and the thesis (the main argument). Then go back to the beginning and read more slowly, looking up words you don’t know and paying close attention to how the words are put together.

For example, in the first couple of paragraphs we find the phrase take the helm – a common expression in business English meaning to take charge, to become the leader of something, in this case referring to Ursula Burns becoming the new CEO of Xerox. The word comes from the nautical world, since helm means the wheel or tiller by which a ship is steered.

Next up is the verb balk (rhymes with walk), which means to stop, as at an obstacle, and refuse to proceed or to do something specified (usually followed by at). Here, Burns’s predecessor as CEO of Xerox, Ann Mulcahy, refutes the idea that Burns would have had a harder time reaching the top if Mulcahy hadn’t broken the glass ceiling at Xerox. Balk is also a term used in baseball, when the pitcher interrupts his pitching motion to fake a throw to one of the bases – an illegal move that allows a baserunner to advance.

This leads into a discussion of the paucity of women in senior positions. Paucity is a noun which means that there isn’t enough of something.

Don’t feel frustrated if it takes you half an hour and you’re still not even halfway through the article. Who cares how many pages or paragraphs you read? The important thing is you’ve learned a few new words in context, and that context will help you understand those words the next time you encounter them in print or on the web.

Bonus article on the topic of women in science: from a science blog, short bios of top women scientists past and present.

Have any of your own tips about learning vocabulary through reading, or about the issues raised in the Slate article about women in science?