The U.S. government just launch a website (http://www.usalearns.org) to help non-native adult speakers learn English. According to the site:

The Project U.S.A. Learns was an outgrowth of a project that was conceived by the U.S. Department of Education (ED), Office of Vocational and Adult Education, Division of Adult Education and Literacy (DAEL).  Core funding for U.S.A. Learns was provided by ED.  Additional funding for U.S.A. Learns was made available by the California Department of Education, Office of Adult Education.

DAEL promotes programs that help American adults get the basic skills they need to be productive workers, family members, and citizens.  The major areas of support are Adult Basic Education, Adult Secondary Education, and English Language Acquisition.  These programs emphasize basic skills such as reading, writing, math, English language competency and problem-solving.

The contents and lessons are free.

From the New York Times:

Study Abroad Flourishes, With China a Hot Spot

Rock knows how to hit his opponents hard with his fist; he does even better to his love with his words.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Z5OookwOoY

According to the report from The Independent,

“In the multilingual, globalised workplace, knowledge of another language can provide a wealth of opportunities – and boost your salary by as much as 20 per cent”

Click here for the full article.

It’s not easy to try at home:

Indians speak English with an unique accent. AFP has reported the latest trends:

“In India, speaking English with an American accent is no longer the preserve of call centre workers. Children, business people and the elderly here are now seeking a US twang.

The phenomenon has spread from the Indian offshore operations boom in the late 1990s to a wider cross-section of society, whether to help them get on in business, communicate with family State-side or just show off.”

For the complete article, click here.

Here are some interesting–or disturbing–statistics about the foreign langauge education in the U.S.:

If you feel that English spelling is hard, don’t be discouraged. It’s not easy for a native English speaker either, according to the Times’s recent article English Spelling: hard to learn, full of oddities and a glorious portal to history. Here is the excerpt:

There is no point in pretending that English spelling is easy. But then neither is water-skiing, nor horsemanship, nor playing the guitar, nor doing tricks on a skateboard. And the rewards are curiously similar: precision, communication and aesthetic satisfaction. English words are not dull products of an isolated and narrow monoculture: they reflect the kaleidoscope of history. They are eccentric, wayward and playful, thumbing (with that crazy b in the middle) their nose at dull phoneticists. No vowel sound depends on only one letter: we have peep and leap, weird and police, ski and key and people; we have truth and fruit and tomb and blue.

For the full article, click here.