Thursday, February 13, 2014

Nerding Out In Your Spare Time

According to my spellcheck, "nerding" is not a verb. Sorry if you were looking forward to using it without being thought a fool.

Okay, this post is about what people who like words and need to get out more can read/listen to/watch/play in their spare time instead of getting out more.

Everyday you can play games at Merriam-Webster  (my spell check says Merriam-Webster should be spelt "mermaid"), but more importantly you can look at the word of the day and astound your friends when you use simpatico in a sentence, as in, "You and I are simpatico in our interest in language."

You can also test your grammar and/or vocabulary with freerice.com. With free-rice, you can feel doubly-satisfied with yourself when you pick the right answer because you essentially just donated 10 grains of rice to someone in need of it just by being a nerd.

Alright, say you got bored learning new words with freerice.com, and now you want to lay back and rest your eyes. You can listen to an audio book while your eyes are closed. Librivox has many books from the public domain, recorded by volunteers, available for free on their website.

Okay, last, but certainly not least, is for when you are tired from a long day of school, and all you want to do is go to more school. You can pop a beverage of your choice and throw on an English lecture. My preference is ItunesU, which takes many of the other lectures from around the web into their archive. You can download the lectures and watch them whenever you want without relying on a poor internet connection. There are also yale courses and youtube courses. Actually, there are a ton of free courses to be found if you just search for them.

I recommend the Standford Structure of English Words course from Itunes U. It is taught by William Leben, who is one of the people who helped invent the word "Swiffer" (which my spell-check also says is not a word).


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