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Simple Wikipedia   

Hi everyone!
In this blog I'm going to introduce you to a very useful website for studying English. You have probably heard of Wikipedia, the free online encyclopaedia - but did you know that there is a version of Wikipedia written in Simple English? Right now it has 71,251 pages, and there are pages on all kinds of things. I did a random search just now and found an page about Dance Dance Revolution, another about a painting by Boticelli, and another about Hasselt, a city in Belgium. And it's all written in a simple and easy-to-understand way.

If you use Wikipedia in Japanese, you could get a lot of extra English reading by getting the same information from Simple Wikipedia instead. The key to fast and fluent English reading is to read a lot, and to read things that are easy. If you use Simple Wikipedia every time you need to know something, your English reading skill will get better fast - especially if you do it every day. And if you don't use Wikipedia yet, why not just try and read a few pages? You might learn something new and interesting.

Some of you already have very good English, and can easily read the normal English Wikipedia. There is still something you can do at Simple Wikipedia - you can write pages yourself! Writing is very good practice for advanced English learners, and Simple Wikipedia is a great place to practice. You need to know a few rules of Wikipedia before you start, but then you can have as much writing practice as you want. It doesn't really matter if you make a mistake, because in Wikipedia you can undo almost anything, and other people can help you with the pages you write. The most important rule is to keep your writing neutral. So if you are writing a page about the Nippon Ham Fighters, you can't say "The Nippon Ham Fighters are the best baseball team in Japan!". However, you can say "The Nippon Ham Fighters are a baseball team in Japan, and they have won the Japan Series twice". If you stick to this rule then the other rules will be easy to learn.

If you are already writing a diary or a blog to practise your English, why not try writing for Simple Wikipedia? You might just help another English learner find something interesting.

Jack (UK)

by chitchatcafe | 2011-06-08 14:25 | 札幌 英会話 サークル

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