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John Barré, Author at John Barré - Page 12 of 13

Page 12

My favourite dictionaries – part 1: French-English

Right, I know it’s been a LOOOONG while since I’ve posted anything, but here I am again 🙂 I’ve decided to write a post about online dictionaries, since I am now working for one. I have a very different approach to it, since I don’t regard them from a user perspective any longer. The ones […]
September 21, 2012
A cross-language comparison on the use of the Facebook Like button

We all know what an integral part of social media has become on the web. And the Like button is probably the most prominent example of how easy it is to “integrate” social media activities on your website. So after our last two introductory guides on online marketing (a Twitter guide and a Social Media […]
August 30, 2011
What on earth is fluency?

Right, as I was browsing through job opportunities a couple of days ago, I noticed that many required fluency in one or several languages. What puzzles me is that fluency is a very vague word in term of knowledge. What is fluent? Does it mean mastering as your native language? Or being able to hold […]
June 23, 2011
Opal day!

Tweet Yesterday was one great day. I found Opal sweets in a drugstore in Hamburg. That sounds like uninteresting fact, but actually Opal sweets are harder to find than you would think. Opal are liquorice sweets manufactured by the Icelandic company Nói Síríus, a candy manufacturer that really should be breaking in the European market. I […]
June 19, 2011
David Lodge’s Home Truths

Ah, dear, dear Mr. David Lodge, should you read this blog post, know that you have become on of my favourite authors, although it did not start under the best circumstances. I first heard -and read -of David Lodge with The Art of Fiction (1992). It was actually the very first book on the reading list […]
June 15, 2011
8 months in Hamburg!

Well, 8 months is not really an anniversary people tend to celebrate, but this one is worth mentioning. Anyone who’s tried to learn German knows it is NOT an easy language. It’s even pretty hard, I think most would agree with me. My relationship with German started when I was 10 and started to learn […]
June 11, 2011
Valérie Saubade’s Happy Birthday, Grand-Mère

Out of three books I rented out from Hamburg’s Main Library last week, two turned out to be dissapointing, to the point that I did not finish reading them. However, I will not slaughter those books for two reasons. First, I do not like to talk about things I do not like and second, I […]
June 05, 2011
How much space do we have?

When it comes to learning languages, many difficulties get in the way. New pronunciation, spelling, different characters, unknown words, sometimes new alphabet and often different syntax. Not to mention learning grammar rules, words and conjugation. Assuming you can take the challenge and decide to give it a try. You learn and practise thoroughly, religiously even, […]
May 26, 2011
The mysterious world of punctuation conventions

Punctuation is very often neglected and deemed as not that important by too many people who are brought to write. Ask English speakers how they differentiate the uses of colons and semicolons, they are not that assertive about how to use them correctly, if at all. But this is not about the use of punctuation, […]
May 21, 2011
Good spelling is attractive

By deciding to write my blog posts in English, I take a bigger risk than writing it in my mother tongue, French. It would be so much easier to write in the language I master best, in which I know what sounds idiomatic, what grammar rules are correct, how to spell most words, etc.
May 14, 2011