Old updates and news

Hello English learners! This year's update is a review of SuperMemo for Pocket PC.

With SuperMemo for Pocket PC, you can learn English wherever you are, whenever you have a few minutes of free time — e.g. when waiting for a train, between classes, etc. What's more, this is the easiest-to-use version of SuperMemo, much simpler than SuperMemo for Windows. It would be a dream if you could add items on your PC, with a real keyboard. Unfortunately, you have to use the stylus on your PDA, which is impossibly slow.

Review of the Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary CD-ROM — a huge dictionary of American English with phonetic transcriptions and recordings, available for $7.00 + shipping.

Elearnaid has reduced its prices on Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner's English dictionaries. You can now get the hardcover + CD for $26, the paperback + CD for $19, the CD for only $10, and the Resource Pack on CD (includes the dictionary and thesaurus) for $29.

More information

The Antimoon Forum is back and now has two subforums: One for discussing English and one for discussing languages in general.

Why your input should be fun: Want to make real progress with your English? Thrilling, enjoyable and/or funny content is the key.

What to read: Suppose you want to read in English. What kind of texts should you choose to maximize your progress?

This week's update is a real hit: Tom explains how people normally read and why this way of reading is not optimal for English learners. He also shows, with plenty of examples, how you should read if you want to super-charge your grammar.

How to read English texts if you're learning English

Why you need to start reading in English on your own:

"In this article, I will show why reading English texts on your own is the way to go. The arguments will fall into three categories: Intensity, Motivation and Authenticity (...)"

Seventh article in our popular series "Language learning: Myths and facts": "Studying pronunciation is not important".

We have updated our user-friendly SuperMemo manual ("Using SuperMemo to learn English") to describe SuperMemo 2004.

This time we have something for those of our readers who use SuperMemo to learn English (or other languages): an updated version of our introduction to sentence items with a more thorough discussion of their advantages over standard definition-word items.

By the way, SuperMemo 2004 for Windows has just been released. Congratulations SuperMemo World on this new release!

How many times have you heard that "If you didn't learn a foreign language as a child, you will never be fully proficient in its grammar"? This week's article explains why this statement is unjustified.

"You are a foreigner, therefore you will always have a foreign accent" — this line is often used to discourage learners from studying pronunciation seriously. Our new article in the "Language learning: Myths and facts" series proves it is not true.

Two more language learning myths:

3. "It is OK to make mistakes"
4. "As a beginner, you're bound to make a lot of mistakes"

Probably the most frequently repeated piece of advice for language learners is that the best way to learn a foreign language is to speak it. We discuss this statement in the second article in our series on the myths of language learning.

In the coming weeks, we will be publishing a series of short articles about the most widespread and most harmful myths of language learning. We've named the series "Language learning: Myths and facts".

The first myth we're going to discuss says that the best way to learn a foreign language is to go to a foreign country. Is going to America or Britain really the best way to learn English? Read the article to find out!

Tom has developed an online editor which lets you type IPA-based phonetic transcriptions of English words. You can type phonetic symbols with buttons and keyboard shortcuts, and then copy your transcriptions to your word processor.

If you're an English teacher, this is the easiest way to add IPA-based pronunciations to your handouts.

Learn why publishers are unable to develop a really good software dictionary and why HarperCollins made a new edition of its software dictionary that is worse than the previous one.

Updated versions of our popular table with English sounds and the introduction to phonetic transcription. Now even more informative and accurate.

Other news: Previously, if you lived in the European Union and bought PerfectPronunciation, you had to pay up to 25% Value Added Tax (VAT). Now you can get a 20% discount, so that you pay about the same price as customers in other countries.

• What's new in the 4th edition of the Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner's English Dictionary?
• Updated review of the dictionary
• Updated review of the CD-ROM

The best of Antimoon Forum in 2003: 390 most interesting discussions that occurred in our forum in the past year. Most of the topics fall into these three categories:

• English grammar/vocabulary questions
• Discussions on pronunciation and accents (including accent samples from our readers)
• Advice for learners of English and other languages

Find answers to your questions with our terrific new search engine (SWISH-E) which lets you search all of Antimoon, including every single forum discussion since February 2002. That's 2,372 pages of language-related information!

In other news, the Netscape 4.x browser is no longer supported. In exchange, the source code is much cleaner, the site works even faster than before, and looks perfect in Internet Explorer, Mozilla-based browsers, and Opera.

Why are we all here? What is the meaning of life? Why do people sign up for English classes? Tom has been thinking about these three important philosophical questions, and came up with an answer to the third one.

If you haven't been interested in the example sentences in your dictionary, you should read our brand-new article which shows why example sentences are more important than definitions and how they can give your English a huge boost.

Review of the Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary CD-ROM. The software offers quick access to a great number of transcriptions and recorded (British) pronunciations, exercises for learners of British pronunciation, and the ability to search for words containing a given sound.

Check out our new article on phonemic transcription and a new version of our introduction to phonetic transcription to learn about different types of phonetic transcription — where they are used and how they work.

In our new article, we review the latest edition of the legendary English Pronouncing Dictionary, a specialized dictionary with 215,000 pronunciations of English words, including proper names and inflected forms.

You can now listen to recordings of Tom's and Michal's English pronunciation in Tom's and Michal's stories in the "Successful English learners" section.

What is necessary to learn English well? Our new article looks into the psychology of learning English as a foreign language and tries to answer the question "Why do some learners succeed and others don't?".

Three biggest challenges facing an English learner: What is most difficult about learning English as a foreign language? Read our latest article to find out!

We're very excited to announce PerfectPronunciation — Antimoon's software for learning English pronunciation. PerfectPronunciation has 500 audio exercises which teach you to properly pronounce the most frequently used English words.

The best of Antimoon Forum in 2002 is online. This is the archive of the best discussions that occurred in the forum in the past year. It includes tips on how to learn English, answers to questions, and a few interesting discussions about accents.

We have published a large sample from Krzysztof Cichy's SuperMemo collection. We believe it is a good inspiration for people who want to learn English by making their own SuperMemo items.

Also, you can now view Michal's demo collection in your browser.

Special offer: You can get the Antimoon Starter Collection for free if you buy SuperMemo 2002 or 2000. This new collection has 100 pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary items showing many different ways to learn English with SuperMemo.

Our new article, "Why you shouldn't learn English by grammar rules" explains why we think grammar rules are evil and why you don't need them to learn English.

For the first 30 years of his life, Robert Boydell couldn't speak or write. He could just listen and read. At 30 years old, he wrote the first English sentences in his life. And they were all written in perfect English! Boydell's case shows that input is enough to learn English well.

Input is the difference between you and a native speaker. Input can give you natural, fluent, correct English. Input should be your new religion. What is input and why you need it to learn English well — read all about it in our new update!

We continue the "Learn English without mistakes" section with a new article: "How to avoid making mistakes in English". Last week's article explained why you should avoid mistakes. This article tells you how to do it. Yes, you too can learn English without mistakes!

We have added a new section of "How to learn English" titled "Learn English without mistakes". It contains our new article which explains how you can damage your English by writing or speaking and why you should never make mistakes.

We're giving our report "Free Recordings for English Learners on the Web" to anyone who will take our survey.

Complete the survey now to tell us more about you and get access to the best ESL recordings on the Web!

To help you learn English pronunciation, we have created a special printable phonetic alphabets chart. It shows all the symbols of the IPA and ASCII phonetic alphabets, fits nicely on one sheet of paper, and looks really good, too!

A special gift to our readers from Antimoon and the English Teaching Forum magazine — 10 "Shaggy Dog Stories" and two other recordings in mp3 format.

These are short, funny stories in clear American English. When we were in high school, we would listen to them every day to learn American pronunciation. Now we're sharing them with you.

Me and SuperMemo: Tom writes about his 9-year experience with SuperMemo, the software he used to learn English in high school. He talks about his motivation for using SuperMemo and his excellent results.

Sentence items are perhaps the best way to learn English with SuperMemo. In our new article, we explain how to make sentence items, how to repeat them, and what are their advantages. We present many examples.

To get an e-mail message when we publish a new update, please subscribe to the Antimoon Updates mailing list. The list is 100% spam-free and you will never receive more than one message per week.

Did you know you can improve your English writing in 5 minutes by spelling words correctly and using correct punctuation?

Our first product is here! The Pronunciation 500 is a tool which teaches you the pronunciation of 500 basic English words.

Does "law" rhyme with "low"? Do "foot" and "food" have the same vowel sound? The Pronunciation 500 will tell you the answers to such questions, help you say English words with more confidence, and become fluent in reading phonetic transcription.

Are you worried because you understand many more English words than you use? Our article "Don't worry about your active vocabulary" may convince you to stop worrying.

Suppose you want to speak pure British English. Should you study American pronunciation, too? We discuss this problem in a new version of our article "How to learn English pronunciation".

Our SuperMemo manual for beginners ("Using SuperMemo to learn English") has a new part: "Memorizing and repeating knowledge in SuperMemo".

It explains the rules of learning with SuperMemo, shows the steps taken when you repeat a piece of knowledge, and tells you how to grade yourself. Includes screenshots from SuperMemo 2000.

Big day today: the Antimoon Forum is online!

If you want to ask a question, present your opinion on an article, or discuss English with other people, then post a message to our forum.

Update in the "Using SuperMemo to learn English" series: How to make pronunciation items. Pronunciation items help you learn the pronunciation of English words.

The "How to learn English" section has a new front page.

Many readers have asked us to write about software (electronic) dictionaries. Now we have something for them: Our review of the "Collins COBUILD on CD-ROM" — the software version of the excellent "Collins COBUILD Dictionary for Advanced Learners".

A reader has sent us a letter about why she thinks pronunciation is important and about her experiences in learning it.

The "Using SuperMemo to learn English" series now has a new page about creating gap-filling items.

Michal is learning Norwegian as an experiment. He wants to test our methods for learning English. He also wants to better understand the situation of English learners. You can read about this project on his site: "Antimoon / Norsk Experiment".

Read our new page about the English sound [@] (the vowel in "cat" or the first sound in "act"). The page has mp3 recordings of seven words with the sound in four different versions.

Our review of the Collins COBUILD English Dictionary now lets you look at two example pages from the dictionary.

Our new page shows how to make word-definition items in SuperMemo. The page is part of our manual "Using SuperMemo to learn English".

A reader has sent us an interesting comment on why learning pronunciation is important. The reader writes that pronunciation is like singing.

Part 3 of our manual "Using SuperMemo to learn English" discusses ways of making items for English learning in SuperMemo. Each type of item will get a separate page.

So far, there is one page about "definition-word items". In these items, you see a definition and you have to say a word which matches it.

Read our review of the Collins COBUILD English Dictionary for Advanced Learners. Learn why we recommend the dictionary!

In her story, Marta Wlodarczak tells how she managed to learn English successfully using our methods:

"I have been using these techniques for four years, and in my opinion, I have achieved pretty good results. I find it easy to read books in English (...), which gives me pleasure and satisfaction. I don't have much difficulty writing in English. (...) My pronunciation has markedly improved."

Amazon.co.uk now has the Collins COBUILD English Dictionary in paperback. It costs 13.59 pounds, which is only 19 dollars. (The hardcover edition costs $25).

Krzysztof Cichy sent us his opinion on the new Collins COBUILD English Dictionary, which he recently bought.

Joanna Wlodarczak disagrees with our article "Why we don't like English classes". She reminds us that we attended a good class in high school (Tom writes about it in his story). She also writes that classes create competition between students, which improves their motivation to learn English.

A few people have told us that Antimoon looks like a site which exists to sell commercial products. We have written a short article which explains why we are recommending products in some of our articles.

In our new article, you can learn why reading is much easier than listening, and what this means for the English learner. The article has a short demonstration with sound.

The new Collins COBUILD English Dictionary is finally available at Amazon.co.uk! You can get it for 18.39 pounds (about $25).

Every serious learner should have a good dictionary. The Collins Cobuild is the best dictionary that we've used. (You can learn more about English dictionaries and the Collins Cobuild in one of our articles.)

Does your teacher tell you: "you should practice your writing"? Well, maybe you shouldn't listen to your teacher. In our new article, we explain why your English can get worse because of writing.

Michal has written a short story for those who say: "I don't have to learn English pronunciation; I just want to communicate in English".

We have a new section, which will contain explanations of terms related to the English language. For now, you can learn the meaning of 7 words: "noun", "verb", "adjective", "adverb", "ESL", "American English", and "British English".

More reader comments: Teruko Fukuya has sent us an interesting message about the pronunciation of foreigners living in the USA and their ability to communicate in English.

Marta Sokolowska has e-mailed us her comments on two of our articles. She tells us the opinion of her professor: "If you learn only five English words a day, you will know almost 2,000 after a year". We disagree with the opinion.

Marta also writes about her good experience with English classes. We discuss tests and reading in class.

Read our new article in "How to learn English" — "Watching movies in English". It tells you why films help you learn English and what you should do to learn from them effectively.

Can you communicate in English? Should you study English pronunciation? If you want to find out, take a look at version 2.0 of our article "Why you should study English pronunciation".

Good news, folks! Raymond Weschler of ESLnotes.com (the fantastic site with movie guides for English learners) has placed a link to Antimoon, calling us "the greatest ESL students in all of Poland". We can die now. :-)

What is good English pronunciation? What does it mean to speak good English? You can find the answer in our latest short article.

Part 2 of our SuperMemo 2000 manual ("Using SuperMemo to learn English") is ready. It explains how to start your first SuperMemo collection.

Our article "Reading — the most important way to learn English" is now expanded with a new page. The page has two stories of learners who completely changed their English because of reading.

"Why learn English", "English makes you feel good", and our new article — "Why we don't like English classes" — are now in the "Other interesting articles" section.

You can find out why we don't like English classes in our new article. 99% of English learners go to English classes. They spend a lot of time, their English doesn't improve, but they still do it. Why? We don't know. We think English classes are a terrible way to learn.

A demo of the phonetic transcription system is available. The demo shows how phonetic transcription works. You can listen to some English words and read their phonetic transcriptions.

The people at Web English Teacher, a directory of English teaching resources, have given us their award (see the logo of the award).

We have started writing a SuperMemo 2000 manual in the "How to learn English" section. The manual is called "Using SuperMemo to learn English", and we have completed its first part: "Getting, installing, and uninstalling SuperMemo".

Michal Wojcik's story in "Successful English learners" now has a photo of Michal.

There's a new article in the "How to learn English" section — "Reading — the most important way to learn English". You can learn why reading is absolutely important in English learning. Also in the article: why you don't need grammar books, what is "grammar intuition", and what is the best way to read.

He says his English is far from perfect. We don't agree. That's why you can read his story on Antimoon. Meet Krzysztof Cichy, a 20-year-old successful student of business administration. In his story, he tells how his interests (science, sports, and rock music) motivated him to learn English.

The Collins COBUILD English Dictionary is, in our opinion, currently the best learner's dictionary in the world. You can now take a look at an example page from this dictionary. (Warning: this is a large GIF file, 130 KB in size.)

If you would like to see the possible ways of adding English words to your SuperMemo collection, download Michal's free demo collection from the SuperMemo Library. (You can read about the learning software SuperMemo in one of our articles.)

A photo of Tom is now added to Tom's story in the "Successful English learners" section.

Antimoon has received the Lightspan StudyWeb Academic Excellence Award! StudyWeb's editors have decided that we are one of the best educational sites on the Web. Take a look at the logo of the award.

There is a new article which updates our introduction to English pronunciation: Good English pronunciation — why it is important. It explains why you should concentrate on pronunciation when you begin learning English.

Michal Wojcik's story is posted in the "Successful English learners" section. In the story, our webmaster tells about his experience with learning English: how he learned it, and what it gave him. You have to read this one!

Read our new, fascinating article about SuperMemo — a modern computer program which is great for learning English vocabulary. SuperMemo was our secret tool for years; now you can read about it on Antimoon.

Yes, we really think that playing adventure games on your computer is a great way to improve your English. Read our new article about adventure games in the "How to learn English" section.

Our English learning program, "How to learn English" is growing. We have added a new article which teaches the basics of English pronunciation and the International Phonetic Alphabet.

Artur Pajkert has commented on the article "English makes you feel good". In his short story, he tells how he helped two English speakers in Poland, and impressed his girlfriend.

After six months of work, the big moment is here. We finally present Antimoon.com to English learners around the world.

Why did we start this site? Because we have something to say. We have ideas on how to learn English, and we want to share them with other people. We hope we will help you, and perhaps you will help us improve our ideas, too.

We have spent much time on creating what you see now, but this is just the beginning. We will be working on lots of new content in the following months. Right now, you can influence the future of Antimoon by giving us your comments. Thanks!