Colombia very well

Have you ever heard about this? If you don't, let me introduce a little this program and tell you my opinion and my expectations.

This program promoted by the president of colombia, Juan Manuel Santos and the minister of education, Maria Fernanda Campo, presented this program with the purpose to improve the level of English and development of competencies in English all over Colombia. This program will be on action through 2015-2025.

If you want to know better the program, here is the link where you can find everything about it.

http://www.mineducacion.gov.co/cvn/1665/w3-article-343476.html

I really think that this program is necessary and I'm hoping that works well, I'm not going to talk about the government cause we all know that is not save of corruption, but if all of this program is true, it would be a big step to the education of Colombia. I'm very interested because I'm in the sistem now and I will be affected or get beneficiary of this. So I will work hard on this and try to make this country have a better level of English.

1. How much importance do you think that this program is for our country?

2.  Dou you think that the time proposed in the program can reach the goal, or do you think that 10 years are not enough?

Grammar

Grammar can be a nightmare for many, I can bet for that cause I have many problems with grammar, but we cannot deny that is real important thing to know.

Grammar is the bases of every language, and very important when you are learning a second language as me. Grammar gives you all the structure necessary to take into account: speaking, writing and reading.

I know that grammar is hard, but imagine if the structures of a language doesn't exist, it would be a chaos, we can see that chaos when we see somebody writing that skips the structures and we can barely understand and when you are learning a second language you can have some misunderstanding because of this, maybe you used the wrong pronoun or you didn't use the right tense. But please!! It is not necessary to became into a grammar Nazi, of course that a person that talks or write very well has more credibility, but when is a grammar Nazi evolves into a annoying person.

Now it's important to know that your level of grammar depends of  the context, is fundamental to use all rules if you are in school, university or your job, but if you are with friends or posting in social networks a little mistake can be accepted, but just little mistakes! 

SAY NO TO GRAMMAR NAZIS!

Idioms

" Idioms " or idiomatic expressions. This can be a big wall between the language and a person that is not native. Why? Because an idiom it doesn't mean what the words literally means, so if you don't understand the idiom you'll be in problems and probably misunderstood what somebody wants to say. So we need to have care with this idiomatic expressions that have only that meaning in the respective culture.
Let me give you some examples.


"Cut someone off at the knees". This one can be problematic if you take literally the meaning, but the real meaning and its use is to stop someone of doing something immediately. Now as you can see this make sense cause if you cut someone off at the knee, well... it won't go that far.

"Too clever by half". For those who are too smug and thinks that they are better just cause they are smarter than other.

"Grinning like a shot fox". When somebody didn't not understand the joke and still is smiling, but with that smile they show that they don't really understand what's going on.

"Part of the furniture". This one is used to something or somebody that has being in the same place for too long.

"Without batting an eye". For those who made something, and made it looks easier cause they didn't act like there wasn't big deal.

Some idioms explain theirselve, and makes the language more funny, but some are really different of the literal meaning, some are part of a culture and some idioms has been translated to another language. But the thing is that the idioms are an important part of any language, and as I already said can be a problem for somebody that is learning a new lanfuage, that's why is important to know this expressions to have a good communication with the context where you are.