The most common problems students in Italy face when learning English. According to the F English Proficiency Index, in the year 2017 Italy ranked last, among European countries, in English proficiency skills. Being an Italian myself and having studied foreign languages up to my master's degree, I have progressively grown aware of the main factors which cause Italy to perform so poorly. Other than grammatical gaps, which are not to be analyzed in this context, I have noticed how the extremely limited exposition to spoken words can affect not only the student's ability to understand and follow conversations or arguments, but even the possibility for them to be understood when trying to speak. Lack of proper inflection and correct pronunciation During my university years, I have been working and studying in close contact with Italian people whose English proficiency was high, or, at least, higher than average. Despite a correct grammatical and syntactic development of the sentences, most of these people lacked two elements which, in my opinion, are essential, a proper inflection and a correct pronunciation of several phonemes. Whereas inflection is something that usually comes naturally after a regular exposure to the language, a correct pronunciation of the phonemes should be properly practiced through drilling exercises. Many English classes in Italian schools lack this approach. Grammatical correctness is often considered more important than everything else. I would therefore like to analyze the most frequent pronunciation problems foreigners might face in my country of Italy when talking to someone in English. Rolling slash r slash Let us start with a more stereotypical observations. First of all, the slash r slash issue. In Italian, the slash r slash is rolled. Not as strongly as in other languages, such as Finnish, but it is. Although I believe that it is more difficult to reproduce a rolled slash r slash for someone who naturally uses a smooth one, reproducing the smooth British or American slash r slash can be tricky for many Italians. Adding vowels or additional consonants. Second, the tendency to add a vowel, very often in E, at the end of the word, for example glass becomes glass. This is most likely due to the fact that, in Italian, every single word ends with a vowel, only loan words and accent with a consonant. Additionally, especially in Northern Italy, there is a tendency to prolong the sound of the last vowel. Therefore, it is easy to understand that, to an Italian ear, a word ending with a consonant can sound incomplete or unnatural. In Southern Italy, on the other hand, people tend to double consonant when it is not required, for example bugia becomes bugia. This phenomenon affects English words pronunciation as well, for example management becomes managament. As you can see from this last example, the addition of letters unavoidably causes, more often than not, a shift in the stress of the word, making the pronunciation doubly wrong. Problems with the diphthong th The diphthong th is also complicated for Italians to emulate and this is because such a sound does not exist in their native language. The most national way for Italians to aviate this issue is by simplifying slash th slash into a dental sound, that is, slash d slash or slash t slash. The slash h slash issue is also very interesting, in my opinion. Despite the fact that slash h slash is a letter in the Italian alphabet, we need to bear in mind that it is literally called the mute consonant. As a matter of fact, slash h slash rarely represents the first letter of a word and, when it does, it is not pronounced. For example, if we take the two Italian words ha and a, that is, the verb has and the preposition to, respectively, we can see that they are pronounced in the very same way, slash a slash. This is why most Italians find it unnational to pronounce slash h slash, for example his and his are often pronounced the same way. Difficulties with irregular spelling patterns in the English written language We also need to highlight that Italian is a phonetically written language, meaning that you write the words exactly the way you hear them. English is totally opposite, in that sense. Many Italians tend to pronounce every single letter, when reading a text. Therefore, for example, island will not be read slash sound slash, but, most likely, slash island slash or, in the worst case, slash island slash. This example takes us to another very common pronunciation error, the letter i pronounced as slash slash instead of slash a slash, following the Italian pronunciation of the letter i. The same concept applies to the w and the word right, you will typically hear a slash v slash instead of a slash w slash, which totally works in a German context, though. More reasons for the struggles of Italian English learners To conclude, I would like to express my opinion concerning pronunciation problems in Italy. I believe that the lack of training of listening and, above all, speaking skills is largely due to the old school lesson planning method, which is extremely popular in most Italian public schools. A negative feature of this method is that the speaking time of the teacher considerably exceeds that of the students. While I had to draw a rough cast of the situation, I would say that the teacher's speaking time accounts for 95% of the lesson, while only 5% involves the students. Oftentimes only the most confident students participate actively and shire and less confident students are left behind. As a consequence, students do not get the opportunity to practice, make mistakes and be corrected and, at the same time, they become even more scared of speaking a foreign language in front of a group of people, especially if they are native English speakers or foreigners. I also believe that Italians do not pay too much attention to these pronunciation problems because they tend to speak English only when required and, above all, among themselves. Obviously, pronunciation problems do not create many hurdles when you are talking to someone who is native in your very same language. Are you ready to teach English abroad? Speak with an ITTT advisor today to put together your personal plan for teaching English abroad. Send us an email or call us tollfree at 1-800-490-0531 to speak with an ITTT advisor today.


Hi, my name is Agnes Leina. I work for Elaramata Community Concerns. Last year, I attended community-based adaptation 13 in Addisababa, Ethiopia. I met different community practitioners and learned so much. I learned various approaches to climate change adaptation. It was remarkable. Please register for this year's CBA, which will be held virtually. You will enjoy it, you will learn a lot and you will come out a different person. Please register and see you there soon. Thank you.


Abstract larch, a widely distributed tree in boreal Eurasia, is experiencing rapid warming across much of its distribution. Previous studies have shown that warmer temperatures can negatively affect the growth of this species, but these studies were limited in their ability to accurately capture the full extent of the effects of warming. To address this issue, researchers developed a new method for creating physiologically relevant temperature data that better captures the effects of warming on growth. This method indicated that warming has already caused negative growth responses in many areas of boreal Eurasia, with these responses expected to spread further north and higher in elevation over the coming decades. These findings suggest that the risks associated with warming to this region may be greater than previously thought. This article was authored by Wen Qing Li, Ruben Di Manzanado, Yuan Jiang, and others.


We have somebody who knows about religious authority and that kind of societies yes Yet you have made the choice for Tunisia to be a pluralistic society so that the religious authority steps Away to create a society which is quote-unquote more free If so, why why is it that you have made that choice and not the choice of Alexander to have a Authoritarian society. We are in Tunisia in transition, but we know where Yes, so we are going to to rebuild Real society based on freedom on democracy Reconciled between the concept of an individualism and the concept of society Community community how reconcile we because Islam respect both Individual and the collective the community so we are going to to Establish advanced society developed economy and reconcile between Through the concept of consensus between all fractions all ideologies all parties So far we succeed to provoke or to the Peaceful revolution and after that we preserve this flame of liberty of revolution preserve and transform it into Advice into institution Constitution based on the human rights on the quality between sex so and It's different from what happened in Egypt Where There is a coup d'etat a coup d'etat and we can Criticize brotherhood and I have done I can't decide them, but we cannot Pretend that we are Democrat and and Defend the coup d'etat happened So it's a it's scandal Scandal Western democracy is sort of scandal to Defend this coup d'etat the system of eradicate Totally the any voice of the of of liberty of democracy. So we hope that Western democracies Invest in democracy in Arab world not invest in dictatorship But but I must say I must say on more on moral grounds on moral grounds I prefer your Islamism to his Eurasianism. I just want to be clear and look we are experiencing in Liberal democracies a tremendous moment of challenge and for the reasons that Leon and others said earlier problems And we do have to get back to first principles But there are still certain first principles that really do matter and resonate One is that if you don't have a system in which the leaders are actually responsive and accountable to the people At some point you're headed for failure If you don't have a system in which the people and the mechanisms through which they're represented have the ability to tell the leader That he has no clothes At some point he or she is going to make a fatal mistake And so for example Hitler was a pretty terrible general, but his own generals couldn't tell him that and That led to something. You're familiar with Stalingrad If the emperor has no clothes, but no one can tell him the this is how this is how nations fail But there's something else at play here and I think again, I with great respect suggests that this collective Nationalist notion of strength and power is the wrong one If you if we were sitting around this table 50 years ago or 100 years ago when we were asking ourselves this question What constitutes the wealth of a nation? Probably we'd all offer different versions of the same answer. Well, it's the abundance of its natural resources It's the strength of its army. It's the size of its population It's the spans of its geography and those things still matter and as it happens Russia is still well endowed with them So is the United States But I think what we recognize more and more in the 21st century is that the true wealth of a nation is its human Resources and the ability of a country to allow them to reach their full potential And so the great question for all of us is what are the best means to do that? How do you achieve that? How do you allow the human resource to become educated? How do you allow it to be protected? How do you allow it to debate to argue to fight to create and for all of the deficiencies of liberal democracy? I still believe profoundly that no other system gives us the same opportunities to do that Yeah, but but then Cody the question is recently you will have all these things And yet Mr. Trump was elected How come? Why is it that those things you just mentioned in a very eloquent way are not in place right now in the United States of America? Well, first of all, they are in place but it's not functioning Well, in fact in many ways it still is functioning first of all We can never mind the fact that three million more people voted for his opponent doesn't work We have some structural problems in the in the system from its origins But beyond that no it is working and the fact of the matter is also this One of the things that that I find profoundly Hard to to rationalize I mean I of course I understand it but We're going through a huge crisis and fight over immigration in our country The idea that we would somehow profoundly object to the fact that the United States is the one country on earth that more people still want to come to To get educated to do business to visit that that's a problem not a great source of strength Is one of the great puzzles of this moment? But the fact is that's still true and the fact is if you go around the world as I had the opportunity to do as a Diplomat, many of our policies were often rightly Debated disagreed with but the one thing that remained across the board a very powerful pull of attraction for us was precisely our Education our science our technology our entrepreneurship our innovation that all functions education system In America in North America in the West is actually achieving what it should be I only say that because the education so much nowadays Especially with the advancement of technology has been equated with a degree and a diploma in order to get a job in order to Be part of a manufacturer system I usually use a term in Farsi in Persian We have a different word for people were in university and those were in high school for example the first one means is a student learning the second means a seeker of knowledge and I grew up in a world where the idea of going to university was always the the notion that you will go to get knowledge and you seek knowledge and my experience of Universities colleges around especially in the Western world despite all the wonderful freedom that exists is that there's as degree of Mediocracy there is a degree of Deming down and I go back to that the only thing I would agree with him on this is the question of what is threatening freedom as well Is the political correctness is the kind of a fear of not wanting to say so the void has been felt by the populace by those were Bluntly racist and fascist and yet they can get to say what they want to say But the rest of us because of our liberals and because of our politeness because of that notion of sort of We want to be civilized We are no longer able to the use of language for example in North America I am working on a documentary about media in the Middle East and the Western media And I can tell you that the use of language to avoid to tell the truth about the Middle East for example Is so creative that it could be passed as fiction And I think those are the roots of problem for me I would love to see liberalism and democracy flourish all over the world since I am one of the people who have directly benefited from it But at the same time I like to acknowledge that there are some fundamental problems And I think education is one of the first places where I would go to because I'm a big advocate or of education For all the people including in the Middle East and Afghanistan and in the West And the second thing for me, which again, I fought against communism I Flourished in a sort of a socialist system in Canada But I find more and more that there is a big problem with the market society I don't have a problem with market economy because there is a morality attached to it There are some values attached to it and it's about competition and about achieving the best But when a society has become a market society like as we're experiencing and I talk China is one of the greatest examples of it Then that kind of a mediocre educational system the political correctness and the market economy where everything is for sale Including love and friendship and everything else It's become devoid of the kind of moral values that we held so so there as freedom and that individual freedom that I respect And and I will die for that would be the only thing it's several issues at once And they serious issues one I mean the dumbing down of of education It's it's probably unavoidable because it has to do with it's becoming a mass phenomenon I mean in the old days. I mean there was a very narrow group of people who received college and the high Higher education. It's the same like with with music. I mean music used to be an elite phenomenon and There was some great music then, you know today. It's a phenomenon of mass culture and most of it is rubbish and and You know people from Prague think once upon a time only Mozart exists Quite but almost Leon but the second thing which is probably more serious and very troubling is what is being taught in in the Universities and in in the fast panel. I think it was better we who spoke about mentioned Michel Foucault and and for me, this is it's not the foocalls blame or anything, but this is where the process of post-modernism deconstruction of truce and its dissipation into what we call narratives I have a narrative you have a narrative my narrative is as good as your narrative and and that's that's that's all true people have different narratives, but the very concept of Truth has evaporated. There is no truth. I mean a friend of mine Peter Pomerance a Russian wrote quite wonderful book about Russia, which is where nothing is true and everything is possible and That is increasingly the the world We living in and we have to make an effort to pass away People who are still willing to to listen to us that the quest for truth may be very complex and sometimes unsuccessful and That also point faith painful because I think I think you're right. I would say together I would say two things about that the first is that the political crisis That we're facing in the United States is at bottom on if you pardon the expression an epistemological crisis In that we it's not that we disagree about policies We no longer agree on a description of reality and that is a very very profound Problem a very profound problem the second thing that's worth saying is when you talk about education and the media It's very important to remember that an open society Places an enormous intellectual Responsibility on ordinary people that is to say in an open society We govern ourselves by means of our opinions. We count them in elections. We discuss them It this means that the quality of our opinions will determine the quality of our politics And this means that what will really determine the quality of our politics is the quality of our opinion formation an Education and media in an open society are the those are the machineries of opinion Formation and one of the things you're seeing and certainly in the United States right now is a complete breakdown and degeneration of opinion formation and that is a problem that frankly it's not a political problem It's a cultural problem culture is much harder to deal with than politics for that reason It's going to take a while. This is not a question of an election cycle It's a much larger problem and frankly. I'm not sure what we're going to do about it But I think the crisis is that deep


Bye! Should I get my coffee time? Northwell Health represent. Alright, and it is a new day and another day at the airport. We are going somewhere, which you probably know about the title and thumbnail by now, but we're going through Paddy. Alright, so a good start to the trip. We're already delayed. I hate rushing on connected flights, but nonetheless, positive odds only. Expectations. Well, we did not make it to our destination. We just boarded the plane because, here, they can't fix the issue. So now we're sitting here. It's 12.30 and we're going to do the update in two hours. Alright, so as suspected, flight is cancelled. We aren't happy. It's 2 o'clock in the morning and we're going back home. We're rebooked on a flight later today. How happy are you? I'm happy that we're going tomorrow. Well, let's hope that things work out tomorrow better than today. Otherwise, see you tomorrow. Probably won't vlog tomorrow because it's going to be a repeat of today. And welcome back for another day. And we're taking a different approach to getting on the New Jersey Transit and going to the airport that way because the Ubers are like $100 now. Who knows if United is going to reimburse us for that? Very doubtful, but we're very hopeful for today. The good thing is we're staying positive. We've got a non-stop flight. Actually, I needed to call it direct flight. Oh yeah, non-stop, direct flight. Anyways, we're heading to the airport now. Hopefully we'll be on this flight. And one thing I didn't tell Andrana is that I may have upgraded less. I think this will do. And the best part when I get sick of Andrana, I just do this. And we officially made it to Paris. But I'm a little concerned that our bags may not get here. Let's cross our fingers. I don't know. Must be on 1 to 10. How happy are you that we made it? So happy. Paris is actually one of my favorite cities. All right. I just realized, well, for one, we're on a really loud street. And two, we just saw the Notre Dame. We got to whip out the old Vladimir camera. So didn't really get a picture of that. But now we're just kind of walking around. Going maybe a few shops here and there. All right. So no trip to Paris would be complete without some macaques. Yummy. They're my favorite. Tastes good. First off, pistachio. Pistachio. She's ever rated a micron before. I haven't. So what is it? It's an 8. 8? All right. So we're around shopping. Had to get a new mask. His mind broke.  The only reason it's going in the trash. Update. Brand new scarf. And bought some other items as well. And now we're going to grab cocktail. And top of the morning to you. It is officially day two here. We are just leaving our first hotel. Well, let me rewind a little bit. So we were supposed to stay at this hotel for two nights. We ended up missing our flight the first night, as you know. So we got knocked down to one night here. We are in Saint-Germain, which is left bank, I believe, in Paris. Don't quote me on that. I don't really know what I'm talking about. But we were supposed to stay here two nights. We ended up paying for two nights. And always staying here one night. So that's cool. Thanks, United. And now we're going to basically walk around at the end today. See more sites. Probably venture down and see the Eiffel Tower. Because, you know, you gotta do some touristy things while you're here. And that's pretty much it. Oh, and also, if you're looking to stay in Saint-Germain, this is the Hotel Bellamy. Which I'll leave a link to in my description. They're awesome. Recommend this hotel. 10 out of 10. So I'm about to try my hand at the subway in Paris. We'll see how this goes. It's freezing out here, by the way. It's like 30 degrees. And we officially made it to the Eiffel Tower. Not that bad. You can barely see me, but we just got to our hotel room. And I wanted to show it to you because it's adorable. A few little coffee makers. We'll get to the bathroom in a second. A cute little room. We have jazz playing for us. We have a nice little suite. They actually upgraded us, which is nice. And, yeah, then we have a pretty nice view of the city. Open this. I think I'm pretty content. So we are going to get ready for dinner right now. Been in these clothes all day.  All right. So I realize I get too caught up in our date night and dinner and all that stuff to even vlog. But we just finished a beautiful dinner. And now headed back to have a little cocktail. And then bed. And then we'll do it all over again tomorrow. We'll see how we feel when we get back to the hotel. Yeah, two more days left. Plenty more to discover in Patti. Welcome to day three. We are on the subway at the Notre Dame de Lorette.  I can't even pronounce the name, but I'll show you in a second. And then we decided to take the subway because we like to venture out and do what the locals do. Because we do in New York City. So that's what we do here. So we do everywhere. Patti, what are you building here right now? And somehow we made it. Automatically I love this place. It's the Mata Mata. I can't say it. Somebody tell me how to pronounce this. Our next task is to find the pastry shop. And I just want to stuff my face with a Claire. Is that how you say it? Yeah.  Or, I don't know, just French pastry. That's all I want. Obviously some cocktails later. That's it. That's it. Back to bar one out of the way. Highly recommend the Hodgeson Hotel Jacques. Cocktail bar. And, oh it's dark. I knew you were going to say it. It's like midnight 30 or what not. We just finished having a few cocktails. Shout out bar divine. If you venture out and don't go to the touristy spots. We just went to a pure locals cocktail spot. They're like surprised you're there. They're happy you're there. And they're nice. And that's why we love traveling and doing this stuff so you can experience some stuff.  Don't stay on the touristy spots. Honestly every place that was a touristy spot in Paris the lines were so ridiculously long. It wasn't even worth it. No, not at all. The place faster she was so much better. Yeah, so I mean you just got to venture out. Take the chance. And I guarantee people would be nice to you because at least they are just excited to see someone who's like venturing out. You know, so try it next time. But we'll end tonight here. And we'll check back in. Manana. It's supposed to rain tomorrow. Oh yeah, this supposed to rain today. I'm last day but what do you do? We'll make the best of it. We'll make the best. See you tomorrow. Welcome to Saturday. AKA our last day. We've got cinematic modes here. We'll blur it out. So we just finished the cafe Noir and destroyed some croissants. And now we are basically going to go out we have to A, give it a test.  Great to try all that stuff. It's raining this morning but it stopped. So it's a little wet outside but it's not going to stop us. And we're going to see what today brings on our last day. We're not just going to stay out as late as we did last night though. Maybe we will. This is going to have to wake up at like 3.30 in the morning. Also, check this place out. This looks like a legit testing today right on the street. All right, good news. So, ooh. Good news is we found a sandwich shop. Good news is we're testing that here for COVID. Therefore, all worries are off today and we can actually enjoy this day because it's something stressful about worrying about testing positive for COVID while you're overseas because then you have to quarantine here for like X amount of days and, uh. It has to get a baguette. Okay, it's baguette time. Sorry, hold please. Okay, so we got a baguette with brie and ham toasted and we got an almond croissant. I believe it's croissant. Croissant. So, what do you want? What do you want? These are my two favorite items here in Paris. Next will be some eclair. What do you want to taste first? I think it's savory. Just want to show you. That's quite the large. Quite the large. Just bite it. Just bite it. Babe, it's so hot. Just bite it. I need a rating from one to Italian bakery in Queens. Very different. There's a little bit more salty because of this cheese but red here is a 10 out of 10. Delicious? Delicious. Okay, what am I supposed to do with that? This is delightful. Really, really freaking good. Okay, now that my savory dreams were met we are going to enter my sweet dreams. This is the almond croissant. It's a little bit different than the other almond croissants that I had. How do you attack that? Just bite it? I don't know. I was going to break it. I'm a breaker. All right. Delish. Delicious. I'm fine. Everything's fine. Put it over here. Let me just turn it this way. This one has that better. Are you going to save me for me? You have a whole thing. All right. All right, my turn. Mmm. The filling is exceptional. It's not too sweet. Flaky crust. Sweet. Not too soft filling. Well, inside is almonds. Mmm. Also 10 out of 10 almond croissants. All right. So I just poured it over here a little bit today and I'm not one to go shopping when I'm on a vacation but I did picked up a little something about myself. A new tote because I just couldn't say no. Still didn't find my eclairs but this will do. The aftermath. I'm going to keep going. I'm going to keep going. So, we were at the bakery. We destroyed those, I don't know what you call them, cakes, pastries but they were delicious and we devoured them and then we went to that cocktail bar. Shout out Dirty Lemon. That cocktail bar was amazing. You should go there, grab her in. I don't even know where we are right now. But look it up. And now we're going to dinner for our last dinner in Betty. Just took Subway back and had a fantastic dinner at, what do we have? Ober Mama. Ober Mama. Really good. Now we're turned around. That was basically the end of our journey in Betty. But now we have to pack which is a whole big process in itself. After the airport at like four o'clock in the morning tomorrow so that's not cool but we'll turn it in for the night. It's 5.30 am. I still have to upload a video for today and due to the time change I need to do it right now before I don't want this eight hour flight so the things I do is to stay on track to YouTube. Why is someone dragged by it? The second I pulled my camera it says no. Alright, it's about 8 am. Just got off the first flight to Frankfurt. I'm currently in Frankfurt Germany Airport. I tend to just always fly through this airport for some reason. Right now, waiting on a flight we're flying back to Jersey in like an hour and a half and we'll see how it goes. Hopefully, I let it just there. Alright, so officially made it back to the States. This is my usual spot to film when I get back here. Thoughts on the trip? Absolutely love Paris. I really feel like going to big cities like Paris you have to scale your comfort zone and explore and do things that Parisians would do. Don't go to the local touristy spots just go venture out in the city see what you can find mean go with the locals and do what they do. Since that's what we did we had a fantastic time. I don't think anybody spoke anything other than French at almost any restaurant we went to just what we were looking for immersed ourselves had fun now we're here and we start work tomorrow let me know in the comments below if you want to see more videos like this I think a lot of y'all like my travel vlogs prior so I'll probably keep doing them it's fun for me to do and it's fun for me to have memories of the trip on YouTube so it's a win win. Anyways, I wish you a smash like subscribe on my Instagram and take a go already if you've gone somewhere over here I don't know what she's doing but I guess I'll see you all in the next video. Bye.


The BCG vaccine has been shown to have bystander benefits in protecting against heterologous infections and a recent interim analysis of the activate trial suggests protection against respiratory infections in the elderly population. Epidemiologic studies suggest a potential benefit of BCG vaccination on COVID-19 outcomes. A unique natural experiment from differential past BCG vaccination policies between former East and West German states provides evidence that prior BCG vaccination may have a protective effect against COVID-19. Using the COVID-19 international modelling, COMO, consortium model, we estimated a 5% heterologous vaccine efficacy in the highly vaccinated former East Germany. A comparable BCG vaccination campaign undertaken prior to the pandemic in former West Germany, along with known country-wide transmission reduction measures, is associated with a 37% decrease in projected mortality by mid-summer 2020. These findings support a combined heterologous vaccine and non-pharmaceutical interventions, HVI plus NPI, approach to mitigate the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic until SARS-CoV-2 specific vaccines are widely distributed. This article was authored by Daniela Marin-Hanandez, Douglas F. Nixon and Nathaniel Hupert. We are article.tv, links in the description below.


Youth and women in their numbers today took to the streets of Benin City, the Edo State Capitol. They were out to protest what they described as a continual refusal of the appropriate authority to inaugurate the Nigel Delta Development Commission Board. The Board was creamed by the Senate on the 5th of November 2019. Protesting across major roads in the state as well as the Benin Office of the Nigel Delta Development Commission, they accused the Minister of Nigel Delta Affairs of running a one-man show. So, when Mr. President inaugurated the Northeast Development Commission, our commission is well represented and their functionality today amazes all the lives of our people. Hey, don't say the inclusive. What is our own difference? In the end of this year's nine states, nine good states, these states are not represented. They are deprived of representation in the end of this year's Board. Whereas other Development Commission, the Northeast Development Commission and the others have functioning without any form of hindrance.