In 1967, Albert Mehrabian published a groundbreaking research paper that established the 7%-38%-55% rule. This rule states that, in decoding messages about positive and negative feelings, only 7% of our conclusions come from the words spoken by the person we’re...
There are some foreign words that just don’t have an English equivalent. These types of words are often dynamic and multi-faceted, originating out of cultural practices that are different from those of English speakers. Language professionals face an incredible challenge...
In psychological experiments first conducted in 1929 and then repeated in 2001, scientists asked a group of individuals to give a name to two unnamed shapes. The scientists were trying to determine whether the names for these shapes would be...
Do you have three and a half hours to spare? The longest word in the English language contains 189,891 letters. It takes about three and a half hours to pronounce this technical name of the protein Titin. If you’re up...
The Hmong are an ethnic group that originated in China’s Yellow River Basin. Throughout their history, they faced persecution and displacement. Today, Hmong people live in Vietnam, China, Thailand, and America. Hmong is part of the Chuanqiandian Cluster, a branch...
The United States is more linguistically diverse than ever. As of 2015, there were at least 350 languages spoken in U.S. households. One in five people living in the U.S. speaks a language other than English at home. Of those,...
We mark time in many different ways – months, weeks, days, seconds. These terms get thrown around regularly, and they play a huge role in the way we conceptualize the many happenings of our lives. Here we’ll take a look...
The app marketplace teems with clickables that promise shortcuts to learning. Among these apps, mobile programs to learn a second language have exploded in popularity, as busy adult learners search for methods to educate themselves through easy-to-use formats—in fact, the...
We’ve all heard some variation of the ultra-absorbent, spongy brain explanation that suggests children’s talent for second language acquisition comes as naturally to them as a sugar high on Halloween night. But is it actually true? Empirically speaking, yes. To...
The Gregorian calendar dates back to 1592 when Pope Gregory XIII instituted it as a revision of the Julien calendar. After its introduction, it slowly spread across Italy, then to Portugal, Spain, and the German Catholic states. In 1699, it...
We’re getting close to a new decade (on the Gregorian calendar, at least), and around the world, people are preparing to celebrate the start of the new ‘20s with New Year’s traditions that run donning colored underwear to setting cars...
It’s almost 2020, which means that this year, we’re reflecting not just on all the things that happened in 2019, but on a whole decade of happenings. In this post, we turn our gaze to the many cinematic gems that...
View our test prep materials or FAQ’s for common questions about taking a test.
