Is the „green“ energy really free?

I have been studying the comments (382 comments in total) to the post Renewable energy – our downfall? By Ralph Ellis. Most of comments are extremely absorbing. Below is one of these comments. It concerns the real price of renewables. I like very much the author´s proposal on how to show „green“ people that „green“ energy is not free, but on the contrary is very expensive. Consider yourselves. Galina Vitkova

Opravdu „zelená“ energie nic nestojí?	Действительно “зеленая“ энергия ничего не стоит?
Autor komentáře: chris y, viz Renewable energy – our downfall? , 25.5.09 (09:09:32),	Автор комментария: chris y, см. Renewable energy – our downfall?, 25.5.09 (09:09:32),
Lidi zřejmě mají zájem o ”zelenou“ energii a měli by mít možnosti jí zvolit i za cenu toho, že budou platit dvakrát tolik. Nejlepší způsob, jak ukázat zeleným, co stojí zelená energie, nechat je platit náklady za provoz zelených zdrojů.	Некоторые потребители очевидно предпочитают “зеленую“ энергию, и им следовало бы дать возможность потреблять ее и за цену того, что будут платить в 2 раза больше. Наилучший способ показать “зеленым“, сколько стоит “зеленая“ энергия – это обязать их оплачивать расходы на эксплуатацию “зеленых“ ресурсов.
V současné době se již začínají používat technologie měření spotřeby od jednotlivých zdrojů energie. Nové měřící elektronické přístroje AMI (Advanced Metering Infrastructure) mohou být instalovány všude u každého uživatele podle jeho přání. Tyto přístroje komunikují v obou směrech a poskytují dálkové měření množství energie spotřebované od různých zdrojů, zaznamenávají časové pořadí využití energie, vyúčtování za energii a dálkové připojení a odpojení zvoleného zdroje energie. EMS (Energy Management System) databázový software může být uspořádán mnoha různými způsoby odpovídajícími konkrétní situaci.	В настоящее время начинают использовать технологию измерений потребления от отдельных источников энергии. Новые измерительные приборы AMI (Advanced Metering Infrastructure) могут быть установлены везде, у каждого потребителя. Эти приборы работают в обоих направлениях и проводят дистанционные измерения количества электроэнергии, потребляемoй от отдельных источников энергии, регистрируют последовательность использования энергии, платежные операции, а также включают и выключают выбранный источник энергии. EMS (Energy Management System) софтвер базы данных может иметь самую различную конфигурацию, отвечающую конкретной ситуации.
Díky této technologie spotřebitel si může zvolit mezi konvenčním a obnovitelným zdrojem energie (solární nebo větrný). Pro Spojené království, například, to bude na 99% vítr. Náklady na využití elektrické energie jsou přímo závislé na zdroji. Skutečný cenový rozdíl bude v rozmezí 3 – 5krát vyšší v závislosti na místě bydlení spotřebitele. Takže eko-spotřebitel bude platit skutečnou cenu za eko-energii a rychle si uvědomí iluzornost představy, že eko-energie nestojí “nic”.	Благодаря данной технологии потребитель может выбрать классические или возобновляемые источники энергии (солнечную или ветряную). Например, в Великобритании это будет на 99% ветряная энергия. Расходы за использование электроэнергии напрямую зависят от типа источника. Реальная разница в цене будет лежать в интервале в 3 – 5 раз больше в зависимости от места пребывания потребителя. В результате эко-потребитель будет платить реальную цену за эко-энергию и очень быстро поймет иллюзорность мнения, что эко-энергия ничего не стоит.
Navíc uživatel, který si zvolí obnovitelnou energii, bude odpojován od celostátní elektrosítě pokaždé, kdy obnovitelný zdroj je mimo provoz. Ve Spojeném Království to může být 1 až 20krát denně zcela náhodně. Tyto akce lze snadno uskutečnit propojením EMS software a SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) software, který se v současné době běžně používá v elektrosíti (měří se obvykle každých 10 vteřin).	Более того, пользователь, который выберет возобновляемый источник энергии, будет отключаться от объединенной сети каждый раз, когда возобновляемый источник не будет работать. В Великобритании такое может случаться до 20 раз в день совершенно случайно. Эти операции можно осуществить, объединив EMS софтвер и SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) софтвер, который в настоящее время обычно используется в электросети (измерения проводятся каждые 10 сек.)
Tímto způsobem “zelení” poznají na vlastní kůži přednosti obnovitelných zdrojů. Budou platit skutečnou cenu a navíc budou neustale přepínáni. Samozřejmě I tyto spotřebitelé mají možnost se přepnout na spolehlivý klasický zdroj energii, tj. vrátit se k napájení od celostátní síti.	Таким образом ’’зеленые’’ убедятся на собственном опыте в достоинствах возобновляемых источников энергии. Будут платить настоящую цену и кроме того будут отключаться и включаться все время. Конечно же и эти потребители будут иметь возможность подключиться снова к надежному, классическому источнику электроэнергии, т.е. вернуться к снабжению от объединенной сети.
Bez pohyby, že jakmile v UK se podpoří iniciativa instalovat celostátní měřící síť s cílem snížení poptávky na energii, za několik let veškeré ceny obnovitelných zdrojů budou uvedeny do souladu s realitou.	Вне сомнения, как только начнут в Великобритании поддерживать создание общегосударственной измерительной сети с целью снижения спроса, все цены электроэнергии от возобновляемых источников придут в соответствие с реальностью.
Autor tohoto komentáře sám žiji ve sluneční Floridě. Ale i tam širší využití solární energie bude znamenat přibližně 3krátní zvýšení účtů za elektřinu. I na Floridě se usiluje o výstavbu 4 nových atomových reaktorů, ale někteří tamější obyvatelé jsou proti tomu.	Автор данного комментария живет в солнечной Флориде. И там внедрение широкого использования солнечной энергии приведет примерно к трехкратному повышению цен на электроэнергию. И на Флориде идет борьба за строительство 4 новых атомных реакторов, но не все с этим согласны.

If we don´t interest in the energy future, we may see its collapse

We study English discussing actual technical problems

Compiled by Galina Vitkova

I have recently read a very interesting article about the future of energy sources (Renewable energy – our downfall? By Ralph Ellis). The author of the article, in the compliance with many other specialists, claims that conventional sources of energy (coal, gas, oil) will be exhausted in 30 years. Renewable sources of energy won´t be able replace the amount of electrical energy generated by power plants using conventional sources of energy. Here are some excerpts that summarise the main ideas of the article, with which I completely agree.

The governments, under pressure from environmentalists and greens, have agreed to press ahead with usage of renewable energy sources, including wind, tidal and wave power. Nevertheless, despite the vast sums of public money that will be allocated to these projects very little of open debate has been held on the subject. Nobody has even demonstrated the fundamental issue of whether any of these energy generation systems actually work. Any renewable energy resource is ‘free’. In the contrary the conversion from ‘free’ renewable energy to usable grid electricity is eminently expensive.

Our civilisation can´t exist without electricity. Six blackouts in 2003 through the whole world showed that. Especially impact of the blackout on 14^th August 2003 in the USA was terrible. Within one hour 256 power plants in American North-East fell out. The all North-East lived under emergency conditions, which caused great chaos. All transport (aircraft, trains, road traffic) came out of regular functioning. Water supplies, telecommunications were seriously damaged. Chaos looms, people die, production ceases, life is put on hold. And this was just a once-in-a-decade event. But if this occurs every week and lasts for a longer period, the situation becomes unmanageable.

According to recent EU Directives 40% of electricity should be powered from renewable resources by 2020. This energy will be likely mostly produced by winds turbines, which demands to install about 30 gigawatts (GW) of wind generating capacity. Now the UK has about 0.5 GW of wind capacity, but only 25% of it is delivered mainly due to wind fluctuations, i.e. in fact it demands to construct 120 GW of wind capacity. Supposing in average 2 MW rated capacity of a wind turbine, 60,000 wind turbines have to be installed over the next twelve years in the UK.

However, it is not everything. When wind does flow, no electricity is produced by all installed wind turbines. In Denmark their ‘wind carpet’, which is the largest array of wind turbines in Europe, generated less than 1% of installed power on 54 days during 2002. In fact, wind generation is so useless, that Denmark has never used any of its wind-generated electricity – because it is too variable. Denmark has merely exported its wind supplies to Norway and Sweden, where they have many hydro power stations to cope with fluctuations.

Assumption that renewable power can somehow be stored to cope with power outages doesn´t agree with reality. As for the UK the first energy storage facilities is considered the pumped water storage system, which in fact can´t save the situation:

1. Present pumped storage systems are fully utilised.
2. These storage systems provide with a very small percentage of the whole electricity for just a few hours.
3. Pumped storage systems can´t be built anywhere. In Britain, for example, only very few sites are available.

The same kind of arguments can be given for flywheel energy storage, compressed air storage, battery storage and hydrogen storage – for each and every one of these systems is very expensive, highly inefficient and limited in capacity. Besides hydrogen is not an energy source, it should be produced before its usage. Moreover, hydrogen powered vehicles and generators are only about 5% efficient. The hydrogen, is extremely flammable and potentially explosive. For ensuring recharge of hydrogen powered vehicles (and electric vehicles) the capacity of current power plants should be doubled or trebled.

That´s why for predictable future the nuclear technology (either fission or fusion) is the only practicable realizable energy source. Even if nuclear power has a bad sound especially due to Chernobyl only nuclear power plants can cover demands on electricity and keep the life level which people in the developed countries are used to having. New technological capabilities will ensure the safety and efficiency of nuclear power plants development and maintenance. Moreover, the nuclear power is non-polluting.

As for nuclear safety issues it is necessary to remind that ecological damages and number of people killed within oil and coal extraction industries over past decades are much bigger than in nuclear power plants incidents. But media devote much more attention to the incidents caused by nuclear power and so influence public opinion in this way.

Nonetheless, nuclear energy is not renewable. It means that it is only a temporary solution, a temporary stop-gap. But this stop-gap enables providing the world with 1000 years of energy. During this time more convenient source of energy could be found out.

A worm, a virus or a Trojan horse?

We study English discussing actual technical problems

By Pavel Macenauer

Many people often misuse these terms, which may in reality lead to great confusions while discussing this topic. Discrimination the differences between them might help you protect your computer.

What is a virus?

A virus is a malicious program usually hidden in an executable file. It is able to replicate and cause harm only as a consequence of a human action. For example, you´ve just received a suspicious email offering you to earn lots of money simply by filling out a form contained in an executable file. When you open this file, you basically run the virus. It has not only a harmful effect on you computer, but it also adds a copy of itself to every email you send.

What is a worm?

Worms are not very much different from viruses. Some people even consider them to be a subspecies of a virus. Worms take advantage of every piece of contact information in your computer and without any human action they replicate and then cause harm. Usually, they abuse contact information hidden in your email client or your instant messenger.

What is a Trojan horse?

At a first glance, Trojan horses appear as helpful software. Usually, they even mask as virus removal tools. In reality they are designed only to cause harm. The main difference between a horse and a virus or between a horse and a worm is that horses can’t replicate. They are mostly used for tunneling information or for enabling a third party to access your computer.

Many people often misuse these terms, which may in reality lead to great confusions while discussing this topic. Discrimination the differences between them might help you protect your computer.

Are you afraid of nuclear energy?

By Martin Wolny

I selected this topic because I always wanted to know something about nuclear technologies, nuclear energy and its application in modern equipment such as power plants and submarines. Many people are afraid of Temelín and nuclear power plants as they still brightly remember the explosion in the Russian nuclear power station in Chernobyl and the consequences that have had an impact on east European nations to this day. People all around the world wouldn’t be so afraid of nuclear energy.

The fuel for nuclear fission is a special isotope of metal uranium called U-235, which has 235 nucleons in its core. When a neutron hits such an atom of uranium, it splits the atom into two smaller ones. Within this process, two or three neutrons “fly” speedily out of the dissociated nucleus, dissociate other atoms and unleash more neutrons and energy from their cores. Thus the procedure goes on. This is how the chain reaction works.

And how does it all work in a nuclear power plant? The reactor, wherein the chain reaction runs, is cooled by cold water. The water flows through the pile, vaporizes into steam and then reels the turbine that drives the generator. After that the steam condenses and as water flows back into the reactor’s core. Adjusting rods, which are mostly manufactured out of cadmium or boron, regulate the speed of the nuclear reaction.

The greatest advantage is that electric current generated by nuclear reaction is extremely effective. Up to now, there has been no more efficient way discovered. One kilogram of dissociated uranium unleashes the amount of energy equal energy acquired by burning 25 tons of top black coal. Just imagine that! It’s 25,000 times more! Not to mention the devastated landscape and highly polluted air after coal mining. Another advantage, which is perhaps just plain fact, is that there’s still enough uranium to use. As we all know, the resources of both black and brown coal are decreasing and soon, all of the mines will be exhausted. And regrettably, there aren’t many places where you could effectively utilize solar energy, geothermal energy, waterpower or airpower. All the same, the effectiveness of such resources of power is relatively insufficient. So for the time being, the nuclear power plants are the only usable solution. Nor is the fact that nuclear power stations do not pollute air and produce minimum of unwanted spillover products in contradistinction to other power facilities omissible.

An average nuclear power plant produces just some 60 kilograms of highly radioactive toxic waste per year. Which is, on the other hand, rather disadvantageous. In fact, that’s a big problem. Approximately 2 per cent of these materials, such as plutonium, are frightfully dangerous substances. They need up to 1000 years to decompose, so that they aren’t radioactive and don’t ruin our health (by the way, if you inhale just one-millionth gram of plutonium, you are taken ill with cancer). The only available and reasonable solution is to store this fall-out in highly secured places. The last important negative is that despite thorough protection against radioactivity from the uranium used in a reactor, the small amount of radiance still gets out from a power plant. But since this radiance represents less than one-hundredth part of the natural sources of radioactivity such as minerals or rocks, this emission is completely imponderable.

I myself am for nuclear power plants because they are very efficient and they have almost no effect on the environment. Even though the running of them can be quite dangerous in a way, it’s still the only solution for generating a sufficient amount of electric energy after we have exploited all stocks of coal, petroleum and natural gas.

NOTE: We study English discussing current technical issues. Join us! Just answer the question: Are you afraid of nuclear energy? G. Vitkova

Dictionary – your best helper in mastering English words

By Galina Vitkova

General delineation

A dictionary (according to WIKIPEDIA, the free encyclopedia) is a book or collection of alphabetically listed words in a specific language with definitions, etymologies, pronunciations, and other information. Besides, it could be a book of alphabetically listed words in one language with their equivalents in another.

In many languages, words can appear in many different forms, but only the undeclined or unconjugated form appears as the headword in most dictionaries. Even if dictionaries are most commonly published in the form of a book, some newer dictionaries, e.g. StarDict and the New Oxford American Dictionary are dictionary software running on PDAs or computers. There are also many online dictionaries accessible via the Internet.

Specialized dictionaries

A specialized dictionary focuses upon a specific subject field. Specialized dictionaries are categorized into three types:

• A multi-field dictionary broadly covers several subject fields (e.g., a business dictionary),
• A single-field dictionary narrowly covers one particular subject field (e.g., law),
• A sub-field dictionary covers a singular field (e.g., constitutional law).

For example, the 23-language Inter-Active Terminology for Europe is a multi-field dictionary, the American National Biography is a single-field, and the African American National Biography Project is a sub-field dictionary.

A language for specific purposes (LSP) dictionary is a dictionary that is determined to describe a variety of one or more languages used by experts within a particular subject field. At the same time LSP dictionaries are often made for semi-experts and for users who may be beginners regarding a particular subject field.

In contrast to LSP dictionaries LGP (language for generic purposes) dictionaries are made to be used by an average user. LSP dictionaries may have one or more functions. For example, they may have communicative functions such as help users to translate texts, help users to understand texts and help users to produce texts. Dictionaries may also have cognitive functions such as help users to develop knowledge in general or about a specific topic, e.g. the birthday of a famous person and the inflectional paradigm of a specific verb.

Another variant of a specialized dictionary is the glossary, an alphabetical list of defined terms in a specialised field. The simplest dictionary, a defining dictionary, provides a core glossary of the simplest meanings of the simplest concepts. From these concepts, others can be explicated and defined, in particular for those who are first learning a language. In English, the commercial defining dictionaries typically include only one or two meanings of fewer than 2000 words. With these, the rest of English, and even the 4000 most common English idioms and metaphors, can be derived.

Pronunciation

Dictionaries for languages for which the pronunciation of words is not apparent from their spelling, such as the English language, usually afford the pronunciation, often using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For example, the definition for the word dictionary might be followed by the (American English) phonemic spelling: /ˈdɪkʃəˌnɛri/. American dictionaries, however, often use their own pronunciation spelling systems, for example dictionary [dĭkʹshə-nârʹē] while the IPA is more commonly used within the British Commonwealth countries. However others use an ad hoc notation; for example, dictionary may become [DIK-shuh-nair-ee]. Some on-line or electronic dictionaries provide recordings of words being spoken.

Types of dictionaries

Bilingual · Biographical · Conceptual · Defining · Electronic · Encyclopedic · LSP · Machine-readable · Maximizing · Medical · Minimizing · Monolingual learner’s · Multi-field · Phonetic · Picture · Reverse · Rhyming · Rime · Single-field · Specialized · Sub-field · Visual

Helpful references

Dictionary of Technical Terms

Dictionary of Technical Terms and i. http://www.techterms.com/technical.php

Technical Glossary, References on Internet Terminology and An Internet terminology reference with informative definitions.
http://www.domainavenue.com/faq_glossary.htm

Sun in the Forecast

By Martin Wolny

The solar revolution of the last two decades has made solar energy an increasingly powerful force in the energy arena. Solar panels (arrays of photvoltaic cells) convert sunlight to electricity. Solar panels are typically constructed with crystalline silicon, which is used in other industries (such as the microprocessor manufacturing), and the more expensive gallium arsenate, which is exclusively produced for use in photovoltaic (solar) cells. Other, more efficient solar panels are assembled by depositing amorphous silicon alloy in a continuous roll-to-roll process. The solar cells created within this process are called Amorphous Silicon Solar Cells, or A-si. Solar Panels constructed using amorphous silicon technology are more durable, efficient, and thinner than their crystalline counterparts.

Panels make use of renewable energy from the Sun, and are a clean and environmentally sound means of collecting solar energy. In direct sunlight on the surface of the equator, solar panels get the best: a maximally efficient photovoltaic cell about 1/5m in diameter creates current of approximately 2 amps at 2 volts. However, due to the Earth’s atmospheric interference, solar panels will never perform as well as solar panels exposed directly to the Sun’s rays. Years of overheating and physical wear can, after all, reduce the operation efficiency of the photovoltaic unit. Solar cells become less efficient over time, and excess energy is released into its thermally conductive substrate as infrared heat.

Solar energy originates in the depths of our Sun. The Sun endures a continuous stream of thermonuclear explosions as hydrogen atoms are fused into helium atoms. We encounter the resultant energy as radiation that strikes the surface of the Earth. Solar panels convert this solar radiation into useful electrical energy and store them in batteries for our use. Enough solar radiation strikes the Earth every day to meet Earth’s energy needs for an entire year. Solar panels help us harvest this energy and convert it to usable energy to meet the everyday needs of modern life.

NOTE: We study English discussing real technical issues. Join us, let us know your opinion about usage of solar energy. G. Vitkova

Thesaurus – what’s up with it

By Galina Vitkova

A thesaurus (according to the Wikipedia) is a catalogue that contains synonyms and sometimes antonyms even if it shouldn’t be a complete list of all the synonyms or antonyms for a particular word. Besides, its entries are intended to draw up distinctions between similar words, which assist in choosing exactly the right word.

In Information Science, Library Science, and Information Technology, specialized thesauri are designated for information retrieval. They are a type of controlled vocabulary for indexing or tagging purposes. Such a specialized thesaurus can be used as the basis of an index for online material. The specialized thesauri typically focus on one discipline, subject or field of study

Thesauri for information retrieval have their own unique terminology, which specifies different kinds of terms and relationships between them.

Terms are the basic semantic units for conveying concepts (i.e. an abstract idea represented in a language by a word)). Terms are defined within various fields of human activities. They are usually single-word nouns because nouns are the most concrete part of speech. Verbs can be converted to nouns – “cleans” to “cleaning”, “reads” to “reading”, and so on. Adjectives and adverbs, however, seldom express any meaning useful for indexing. When a term is ambiguous (i.e. can be interpreted in more than one way), a “scope note” from the given field of knowledge can be added to give direction on how to interpret the term. For example, the term is placed in context, which allows a user to distinguish e.g. between “bureau” the office and “bureau” the furniture. Not every term needs a scope note, but their presence is of considerable help in using a thesaurus correctly.

“Term relationships” are links between terms. These relationships can be divided into three types: hierarchical, equivalency or associative.

• Hierarchical relationships are used to indicate terms, which are narrower and broader in scope. A “Broader Term” (BT) is a more general term, e.g. “Apparatus” is a generalization of “Computers”. Reciprocally, a Narrower Term (NT) is a more specific term, e.g. “Digital Computer” is a specialization of “Computer”. BT and NT are reciprocals; a broader term necessarily implies at least one other term that is narrower.
• The equivalency relationship is used primarily to connect synonyms and near-synonyms.
• Associative relationships are used to connect two related terms whose relationship is neither hierarchical nor equivalent. This relationship is described by the indicator “Related Term” (RT). Associative relationships should be applied with caution because excessive use of RTs will reduce specificity in searches. For example, if the typical user is searching with term “A”, would he/she also wants resources tagged with term “B”? If the answer is no, then an associative relationship should not be established.

In information technology, moreover, a thesaurus represents a database or a list of semantically orthogonal topical search keys (i.e. search keys that are semantically independent of each other). In the field of Artificial Intelligence, a thesaurus may sometimes be referred to as an ontology. In this case the ontology is a formal representation of a set of concepts within a domain and the relationships between those concepts. It is used to reason about the properties of that domain, and may be used to define the domain.

Examples of Specialized Thesauri for Information Retrieval

• European Thesaurus on International Relations and Area Studies; ISBN 978-3-927674-11-0
• Eurovoc Thesaurus, (Europa Publications Office)
• GEneral Multilingual Environmental Thesaurus, (European Environment Agency)

Reasons for enriching your vocabulary

By Galina Vitkova

There are several associated lexicographical terms that we meet when studying languages. Those are a vocabulary, dictionary, thesaurus, lexicon, and glossary. Needless to mention that these terms are often mixed up. That is why I decided to briefly describe them using Wikipedia. Let us start with a vocabulary.

A person’s vocabulary is the set of word they are familiar with in a language. A vocabulary usually grows and evolves with age, and serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge.

Types of vocabulary

(Listed according to the Wikipedia in order of most ample to most limited)

Reading vocabulary – all the words a person can identify when reading.

Listening vocabulary – all the words a person caneasily recognize when listening to speech. This vocabulary is enhanced in size by context and tone of voice.

Writing vocabulary – all the words a person can employ in writing. The writing vocabulary is stimulated by its user.

Speaking vocabulary – all the words a person can use in speech. Free nature of the speaking vocabulary often leads to misuse of words.

Focal vocabulary – is a specialized set of terms and distinctions that are particularly important to a certain group and reflect experience or activities of this group.

Vocabulary development

In the earlier phase, vocabulary increase needs no effort. Infants hear words and mimic them, finally associating them with objects and actions. This is the listening vocabulary. The speaking vocabulary follows, as a child’s mind becomes more reliant on its ability to express itself without gestures and mere sounds. Once the reading and writing vocabularies are acquired the anomalies and irregularities of the language can be determined.

In the first grade, an advantaged student (i.e. a literate student) knows about twice as many words as a disadvantaged student. This leads into a wide range of a vocabulary size in the fifth and sixth grade, when students know about 2,500–5,000 words. These students have learned an average of 3,000 words per year, approximately eight words per day. After leaving school, vocabulary enhances areally.

Even if we learn a word, we understand it better when we hear the words in combinations with other words in phrases, where it is commonly used.

Native- and foreign-language vocabulary

Native-language vocabulary: Native speakers’ vocabularies vary widely within a language, and are especially dependent on the level of the speaker’s education. In 1995 the vocabulary size of college-educated speakers came to about 17,000 word families, while first-year college students had about 12,000.

Foreign-language vocabulary: The vocabulary size influences significantly the language comprehension. The researchers studied texts totalling one million words and found that if one knows the words with the highest frequency, the person will quickly know most of the words in a text.

Vocabulary Size	Written Text Coverage	Vocabulary Size	WrittenText Coverage
0 words	0%	4000	86.8%
1000	72.0%	5000	88.7%
2000	79.7%	6000	89.9%
3000	84.0%	15,851	97.8%

By knowing the 2000 words with the highest frequency, one would know 80% of the words in those texts. These numbers should be encouraging to beginners, especially because the numbers in the table are for word lemmas (i.e. the canonical form of all the forms of the given word with the same meaning), which give even higher coverage. Nevertheless, we need to understand about 95% of a text to be close to full understanding and it looks like one needs to know more than 10,000 words for that.

Basic English vocabulary

Several word lists have been developed to provide people with a limited vocabulary as an effective means of communication or of gaining quick language proficiency. In 1930, Charles Kay Ogden created Basic English (850 words). Other lists include Simplified English (1000 words) and Special English (1500 words). The General Service List 2000 high frequency words was compiled by Michael West from a 5,000,000 word corpus. It has been used to create adapted reading texts for English language learners.

How to write a good essay

(Recommendations for students)

By Galina Vitkova

I believe that every intermediate student is able to write a good essay. Nevertheless, there are several aspects that you should take into consideration to be successful in writing. Some of them are as follows:

1. Study carefully the topic (e.g. a given technical text). Sometimes it is not so easy. If you are going to write an essay about computers or the Internet, use as much as possible the dictionaries Definitions of technical terms and general computing terminology and Internet technical terms.

2. Resolve about main ideas, based on an original text, which you would like to expose. Reserve for each idea one paragraph. One idea means one paragraph.

3. Write shorter sentences. Avoid long phrases widespread through the entire paragraph. You can always divide a long sentence into 2 or 3 shorter sentences. Connect these short sentences with the help of connectors like however, moreover, furthermore, nevertheless, so that etc.

4. Use synonyms as much as possible. Employ a thesaurus or a dictionary to find synonyms. Repeating of the same words and expressions in your writing as, for example, “so”, “use”, “in my opinion”, “I think” etc is annoying and doesn´t give the quality to any essay.

5. Don´t forget about articles. Check thoughtfully your essay from this point of view (see e.g. Students do not care about articles, Some details concerning a (an) and the) and prepositions (Prepositions in English).

6. When writing, remember English sentences have the fixed word order and do your best to keep it. If you aren´t sure about your English grammar, consult Ask about English,http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/language/askaboutenglish/

7. Reread the text and make improvements if necessary.

Good luck!

Web Design Technologies

Presented by Pavel Macenauer

Introduction

Web design is a process of creating the visual side of a web-based presentation, but it isn’t only the look that matters. There are lots of other factors such as search engine optimisation, usability or ensuring the same web site look in each possible browser.

Short overview of the www history

The first website was published by Tim Berners-Lee in August 1990. It was written in a language called HTML (hypertext markup language). It didn’t always look like sites most of you have already seen. This pre-HTML as we may call it only contained the simplest pieces of information, such as what a paragraph of a header is. It might have been comparable to the development of Windows and MS DOS. Since then it has evolved into the form you may see nowadays.

Technologies / Coding languages

HTML (Hypertext Markup Language)

HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language, which can be translated as a language, which marks ‘what is what’ in the code. It’s an essential part of every web site, doesn’t matter if it’s a flash presentation or a website only containing one picture. You must always state, what you want to put onto the web and this is the tool to do so.

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) (“+HTML”)

CSS is a language, which was invented to help web designers easily manage the look of their website. It allows saving all the information, such as how the headers will look like or that quoted text should be written in gray colour or that all the images, appearing on the right side of the web site, should have a black border, into one file. Then this information is applied to the whole web site. So if you want to change the look of all the main headers you’ll simply change it in this single file. Of course the layout of the web site must be written in HTML.

In the beginning not many browsers supported this technology and so it hadn’t been used much. Later on with the Internet Explorer becoming dominant and supporting CSS, it started to be seen or even to spread in such a way that today it’s almost impossible to imagine a professional website without the use of CSS.

Web standards

Today CSS combined with HTML (XHTML – advanced HTML) is considered to be the official web design standard. Yet, it still faces many difficulties. Every browser has its own way of interpreting the code. The interpretation of most modern browsers (FireFox, Opera, Safari) is based on what we may call W3C standards. W3C (the World Wide Web Consortium) is an organization, which develops guidelines mainly for web design, in order to gain the web full potential (enabling the use of the most up-to-date technologies) and making the web designer’s life easier. The Internet Explorer tried always to act as a Consortium by itself making up its own standards. Today it’s getting a lot better, so websites look the same in divers browsers.

Flash

Flash is another of the newer technologies. Originally it was used only as a more advanced method of animation. Later on these animations advanced so much that whole websites were made just by making an interactive animation. Even though these websites may look very attractively, they have quite a few disadvantages compared to the more frequently used HTML+CSS.

First of all, just like with Java, you must have Flash installed on your computer. 2% of Internet users don’t have it, so they can’t access these sites. Also, Flash presentations tend to be large and thus it takes longer to load them, which can be quite painful for people with slower connections. Other disadvantages might be the fact, they are hard to be found via search engines or they are not able to use the history buttons in your browser.

Search engines operate like a person reading a book. When a book contains a clear structure of paragraphs or headers, then it will only help to rank this book better. On the other hand you may imagine a flash website only like a line of text telling you the location of the whole presentation, thus saying nothing at all to the reader himself.

Types of web-based languages

In the end, to clear things up a little bit let’s consider two types of www languages, which take care of two major website areas. The first area is the visual part, also called Web Design. Languages taking part in displaying the website belong to the ones mentioned above.

The second area languages take care of communication with databases or solution of different mathematical equations. These server-based languages are PHP, ASP, Python, etc. Such languages are similar to C, C++ or Java in their function.

You may imagine this as a theater play. Web design languages are the actors on the podium, whereas the server based languages take care of all the stuff behind the scenes, such as preparing costumes etc.

There are of course a lot of other languages available (mostly used for more specialized purposes), but these are the simplest ones. So that should give you an idea about what is hidden behind the site you look at.