Noble Linguist Academy

16/12/2025

This is an absurd reality of the unrealistic expectations of testing a language ability students all over the world (and sympathizing exam staff) are facing 😕

is just too cruel

The English section of South Korea's gruelling college entrance exam, or Suneung, is notoriously difficult, with some students comparing it to deciphering an...

11/12/2025

Coming soon to stay ~ newly updated coursework and course descriptions

19/04/2019

Looking for a group of enthusiastic students between the ages of 13-19 to participate in an English summer camp & travel program across the United States of America. More information will be provided upon request.

21/10/2015

Did You Know?

Nocent has been in the English language as a word for "harmful" since the 15th century. It comes from Latin nocēre, meaning "to harm." Latin nocebo is a close relative that means "I will be harmful" and that contrasts with placebo, meaning "I shall please." People in medicine began using placebo for inert preparations prescribed solely for a patient's mental relief, and not for relieving a disorder, in the late 18th century. As doctors began to observe the effects of placebos, some noticed that the harmless preparations actually sometimes caused detrimental effects on the patient's health. English speakers began using the word nocebo for substances causing such adverse reactions in patients in 1961.

08/09/2015

Did You Know?

You probably won't be surprised to learn that the word contact is a relative of contiguous, but would you believe that contagion and contingent are too? All of those words derive from the Latin contingere, meaning "to have contact with." The words contact and contiguous are fairly easy to connect with contingere, but what of the other two? In its early use, contingent was a synonym of "touching," and if you remember that touching something can pollute it (and that another meaning of contingere was "to pollute"), then contagion logically ties in, too.

31/08/2015

Did You Know?

Moot derives from gemōt, an Old English name for a judicial court. Originally, moot named either the court itself or an argument that might be debated by one. By the 16th century, the legal role of judicial moots had diminished, and the only remnant of them were "moot courts," academic mock courts in which law students could try hypothetical cases for practice. Back then, moot was also used as a synonym of debatable, but because the cases students tried in moot courts were simply academic exercises, the adjective gained another sense, "deprived of practical significance." Some commentators still frown on the use of moot to mean "purely academic," but most editors now accept it as standard.

26/08/2015

Did You Know?

Draconian comes from Draco, the name of a 7th-century B.C.E. Athenian legislator who created a written code of law. Draco's code was intended to clarify existing laws, but its severity is what made it really memorable. In Draco's code, even minor offenses were punishable by death, and failure to pay one's debts could result in slavery. Draconian, as a result, became associated with things cruel or harsh. Something draconian need not always be as cruel as the laws in Draco's code, though; today the word is used in a wide variety of ways and often refers to measures (steep parking fines, for example) that are relatively minor when compared with the death penalty.

Examples:

- The editorial asserts that a life sentence for any non-violent crime is draconian.

- "As electronic highway signs implore Californians to 'Save Water' and municipalities impose increasingly draconian conservation measures, we are seeing a phenomenon known as 'drought-shaming'—the humiliation of water-wasters among both the rich and famous and more ordinary residents." —Henry I. Miller, Forbes.comm, 1 July 2015

18/08/2015

For those of you interested in academic writing, make sure to sign up. It's FREE!

An introduction to academic writing for English Language Learners, focusing on essay development, grammatical correctness, and self-editing.

17/08/2015

Pronunciation

Fred Astaire drew laughs back in the Thirties with his song "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off" in which the lovers can't agree on the pronunciation of words like

11/08/2015

Would you say "data is ..." or "data are ..."?

Do you say “data is” or “data are”? Let’s see what a grammar expert says about this issue.

11/08/2015

Did You Know?

Hermitage is of course related to hermit, a word for one who retreats from society to live in solitude, often for religious reasons. The origins of hermitage and hermit are found in Greek. Erēmos (meaning "desolate") gave rise to erēmia (meaning "desert") and eventually to the noun erēmitēs, which was used for a person living in the desert, or, more broadly, for a recluse. The word journeyed from Greek to Latin to Anglo-French to Middle English, where it eventually transformed into hermit. The related hermitage was borrowed into English from Anglo-French in the 14th century. A hermitage can be the dwelling of a hermit (e.g., a mountain shack or a monastery) or simply a secluded home.

10/08/2015

Can anyone spot an error? This is a real-life news article from a real-life news organization. The writer should be ashamed for making this small but rather silly mistake.