【推荐1】New York City. Freelance

The KidPass blog is created by contributions from awesome freelance writers who work from home, and are excited to share their experiences and recommendations for kids’ activities around New York City! KidPass is flexible, so it allows parents like us to spend more time with their kids and work from home or anywhere they like, while building a great resource of recommendations for other parents.

We are hiring freelance writers who can contribute articles to our blog. We pay you for each article that   we accept or approve starting at $20 for short articles and $100+ for longer articles with original research, photos, and videos.

If you enjoy being a parent “in the know”, researching new kids’ activities online, or going around your neighborhood to visit new kids’ centres, indoor play spaces, events, or classes, then KidPass could be great for you!

About you:

*Possess a friendly, confident writing style.

*Work from wherever you want.

*Able to explore kid classes and activities in your neighborhood.

*Take photos and videos if you are interested in writing longer research pieces for us.

*Prompt in communication, responsible and able to meet deadlines.

To apply, submit the following:

*Two writing samples that have not been published elsewhere and not been copied.

*For one sample, please include a list/ round-up of five local kids’ classes for a certain age group in your neighborhood.

*For the second sample, please include a single review of one of the kids’ classes/activities and include pictures.

*Submit these by email and include a brief introduction to yourself.

【推荐2】When I mentioned to some friends that we all have accents, most of them proudly replied, “Well, I speak perfect English/Chinese/etc.” But this kind of misses the point.

More often than not, what we mean when we say someone “has an accent” is that their accent is different from the local one, or that pronunciations are different from our own. But this definition of accents is limiting and could give rise to prejudice. Funnily enough, in terms of the language study, every person speaks with an accent. It is the regular differences in how we produce sounds that define our accents. Even if you don’t hear it yourself, you speak with some sort of accent. In this sense, it’s pointless to point out that someone“has an accent“. We all do!

Every person speaks a dialect , too. In the field of language study, a dialect is a version of a language that is characterized by its variations of structure, phrases and words. For instance,“ You got eat or not? ”(meaning “Have you eaten?” ) is an acceptable and understood question in Singapore Oral English. The fact that this expression would cause a standard American English speaker to take pause doesn’t mean that Singapore Oral English is “wrong” or “ungrammatical”. The sentence is well-formed and clearly communicative, according to native Singapore English speakers’ solid system of grammar. Why should it be wrong just because it’s different?

We need to move beyond a narrow conception of accents and dialects — for the benefit of everyone.

Language differences like these provide insights into people’s cultural experiences and backgrounds. In a global age, the way one speaks is a distinct part of one’s identity. Most people would be happy to talk about the cultures behind their speech. We’d learn more about the world we live in and make friends along the way.

【推荐3】There are many idioms in English. An idiom is a phrase that we can’t understand from the meaning of each word. The following are some of them.

As the crow flies

When a bird flies from place to place, it takes the most direct route. But when people drive, they have to follow roads and often go farther. When people give a distance “as the crow flies”, they mean the shortest distance between the two points, not the distance you would have to travel by following roads.

As Dan and his mum drove along the river, they could see the beach on the opposite side, Dan asked, “How far is it to the beach?”

“It’s only about a quarter of a mile as the crow flies,” his mother said.

Blow hot and cold

In one of Aesop’s Fables, a man blows on his fingers to warm them up and then blows on his soup to cool it down. In both cases, the man is opening his mouth, but what comes out is different. If a person says one thing and later says the opposite, we say that the person is blowing hot and cold.

“Is Felicia going to try out for the soccer team this year?” Stacy asked.

“I don’t know,” Tricia replied. “Last week she was saying yes, but this week she’s saying no. She’s really blowing hot and cold.”

Break the ice

Nowadays people use the phrase to refer to ending an awkward silence by beginning a conversation.

It was the first day of summer camp. The four girls began to make their beds in silence. None of the girls knew each other, and no one knew what to say. Finally, one of them broke the ice by saying “Hey, where’s everybody from?”

Bury the hatchet

In native American culture, when two nations agreed to end their war, they buried the hatchet. So to bury the hatchet is to make peace with someone else.

Colin could not excuse his sister for breaking his tennis racket. Finally, his sister said, “Colin, can’t we bury the hatchet?”