Letter to all Christians from Prophet Muhammad (pbuh)

Letter to all Christians from Prophet Muhammad (pbuh)
How should Muslims treat Christians? With violence? Anger? Hatred? The answer is none of the above.

Below is the English rendering of a letter written by the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh)
to all Christians.
In a time when tensions between Islam and Christianity seem to be at an all time high, we remind our Christian friends that a true Muslim cannot hurt a Christian in any way, neither by his hand, nor by his tongue.
The below letter requires no explanation. We hope it provides credence and comfort that Prophet Muhammad (sa) truly celebrated his Christian friends. (The original letter is now in the Topkapi Museum in Instanbul)
“This is a message from Muhammad ibn Abdullah, as a covenant to those who adopt Christianity, near and far, we are with them.

Verily I, the servants, the helpers, and my followers defend them, because Christians are my citizens; and by Allah! I hold out against anything that displeases them.
No compulsion is to be on them. Neither are their judges to be removed from their jobs nor their monks from their monasteries.
No one is to destroy a house of their religion, to damage it, or to carry anything from it to the Muslims’ houses. Should anyone take any of these, he would spoil God’s covenant and disobey His Prophet. Verily, they are my allies and have my secure charter against all that they hate.
No one is to force them to travel or to oblige them to fight. The Muslims are to fight for them.
If a female Christian is married to a Muslim, it is not to take place without her approval. She is not to be prevented from visiting her church to pray.

Their churches are to be respected. They are neither to be prevented from repairing them nor
the sacredness of their covenants. No one of the nation (Muslims) is to disobey the covenant till the Last Day (end of the world).”

7 Tips for learning an English Word a day

7 Tips for learning an English Word a day,,

1. Use the new word in a sentence
After you have read the word and understood its meaning, use that new word in your own sentence. It is best to try and create a sentence
that has some type of relationship or connection with your life.

2. Look for grammatical variations of the word:

Look for the different ways (grammatical forms) the word can appear. For example if the word to
suspect (a verb) is given to you, you can look for its noun form (suspicion), its adjective form
(suspicious) etc. Suspect can also be a noun (a suspect). Remember that not all words have all grammatical forms. It pays to have a good English dictionary to help you with this.

Once you have the different forms of the new word, you can then try and make a sentence with
each one.

3. Do Word Associations:

Try and associate the word with other things (like a mind map). Not only will it help you remember the new word but it will also increase
your knowledge (vocabulary) of other things associated with the word.

For example if you have the new word CAR (a noun),
Think of nouns associated with the word (parts of a car: windscreen, steering wheel…)
Think of verbs associated with the word (to Brake, to accelerate, to crash…)
Think of adjectives to describe it (Fast, rusty… )
Think of examples of the word (Limousine, Jeep…)
If the word is an adjective for example BIG Think of synonyms or words with a similar meaning (large, enormous, huge…)
Think of antonyms or opposites (small, tiny…)
Think of examples of the adjective (Big: Elephant, a continent, Jupiter…)

4. Carry a list or a notepad with you:

Write the new word and its meaning (and maybe an example too) in a small notepad that you can carry with you and read whenever you have a spare moment (or some people keep them in their smartphone).

 This can be read while you are sitting on a bus, on the underground/subway, or while you are in a waiting room. This will help you see the words more than once and will help them stick in your mind.

5. Make flash cards:

Make little cards with each new word on one side and the meaning of that word on the other side. Put them on the ground and if the meaning is face up, then try and think of the word. If the word appears face up, then think of its meaning.

When you start to have a lot of cards you can shuffle them and randomly pick out 10 or so every day.

6. Look for examples on the internet:

Type the word in a search engine (such as Google) and write down 7 different sentences that contain an example of that word. This way you will see the word in context and maybe other vocabulary associated with it. For better results, look for one sentence every day over 7 different days.

7. Learn the word again on other days:

Don’t just learn or practice a word one day and then forget about it. You may think you have learned the word (since you have just been using it) but if you try to remember/use the new word a couple of weeks later, you may find it difficult.

To really remember a word you need to reuse that word over and over before it sticks in your long-term memory.

There is a saying in English “Use it or lose it.”

Basically this means if you don’t use (or practice) something you have learned, you will eventually forget how to use it properly.

Deep insight into CLT Communicative approach

Deep insight into CLT  Communicative approach/ Communicative language teaching

It is an approach to foreign or second language teaching which emphasizes that the goal of language learning is COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE and which seeks to make meaningful communication and language use a focus of all classroom activities.

The communicative approach was developed particularly by British applied linguists in the 1980s as a reaction away from grammar-based approaches such as Situational Language Teaching and the audiolingual method.

The major principles of Communicative Language Teaching are:

1- learners use a language through using it to communicate.
2- authentic and meaningful communications should be the goal of classroom activities.
3- fluency and accuracy are both important goals in language learning.
4- communication involves the integration of different language skills.
5- learning is a process of creative construction and involves trial and Error.

Communicative language teaching led to a re-examination of language teaching goals, syllabuses, materials, and classroom activities and has had a major impact on changes in language teaching worldwide.

Some of its principles have been incorporated into other communicative approaches, such as Task-Based Language Teaching, Cooperative Language Learning, and Content -Based Instruction.

Element of Successful languagelearning (ESA)

Element of Successful language learning (ESA)

Engage, Study, Activate (ESA) Lesson Plan taken from “How to Teach English” by Jeremy Harmer.

Engage: The point (activities) in a teaching sequence where Teachers try to arouse Ss’ interest by involving their emotions. Some activities are:

games, music, challenging discussions, stimulating pictures, dramatic stories, and anecdotes.

Study: The point (activities) in a teaching sequence where students are asked to focus in on language/information and how it is constructed.

The range from macro to micro concentrations:

Macro studying a transcript for spoken style.
Micro studying a specific verb tense. It includes a variety of study styles:

explanations, discovery through evidence, groups, whole-class, pairs, and individual. The main focus is the construction of language.

Activate: The point (activities) in a teaching sequence where students are meant to use the language as freely and communicatively as possible. The focus is not on construction, or practicing specific bits of language, it is for students to use all and any language appropriate for a given situation. Some activities are: role-plays, advertisement design, debate, discussions, describe and draw, story and poem writing/ reading/telling, and group writing.

*If students do not have a chance to Activate their knowledge in the safety of a classroom, they may find transferring language acquisition and study into language use in the real world far more problematic.*

*Lesson Planning is offering Learning Patterns for the students.*

Variety of LESSON PLANNING:

Straight line ESA:

Engage Study Activate

This procedure may work at lower levels for straightforward language, but it might not be appropriate for more advanced learners.

Boomerang EASA:

Engage Activate Study Activate

Engage: discussion about topic and what language to use.
Activate: role-play with teacher logging mistakes.
Study: error reflection/discourse analysis.
Activate: Role-play integrating study aspects.

This sequence answers the needs of the students. They are not taught language until and unless they have shown a need for it. The connection between what they need to learn and what they are taught is more transparent.

*-- Many lessons aren’t quite as clear-cut as those above. They tend to be a mixture of procedures, mini-procedures, and short episodes building into a whole lesson a patchwork lesson. Patchwork lessons reflect the way we learn (rather chaotically), and they provide an appealing balance between Study and Activate (language
and topic).

Straight line ESA:

Engage Study Activate

This procedure may work at lower levels for straightforward language, but it might not be appropriate for more advanced learners.

Boomerang EASA:

Engage Activate Study Activate

Engage: discussion about topic and what language to use.
Activate: role-play with teacher logging mistakes.
Study: error reflection/discourse analysis.
Activate: Role-play integrating study aspects.

English Knowledge about Lexcial

English Knowledge about Lexcial

The adjective lexical refers to things concerning the words or lexicon of a language. Linguistics, the study of language, often uses lexical concepts.

Lexical may also refer to :

- Lexical (semiotics), words referring to things, as opposed to having only grammatical meaning.

- Lexical verb, a member of an open class of verbs that includes all verbs except auxiliary verbs.

- Lexical definition or dictionary definition, the meaning of a term in common usage.

- Lexical form, the canonical form of a word, under which it appears in dictionaries.

- Lexical semantics, a subfield of linguistic semantics that studies how and what the words of a language denote.

- Lexical word, the opposite of function word.

Semantic is the study of meaning

Semantic

It is the study of meaning. It focuses on the relation between signifiers, like words, phrases, signs, and symbols, and what they stand for; their denotation.

Linguistic semantics is the study of meaning that is used for understanding human expression through language. Other forms of semantics include the semantics of programming languages, formal logics, and semiotics. In international scientific vocabulary semantics is also called semasiology.

The word semantics itself denotes a range of ideas—from the popular to the highly technical.

It is often used in ordinary language for denoting a problem of understanding that comes down to word selection or connotation. This problem of understanding has been the subject of many formal enquiries, over a long period of time, especially in the field of formal semantics.

In linguistics, it is the study of the interpretation of signs or symbols used in agents or communities within particular circumstances and contexts.

Within this view, sounds, facial expressions, body language, and proxemics have semantic (meaningful) content, and each comprises several branches of study. In written language, things like paragraph structure and punctuation bear semantic content; other forms of language bear other semantic content.

The formal study of semantics intersects with many other fields of inquiry, including lexicology, syntax, pragmatics, etymology and others.

Independently, semantics is also a well-defined field in its own right, often with synthetic properties. In the philosophy of language, semantics and reference are closely connected.
Further related fields include philology, communication, and semiotics. The formal study of semantics can therefore be manifold and complex.

Semantics contrasts with syntax, the study of the combinatorics of units of a language (without reference to their meaning), and pragmatics, the study of the relationships between the symbols of a language, their meaning, and the users of the language.

Semantics as a field of study also has significant ties to various representational theories of meaning including truth theories of meaning, coherence theories of meaning, and correspondence theories of meaning. Each of these is related to the general philosophical study of reality and the representation of meaning.

 

 

The three veils of darkness

"He makes you in the wombs of your mothers in stages, one after another, in three veils of darkness." (Quran 36:6)

This statement is from Sura 39:6. We do not know when it was realized that human beings underwent development in the uterus (womb), but the first known illustration of a fetus in the uterus was drawn by Leonardo da Vinci in the 15th century. In the 2nd century A.D., Galen escribed the placenta and fetal membranes in his book "On The Formation of the Foetus."

Consequently, doctors in the 7th century A.D. likely knew that the human embryo developed in the uterus. It is unlikely that they knew that it developed in stages, even though Aristotle had described the stages of development of the chick embryo in the 4th century B.C.

The realization that the human embryo develops in stages was not discussed and illustrated until the 15th century.

After the microscope was discovered in the 17th century by Leeuwenhoek descriptions were made of the early stages of the chick embryo. The staging of human embryos was not described until the 20th century. Streeter (1941) developed the first system of staging which has now been replaced by a more accurate system proposed by O'Rahilly (1972).

"The three veils of darkness" may refer to:

(1) the anterior abdominal wall;
(2) the uterine wall;
and (3) the amniochorionic membrane .

Although there are other interpretations of this statement, the one presented here seems the most logical from an embryological point of view.