Developing good English

This is a text from the TOEFL official materials. I find this text extremely helpful in developing one’s ability to express the thoughts in written English. This is an example of how good written language should look like.

In many organizations, perhaps the best way to approach certain new projects is to assemble a group of people into a team. Having a team of people attack a project offers several advantages. First of all, a group of people has a wider range of knowledge, expertise, and skills than any single individual is likely to possess. Also, because of the numbers of people involved and the greater resources they possess, a group can work more quickly in response to the task assigned to it and can come up with highly creative solutions to problems and issues. Sometimes these creative solutions come about because a group is more likely to make risky decisions that an individual might not undertake. This is because the group spreads responsibility for a decision to all the members and thus no single individual can be held accountable if the decision turns out to be wrong.
Taking part in a group process can be very rewarding for members of the team. Team members who have a voice in making a decision will no doubt feel better about carrying out the work that is entailed by that decision than they might doing work that is imposed on them by others. Also, the individual team member has a much better chance to “shine,” to get his or her contributions and ideas not only recognized but recognized as highly significant, because a team’s overall results can be more far-reaching and have greater impact than what might have otherwise been possible for the person to accomplish or contribute working alone.

New online learning resources

Some of the best online resources for English learners I have ever seen:
- http://www.englishdaily626.com
- http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/
However, the second website is solely devoted to the British English language and contains a lot of idiomatic expressions that may not be intelligible to the native speakers of Northern American English. So, it’s necessary to be aware of that fact when learning and using idioms from that websites.