Zemii Stories
November 17, 2023
Coming Soon! ELL Stories
We have been working behind the scenes this past month to build up the type of newsletter that we want to present. We are all about education and global understanding, and that of course also includes languages. Those of us at Zemii Group are global travelers and and of course we are inclusive of the wider global community in our representation of work, stories that impact the global population, and also how to communicate stories that matter.
For the last 7.5 years, we have been traveling the globe. We have visited 26 (soon to be 27) countries. This has also meant that we navigated many languages (and cultures). We are very used to working with creative language and communication (charades can do wonders). More importantly, we also noticed how prevalent English Language Learning is around the world. One of the things that seems to be most prevalent are traditional language learning models that involve structure (grammar and vocabulary), and maybe a little bit of listening and speaking. The one thing that seems to be weakest for most are the speaking and listening aspects.
As a former music teacher (18 year veteran), I was always working with singers and the way they pronounce the various foreign languages I was teaching them to sing in. This also included teaching them how to listen to themselves so that they could hear the tone they were creating, the pronunciation they were using, and how to adjust that through techniques that helped them help themselves so they could learn how to correct their own native language enunciation patterns (and intonations). In other words, for those learning English, this would translate to losing your accent in order to sound like a native speaker.
All of this leads to a new section of our Substack that will be available in 2024. We will be launching ELL Stories. These stories will be available to anyone worldwide who wants to practice their English through interesting stories. It will include vocabulary and pronunciation guides, as well as audio recordings of the stories for listening and speaking repetition practice.
For the remainder of the year, we will finish out the webinar recordings of our Nonprofit Basics Courses and continue to add articles about books, authors, health, travel, and culture.
Troll: A Love Story
I recently read a book by Finnish author Johanna Sinisalo, Herbert Lomas (Translator) called, “Troll: A Love Story.” The original interest in this book was to identify an interesting story based on local folklore in order to plan a tour of Finland.
About The Book
From Amazon:
This internationally acclaimed winner of the Finlandia Award is “a brilliant and dark parable about the fluid boundaries between human and animal” (The Boston Globe).
Angel, a young photographer, comes home from a night of carousing to find a group of drunken teenagers in the courtyard of his apartment building, taunting a wounded, helpless young troll. He takes it in, not suspecting the dramatic consequences of this decision. What does one do with a troll in the city? As the troll’s presence influences Angel’s life in ways he could never have predicted, it becomes clear that the creature is the familiar of man’s most forbidden feelings. A novel of sparkling originality, Troll is a wry, beguiling story of nature and man’s relationship to wild things, and of the dark power of the wildness in ourselves.
“[An] imaginative and engaging novel of urban fantasy . . . The stuff of ancient legend shadows with rather unnerving precision the course of unloosed postmodern desire.” —Chris Lehmann, The Washington Post Book World.
Learn more about this intriguing story and the inspirational author who brings the core behaviors of humanity into folkloric tales by clicking the link below.
Stories Alive! Tours
Human Acts - Seoul, South Korea
Memoires of a Geisha - Kyoto, Japan
Time Shelter - Switzerland
Tango Singer - Buenos Aires, Argentina
Dracula - Hungary & Romania
A Nervous Splendor: Vienna 1888-1889 - Vienna, Austria
Travel
Your Guide to Elena Ferrante's Naples, Italy
Culture
Health
Food
Nonprofit Basics
Free
Budget Narrative - New!
Board Member Philanthropic Involvement - New!
How Much to Request - New!
Creating a Successful Fundraising Event
Marketing, Development, and Donor Acquisition
Paid
Board and CEO Relationship - New!
Marketing, Development, and Donor Acquisition - New!
Building a Modernized Fundraising Strategy - New!
Event Follow-Up - New!
How Budgets Impact Grant Requests
Website & Promotion (Fundraising Event Course)
501(c)(3) Compliance & Fiscal Sponsorship
SWOT Analysis & Identifying Your Income Strategy
Revenue Sources & Online Tools
Strengthening Your Fundraising Cycle
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