So, You Need to Learn Swahili?

Online options, from free to pricey, abound

(NEWSER) - The days of chanting vocabulary words in a classroom and dozing off in the language lab are fading from memory as language instruction becomes increasingly available on the Internet. Freestanding smartphone apps are one option, and more structured instruction comes at a price—and sometimes no price at all. The New York Times looks at some of the numerous options. More»

Want a job? Avoid fine art, according to 'Daily Beast' list

(NEWSER) - Hey, college students: If your life plans include getting an actual job, you may want to avoid the stars of the Daily Beast 's "most useless" majors list. Majors are ranked in terms of employment, taking into account unemployment rates among recent and experienced grads, earnings, and likely job growth this decade. The list contains a few surprises—sure, fine arts won't get you far, but neither will hospitality management:

1. Fine arts (12.6% unemployment among recent grads; recent grads earn an average $30,000)
2. Drama and theater arts (7.8%, $26,000)

No one wants to teach grammar because it's not fun: Kim Brooks

(NEWSER) - Sometimes, while Kim Brooks is grading essays by her college composition students, she cries. "Not real tears, exactly—more a spontaneous, guttural sob, often loud and unpleasant enough to startle my husband or children," she writes in Salon . Why? Because many of these students "simply ... cannot write." They don't have basic skills, like knowing how to organize paragraphs, how to write a thesis statement, how to outline, how to proofread or edit, or even "how to make sure their sentences contain a subject and a verb." Is this the fault of the traditional high-school English class, full of class discussion but little writing and almost no grammar education? More»

... if it hears them over and over and over

(NEWSER) - It takes the brain just 15 minutes to learn a new word, new research suggests. The trick is hearing it, oh, say 160 times in 15 minutes, the Telegraph reports. If that happens, the brain creates a neural network that is "virtually indistinguishable" from those surrounding familiar words, Cambridge scientists found. (They used electrodes attached to subjects' brains to measure activity.) More»

I am so above all the drama. Literally.

(NEWSER) - If you haven't said at least one of these, oh, at least 128 times in casual conversation, you should check that you still have a pulse. Because most of us can't avoid uttering them time and time again, and it just needs to stop, writes Alida Nugent on her Frenemy blog.

• “If there wasn’t (insert person or obstacle here) I would have kicked her ass.” Seriously? When was the last time you got in a fistfight? What's that? Never? Thought so. Furthermore, "I don’t believe you because you are wearing pink and the only thing on your record is a big smiley face stamp."