2003

The Sony Playstation 2 and Microsoft's X-Box sold like hot cakes worldwide this Christmas as the popularity of computer games continues to grow. According to recent research, three out of four students play computer games for at least two hours a week in the US. But what are the psychological effects of the games on the player? Do violent games make kids more violent? And does sitting around wiggling your joystick have any educational value? Deji Akala ways up the facts.

Letters to the Editor

Thanks to everyone who sent in entries to our SMS Poetry competition.We only have space to print a few of them. We also have had many suggestions to our Top Ten Love Songs of All Time. We receive many entries by e-mail these days, without home addresses accompanying them. So, if you see your name here then please send us your home address details and we will send you a CD as a prize.

4 U, TIGR

IT FEELS SO GUD
IT FEELS JUST GR8
2 WATCH U ENTR
MY G8

Rule Britannia? In the 19th century, Britain was one of the most powerful nations on Earth. This was due to the size of its Empire. With territories on every continent, the colonies comprised 25% of the world's area and population. That is why people used to say: "The sun never sets on the British Empire."

Peter Gentle

Many of the things that the British and Americans associate with Christmas - the tree, the greetings cards, giving presents - have their origins in Victorian Britain. Lets go back in time and see what Christmas was like for an average family living in London in the mid-eighteen hundreds.

The old year is drawing to a close, and a new one is looming on the horizon. That is the time when we all tend to look back at the preceding 12 months and start thinking about what may lie ahead in 2004. Some of you have been with us for quite some time, others have begun reading The World of English© only just recently, but wondering about the future is something everyone has in common.

CHICAGO : My Kind of Town

The international blockbuster Chicago won 6 Oscars at the Academy Awards ceremony on March 23. The musical, set in 1926, is a tale of obsession with fame and celebrity during the period of Prohibition. But what was Chicago really like at that time? Steve DeBretto, who grew up in the Windy City, writes that the real characters and stories of Chicago are even more fascinating than the musical.

And this year was no exception, with over 600 different events taking place in 40 countries celebrating Europe's linguistic diversity and lifelong language learning. In Poland, the Foreign Languages Department of Wroclaw University of Technology staged an IATEFL Conference, which brought together teachers and course book authors to exchange ideas and experience. A joint art exhibition, entitled We in Europe, took place in both Człuchów and Constance, Germany, among many other events happening simultaneously all over the country.

Millions and millions of text-messages are sent everyday worldwide. Its use is so common that the SMS form of shorthand English has entered the language's most respected dictionary, parts of the Bible have been rewritten in SMS, and now people are even writing poetry this way. Now it is your turn to see if you can become the Shakespeare of the text-message.