Welcome to another spotlight episode. You probably know Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia. You probably noticed that there are articles in many languages. There are more than 1 million articles in English, German and French. 37 more Wikipedias have more than 100,000 articles.
But have you noticed that there is another “language” called Simple English? The Simple English Wikipedia consists of more than 10,000 articles. It is very useful if your English is poor or average. The Simple English Wikipedia avoids difficult words and uses an overall simpler language, that anybody with a superficial knowledge of English can understand.
The only downside is that simpler language and less difficult words also contain less meaning. The articles also tend to be shorter than those of the English Wikipedia. For example, the introductory text (lead) of Epicurus in the Simple English Wikipedia says “Epicurus […] was an ancient Greek philosopher, and the founder of a school of philosophy called Epicureanism.” The English Wikipedia has two paragraphs instead! So, if you need more information, try the English Wikipedia, too, by clicking on the link “English” under languages on the left.
Nevertheless I think the Simple English Wikipedia is a good thing for beginner, because you can concentrate on the information without seeing too many words that you have to look up. And when your English gets better, you can then use the normal Wikipedia.
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