One of the experts from Expert Village offers these tips to the Middle Eastern & Asian on pronunciation:
Archive for April, 2008
Learn about prepositions
April 26, 2008English prepositions are not as simple as they look like. A funny animation video helps explain them well:
Learn from the Expert Village
April 24, 2008There are two types of people in the world: those who love to give advices, and those who yearn to receive them. Both are delighted when Internet came along, as the New York Times reported the scene this way:
“Do-it-yourself tips, self-help, cooking and beauty advice, sports and musical instruction are all available in a smorgasbord that offers the serious alongside the satirical, the humorous and the esoteric. Viewers can learn how to swaddle a baby, grow plants hydroponically or teach their cat to use the toilet.” (Making Money, the How-To Way, April 23, 2008 )
Several websites are running those how-to videos, many of which are great for learning English. Expert Village seems to have the largest collections, all in 27 different categories. You are bound to find one or more subjects you like.
Let them keep busy of making money from the videos; you just do the learning part.
Crazy English
April 22, 2008
Crazy English, a unique way to learn English, is huge in China. The latest issue of New Yorker has this to say about its founder and his methodology:
Li, who is thirty-eight, has made his name on an E.S.L. technique that one Chinese newspaper called English as a Shouted Language. Shouting, Li argues, is the way to unleash your “international muscles.” Shouting is the foreign-language secret that just might change your life.
Li stood before the students, his right arm raised in the manner of a tent revivalist, and launched them into English at the top of their lungs. “I!” he thundered. “I!” they thundered back.
“Would!”
“Would!”
“Like!”
“Like!”
“To!”
“To!”
“Take!”
“Take!”
“Your!”
“Your!”
“Tem! Per! Ture!”
“Tem! Per! Ture!”
You can see more pictures that shows Li’s at work teaching. The temperature of the crowds was apparently red hot.
Importance of learning a second language
April 20, 2008The Sundy laugh:
Learn from American Rhetoric
April 18, 2008“Rhetoric is the art of enchanting the soul,” said Plato. At the American Rhetoric website, you can listen to many rhetorical speeches, some of which will enchant your soul, all of which will enhance your spoken English.
You can start with the Top 100 Speeches, the major political speeches in the 20th century. It includes the classics delivered by the politicians like John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Ronald Reagan. Ask not whether you agree with their political views; ask how you can learn from their oratory skills.
You can also start with the Movie Speeches, a collection of the speeches delivered by the lead actors in various movies. It includes the classic scenes like the General Patton’s address to the 3rd Army, the Wall Street financier Gekko’s speech in the stockholders’ meeting, and the revered Godfather’s testimony in the Congress.
Besides the audio or video form, each speech comes with the transcript as well.
Britain and America to Export English Jointly
April 16, 2008The Prime Minister of Britain, Gordon Brown, has been working hard to export English language. Now, he’s asking America to get on board, too. From his press release:
Gordon Brown announced a bid to encourage more people across the world to learn English, as he began a three-day official visit to the United States.
The Prime Minister said he had asked the British Council to develop a joint UK-US initiative “to offer anyone in any part of the world help to learn English”.
In his words:
“In the last half-century the English language has become not only the language of Shakespeare and Twain, of JK Rowling and Cormac McCarthy, but of science, commerce, diplomacy, the internet and travel,” he wrote.
“So…I propose that together Britain and America strive to make the international language that happens to be our own far more freely available across the world.
The problem is, in many occasions, Americans and Britons don’t understand each other when speaking what they thought as the common language–English.
Should they settle their differences first before exporting English to other part of the world?
The full press release is here.
Who took the fun out of learning English?
April 14, 2008In Shanghai Daily, a Chinese raised a rhetorical question: Who took the fun out of learning English? She offered an answer, too.
Here, I have a question: Why do so many enthusiastic English learners feel they are getting no closer to their wonderland after years of learning?
For those who are getting an Olympic-size headache of learning English, maybe they are heading the wrong direction from the very beginning.
Forget about the better career, forget about the high marks, forget about all the benefits that learning English “guarantees,” - can we just learn it just for fun?
When did we forget that the first and purest motivation for learning things in this world - back when we were kids - was just for fun?
We learned drawing because the colorful world was attractive; we played ball because the bounding ball seemed funny.
Now that we are learning English, maybe fun is the key that will open the door of wonderland.
For the full article, click here.
Polish TV Uses Big Brother to Teach English
April 12, 2008A Polish educational TV station has an idea to teach its audiences the authentic English, according to a report by the British newspaper Guardian:
A Polish digital TV channel is broadcasting old series of Channel 4’s Big Brother, including the year the show unleashed Jade Goody on the world, as educational programming for viewers wanting to learn English as a “living language”.
Urszula Majewska, chief executive of the Polish TVN Lingua channel, which is dedicated to helping viewers learn foreign languages, said the programme was an ideal way to show how English was actually spoken.
For the full article, click here.
Learn from Movie Clips
April 10, 2008Even a mediocre movie often has the brilliant scenes, like this one in the movie about singer Johnny Cash, Walk the Line. The scenes are memorable usually because the dialogues or the monologues strike a chord. Besides, they are the great materials for training your listening comprehension.
Several websites offer movie clips, but WingClips.com does the best job for learning purpose. The scenes they chose have the inspirational theme, and can be searched easily by the keywords. Each clip has a brief summary of the scene, along with the plot outline of the movie. With the background information, you have an easier time to understand the dialogue.
Unfortunately, the movie clips at WingClips.com come with no transcripts. However, if you watch the clip repeatedly enough, you may not need the transcript anyway.
