One of helpful ways to practice English listenning skill is to watch English movies. This way we don't just only practice English, but we also feel relax because it entertains us . Whenever I watch movies, I try not to see subtitle because I want to practice to listen. It is hard though since I am sometimes curious to know what the actors said in the movie or sometimes I want to check if what I heard is correct. To see the subtitle on screen at times for me is to check if I understand the conversation in movie correctly. If we keep practicing this way, I am quite sure that we can develop much on listenning skill and we will get new vocabulary or slang and of course we should be familliar with accent.
Short excerpt from America's Library article:
American Art in Delaware
You have probably heard of the DuPont Company, which was founded by a family of the same name. But do you know about the museum that one of the family members began?
I. Vocabulary words from this article:
antique
assemble
century
decorative
estate
fortune
heir
inferior
patriotic
textile
II. Pre-Reading Questions
What types of things do you like to collect?
If you had some valuable artwork, what would do with it?
III. Reading Time
A room filled with early American furniture and decorative art in the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum
American Art in Delaware You have probably heard of the DuPont Company, which was founded by a family of the same name. But do you know about the museum that one of the family members began?
Henry Francis du Pont (1880-1969) was an heir to Delaware's DuPont Company fortune. He was one of the first serious collectors of American decorative art objects --furniture, textiles, paintings, and other objects made in the United States between 1640 and 1840. American furniture and household objects had been considered inferior to those from Europe. But du Pont helped develop a new appreciation for American decorative arts. He created a legendary showplace for these objects on his family's estate just outside of Wilmington, Delaware. In 1951 it was opened to the public as the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur (pronounced winter-tour) Museum.
Du Pont assembled objects from his collection into 175 "period rooms," each with examples of American antiques and decorative arts that followed a certain theme or period in early American history. For example, the du Pont Dining Room has furniture dating from the late 18th and early 19th centuries. And, because this was the time when the United States became a new nation, there is a patriotic theme in the room. Another example is the Chinese Parlor, which has furnishings that reflect Americans' fascination with Asian culture during the 18th century. In these period rooms du Pont believed he could tell the story of the early United States through furniture and other decorative arts.
American Art in Delaware You have probably heard of the DuPont Company, which was founded by a family of the same name. But do you know about the museum that one of the family members began?
Henry Francis du Pont (1880-1969) was an heir to Delaware's DuPont Company fortune. He was one of the first serious collectors of American decorative art objects --furniture, textiles, paintings, and other objects made in the United States between 1640 and 1840. American furniture and household objects had been considered inferior to those from Europe. But du Pont helped develop a new appreciation for American decorative arts. He created a legendary showplace for these objects on his family's estate just outside of Wilmington, Delaware. In 1951 it was opened to the public as the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur (pronounced winter-tour) Museum.
Du Pont assembled objects from his collection into 175 "period rooms," each with examples of American antiques and decorative arts that followed a certain theme or period in early American history. For example, the du Pont Dining Room has furniture dating from the late 18th and early 19th centuries. And, because this was the time when the United States became a new nation, there is a patriotic theme in the room. Another example is the Chinese Parlor, which has furnishings that reflect Americans' fascination with Asian culture during the 18th century. In these period rooms du Pont believed he could tell the story of the early United States through furniture and other decorative arts.
When you have finished reading, return to this page and answer the questions below.
IV. Post-Reading Questions
True or False?
1. Henry Francis du Pont's art collection is displayed in a museum in Delaware.
2. Americans were interested in Asian culture in the 18th Century.
3. Mr. du Pont assembled his collection according to size.
4. Which of the following is not an example of decorative art?
a. textiles
b. furniture
c. legendary
d. painting
The social networking site, Twitter is five years old today. It has grown from having a few thousand users to more than 175 million members around the world. The BBC's technology correspondent, Rory Cellan-Jones spoke about the impact of Twitter on BBC Radio 5 live.
Rory Cellan-Jones: Well, I'm just looking at another tweet right now from a journalist, saying: "Twitter's five today - the most importantinnovationfor journalists in that time. Not much good for insomniathough," and I think that's about right. The first thing I do every morning is have a look at it, because it's become an extraordinary meansof communicating news. I find that the first I see of news is it breaking on Twitter.
Rachel Burden: Rory, can you just literally explain how it works for those people who don't know, who don't use it?
Rory Cellan-Jones: It's a system for putting out messages that are no more than 140 characters long, so, the length of a text message, really. And you put your message out there, and gradually you hope that more and more people follow you. It's a system slightly like Facebook, where you've got friends, but much more public. And on Twitter you have followers, and you follow people. So, I'm following you, Rachel. I hope you're following me. I'm following about 1,000 people. I think we've all learnt over the years, those are the people who use Twitter, to, you know, walk this little line between the personal and the professional.
And I certainly find it useful professionally - a, to see news, and b, to get news. If you put a message out there and say: "Who knows about X?" - you'll find the world's experts on Twitter, and they will come to you.
Nicky Campbell: Completely, and also to share linkswith people as well?
Rory Cellan-Jones: That's right. I think that's become more and more important. You see an interesting article, and you put it out there, and everyone can see it. And it’s a quick way of reading the news in the morning.
VOCABULARY
innovation (n) - new or original idea or invention
insomnia (n) - medical condition which causes people to have difficulty sleeping
about right - close to the truth
means (n) -way or method
breaking on Twitter - being told or revealed for the first time on Twitter, before any other news source
putting out - here, publishing
out there - here, online or on the internet
walk this little line - achieve a balance or strike a balance
links - hyperlinks, website addresses
article - here, piece of writing which has been published on a website or other online platform
“Reading can be a great opportunity that can change your life forever. Reading can entertain you; amuse you, but most of all it will enrich you with knowledge, and experiences narrated”. - Uttara Manohar
Check websites below, it will really help you to be a good reader. But remember this, you will need to practice more and more.
Writing in English seems not to be an easy job, especially, writing a good English essay or article since it requires many skills. First, good writers need to have lots of vocabularies in their brain so that they can select right word for their essay. Then, they should have enough knowledge in English grammar. This week I want to learn English grammar as I found that sometimes I still use it in the wrong way.
As Conditional / If-Clause sentence seems to be one of the most English grammar problem for many students, I would want to start at this first.
Conditional Sentences are also known as Conditional Clauses or If Clauses. They are used to express that the action in the main clause (without if) can only take place if a certain condition (in the clause with if) is fulfilled. There are three types of Conditional Sentences.
Conditional and If-sentences
Real Conditions (first conditional)
- If + Present Simple + will / won't (do) This shows the results in the future of a real situation, with possible or likely results.
Ex. If you eat all the ice-cream, you'll be sick!
- Other variants If can also be followed by can / can't, present perfect (to emphasize completion), going to, present continuous with future meaning.
Ex.If you can't answer this exercise, you won't be able to do next exercise. If you've finished washing the floor, I'll help you clean the kitchen.
The second clause can contain could requests, be able to, can, goting to, imperative, had better, could and might etc. Ex. If I give you the money, could you get me some stamps? If you've finished washing the clothes, you can startdoing your homework.
Future Results: If clauses with will
- There are some if-sentences that describe the possible results of an offer. In these sentences, will is used in the if-clause. Ex. I'll talk to your teacher, if that will stop you worrying so much.
- In some if-sentences, if is followed by emphasized will, meaning 'insist on', or won't meaning 'refuse to'.
Ex.If you will wear such thin clothes, of course you'll feel cold! If you won't listen to common sense, there's no point my talking to you.
- If can be followed by will and would as polite request forms.
Ex.If you'll just wait here, I'll tell Mr. Brown that you've arrived. If you'd just fill in this form, I'll check the details.
Unreal Conditions (second conditional)
- If + Past Simple + Would (do) This shows the results which would follow from an imaginary situation, with impossible or unlikely results.
Ex.Ifthe Earth didn't have a Moon, there wouldn't be any tides.
- Could and might are often used instead of would, as are other modals. Ex.If we all worked together, we could solve the problem faster.
- The difference between real and unreal may be a matter of speaker choice and context.
Ex. If you buy a bike, you'll get a lot fitter. (You are really thinking of buying one - perhaps we are in the bike shop.) If you bought a bike, you'd get a lot fitter. (We are only discussing possibilities.)
Impossible Past Conditions (Third Conditional)
- If + Past Perfect + would have (done) / (passive would have been done) Used for the results which would follow from an imaginary past situation. As we cannot change the past, this is an impossible condition. Passive forms are common.
Ex.If the ship had had more lifeboats, more passengers would have been saved.
If the ship hadn't hit an iceberg, it wouldn't have sunk.
If another ship hadn't arrived soon afterwards, none of the passengers would have been saved.
- Could have and might have are often used instead of would have, as are other modals. Ex.If the ship had been travelling more slowly, it might have avoided the iceberg.
This webiste had been recommended by my lecturer in English class. In the website, there have lots of role plays in many kinds of situation. Just listen to these conversations and try to speak like the speakers said.
Good way to enhance our ability in English speaking is to listen to the way English native speakers pronounce and speak, and then we try to pronounce what they pronounce. We should firstly start knowing how to pronounce each English sound.
Another website, I would recommend is this one http://www.audioenglish.net/(my friend suggested this website). We can see the dialogue and listen to the audio sound. Just remember that you need to hear speaker'accent and try to immitate their pronunciation.
Speaking is the way we express our thinking or opinion to the other people. To speak with foreigners especially with English native speakers by using English as interlanguage, we need to be aware of pronunciation. They might not understand what we say if we pronounce the wrong sound (don't overlook easy words)
If we want to speak English as much similar as a native speakers, we need to know how they pronounce each sound and the way they accent each word.
In nearly all languages, words must contain at least one vowel. While a word can be formed without any consonants – such as the English words I or way – no word may consist of only consonants, without a vowel. A vowel is a type of sound for which there is no closure of the throat or mouth at any point where vocalization occurs. Vowels can be contrasted with consonants, which are sounds for which there are one or more points where air is stopped.
Vowels in many languages are not crucial to the general meaning of the word. Rather, a vowel in these languages – of which many are Semitic languages – acts more to give a specific inflection than to differentiate the word from other distinct words. A parallel of this in English can be seen in the example of dive and dove or lay and lie, in which the core word is the same, but the changed vowel denotes tense. Languages that have this type of structure often do not even mark all of their vowels in written text. Both Arabic and Hebrew are good examples of this, where the marking of many vowels is unnecessary in writing. (http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-vowel.htm)
I have found below clips that teach English sound from youtube. I think he speaks very clear in each sound and show it slowly so that we can hear it clearly and can speak along. The sounds that he taught are the sound that usually ESL learners have a difficulty to pronounce.
"TH" Pronunciation English Meeting ESL Lesson
"SH" Pronunciation English Meeting ESL Lesson
/æ/ Pronunciation English Meeting ESL Lesson
Pronunciation - several sounds/words - English Meeting ESL Lesson
We all know that it is now so easy for us to learn English. We just have computer and internet, then we can learn English easily. I’m one of English learners who always search websites that teach English. And today I would like to recommend one website that I've found. I think it is really helpful. This website is www.voanews.com I like it!!
I'll show you why I like it. But before that, I would like to briefly give you this website background.
voanews is Voice of America (VOA) is the official external broadcast institution of the United States federal government. The slogan of voanews is “A Trusted Source of News & Information” It is one of five civilian U.S. international broadcasters working under the umbrella of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG). VOA provides a wide range of programming for broadcast on radio and TV and the Internet outside of the U.S. in 44 languages. VOA produces about 1,500 hours of news and feature programming each week for an estimated global audience of 123 million people, "to promote freedom and democracy and to enhance understanding through multimedia communication of accurate, objective, and balanced news, information and other programming about America and the world to audiences overseas."[1] Its day-to-day operations are supported by the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB).A 1976 law signed by President Gerald Ford requires VOA to "serve as a consistently reliable and authoritative source of news.” The VOA Charter states: "VOA news will be accurate, objective and comprehensive.”VOA radio and television broadcasts are distributed by satellite, cable and on FM, AM, and shortwave radio frequencies. They are streamed on individual language service websites, social media sites and mobile platforms. VOA has more than 1,200 affiliate and contract agreements with radio and television stations and cable networks worldwide.
There are 4 main features on this website; news, programs, video, and learning English. If you click on News one, you will see news from all over the world. It is separated into the continents; USA, Africa, Asia, Europe, Middle East, etc. The updated news are provided in this feature, the people who are curious to know what is going on in this world must love this feature.
To listen to English song is of course a good way to learn English. I really love to listen to English song and it can be any style of song; pop, rock, R&B, hip-hop, classic, jazz or whatever. Its melody and lyrics that mix together can always make us enjoy! This morning, I turn on the radio and listen to this song, "Who'd have known" of Lily Allen.
"Lily Allen" is an English pop singer-songwriter best known for her songs "Smile" and " The Fear "
Allen is the daughter of comedian / actor / songwriter / frequent New Order team Keith Allen and film producer Alison Owen She is also a god-daughter of Joe Strummer in the late singer / guitarist of The Clash Her first single "Smile" reached number one on the UK singles chart in July 2006 In December 2006 her debut album Alright Still was voted the third best album of the year by Mixmag.
"Who'd have known?" แปลว่า "ใครจะไปรู้ล่ะ"
เป็นเรื่องราวเกี่ยวกับหญิงสาวคนหนึ่งที่เพิ่งจะพบรักกับชายหนุ่ม แต่เธอไม่แน่ใจว่าความสัมพันธ์ของเธอกับเขาคืออะไรกันแน่ แต่ในใจของเธอนั้น เธอรู้สึกแปลกๆ เธอเลยถามตัวเองว่า Who'd have known? ใครจะไปรู้ว่าในที่สุดจะเธอตกหลุมรักชายคนนั้น
"Who'd have known?" ซึ่งย่อมาจากประโยคที่ว่า "Who would have known?"
จากท่อนเพลงที่ว่า
“Who’d have known? When you flash up on my phone I no longer feel alone”
วิธีการแปล would have + V3 ก็จะเหมือนกับ should have + V3หรือ แม้แต่ could have + V3
In my view, our English proficiency can be increased when we learn English songs. The use of music and rhythm is the best way to learn new language. It is a good technique that should be intergrated into English today's lessons in school. We wil find that when singing songs in different languages that are not our language, we will need to pronounce the words and put sentences and grammar together. The process of learning would be much easier and significantly make us progress. So, from now on just listen to English song as often as possible :)
Hello guys!!welcome to my blog space ^^ Let me introduce myself to you guys first, you can call me “Mr. Box” I am an energetic and lively person. I love peace and I would like to know a lot of people around the world.
To know the people around the world, we need to speak in the same language in order to communicate with them. “English” is an inter-language that most of people use in the world. That’s why we need to learn English. I’m also an English learner.
The reason why I create this blog is because I would like to encourage myself to learn English from various sources (through modern media) that I’ve found. The knowledge I’m learning would be useful to the public if I put them up in the blog and publicize it. Is this great idea? Apart from those, this blog would be a self-study project of my English course at University.
Alright,before starting the English lesson, I will tell you guys briefly about my English improvement project. As we know English skill has four skills that we need to practice; listening, speaking, reading, and writing. I will practice these four skills and share the information that I learn or I found in my blog. This would be so convenient for me to practice as I always turn on my PC and serve the internet. (As I'm an English learner, any mistake on my English grammar, pls do accpt my apology)
My Self Study Plan
I would like to improve the following skills:
1.English Listening Skill for Advanced Learners
2.English Speaking Skill & Pronunciation for Advanced Learners
3.English Writing Skill & Grammar for Advanced Learners
4.English Reading Comprehension Skill & Vocabulary for Advanced Learners
(for what skills) – for English Reading Comprehension
Skill & Vocabulary
Plan for each week:
Week 1
I will practice my listening skill through English news in www.voanews.com
Week 2
I will practice my listening skill through English song.
Week 3
Favorite website
Week 4
Know how to improve English speaking skill.
Week 5
I will practice my speaking skill by learning vowel and consonant sound.
Week 6
I will practice my speaking skill by fun role play
Week 7
Know how to improve writing skill
Week 8
I will practice my writing skill by learning grammar.
Week 9
Learning part of speech to improve writing skill
Week 10
Know how to be a good reader
Week 11
Learning new vocabulary for reading skill improvement
Week 12
Reading an English article
Week 13
Listening movie Preview
Week 14
I will practice my listening skill English through kids TV program
Week 15
I will practice my listening skill English through Talk Show program
Week 16
How to pronounce difficult word (speaking skill)
Week 17
Useful expression of business language (speaking skill)
Week 18
Irregular verb (speaking skill)
Week 19
Inversion and adverbial clause for writing skill
Week 20
Diagramming sentence (writing skill)
Week 21
Reporting graph (writing skill)
Week 22
How to present a presentation
Week 23
How to make a good PowerPoint presentation
Week 24
Idioms (reading skill)
Week 25
Reading a passage (reading skill)
Week 26
Vocabulary Hunting (reading skill)
My goal for taking this course is:
1.English listening skill is one of the most essential skills for advanced learners who want to get improved in English. To be progress in this skill relies on regular practice and learners should find helpful way to practice. Practicing through modern media, like internet, would very much help learners to practice by listening English native speakers talks.
2.To be improved in Englishspeaking skill is obviously my second goal. As we know non-English native speakers like Thai people hardly talk with foreigners in daily life, except those who usually work with English native speakers. It is luckily that nowadays we are in globalization era and it seems that everything in our life is possible and easy to access high technology. We don’t need to
3.English Writing skill isone ofimportant skill that I need to use on a regular basis; reading emails, letters and legal document for my work. I set a goal to be more improve in this skill by taking less time when reading a difficult passage.
4.Last but not least, the skill that I really want to be improved is English reading skill as it is significant to my career. I need to read incoming email from my German boss and clients. I always have to read English email message, letter and fax that related to law field. This will not be varied. We need to read the message from many sources and fields such as science, IT, politics, economy, etc. So the media that we can easily access now would be the most advantage for English advanced learner to practice and improve in their reading skill. I am the one of those people who want to enhance my English reading skill.
5.Apart from English learning, it is of course that I will be able to
In my view, this course would extremely encourage and motivate the students to use modern media and IT sources
And now it is time to start by focus on listening skill first. Let’s start!!!
Listening Skill Practice (through news article)
After searching many websites, I’ve found this one that could help me much to practice listening skill.
There are a subtitle at the bottom of screen but I was listening without looking at the subtitle for twice and tried to catch what the story is about. Then I'll look at the subtitle to check if my understanding is right. This is a good practice.
Listening skill is probably the most difficult task for almost all English learners as a foreign language. It is not only you (and me) that we are facing this difficult thing. The most important thing is to listen as often as possible. I would suggest you to find a good resource for you to practice listening. Internet really comes in handy as a tool for English students.
Once you have begun to listen on a regular basis, you might still be frustrated by limited understanding. You might want to give up. What you should do is to accept that you are not going to understand everything. Just relax and listen more and more and try to catch the main idea of what you are listening to. Keep in mind that you don't need to concentrate on small detail. And do not translate into your native language. This will probably take time, but you will see the result one day. Keep learning!!
