10 posts tagged “esl”
Happy New Year! I know this is a cliche, but I can not to stop using this phrase. Time really flies!
It is already a year of 2007. I feel like the end of year 1999 and the beginning of year 2000 was just yesterday.
Since this is my first post this year, I would like to write about my New Year's resolutions.
This year,
- I will not to say "I envy you". If I feel envy someone, I will try to do it myself.
- I am going to be more nice to my family, especially my sweet husband and my mother.
- I will take time for immersing myself in English, at least one hour every day. Either is okay, concentrate or deconcentrate.
- I will keep writing my diary. (This must be difficult to do it, but I will do my best.)
Last Saturday, on December 9th, my husband and I went to a skiing resort, Minowa by name. It was the same place we went last Wednesday when we took a day off. Minowa is the third nearest skiing mountain from our home. It takes about 40 minutes to drive there. The nearest skiing place is about 25 minutes away, but it's a bit small and the slopes are too easy for us.
The weather was pretty bad again. It was quite foggy and I could hardly see anything. Moreover, it was snowing and overcrowded. Therefore, I decided to stay at the lodge and learn English while my husband enjoyed skiing.
The weather was pretty bad again. It was quite foggy and I could hardly see anything. Moreover, it was snowing and overcrowded. Therefore, I decided to stay at the lodge and learn English while my husband enjoyed skiing.
Whether it is correct or not I used "lodge" here, as what I meant to say was those places where we take a break and have some drinks/meals, or use rest rooms at ski resorts. In Japan, we call them "rest houses", pronounced like "resuto hausu", but I am not sure what to call them in English.
Anyway, I brought along my best friend, iPod nano, along with an electric dictionary, Steve's book, some printed papers which I copied from his vox blog, downloaded reading contents from The Linguist, and my pen case which is packed with a lot of several different styles and colors of gel pens. (Collecting gel pens is one of my hobbies, by the way. My favorite pen series is SARARA 0.4mm point.)
A table and a chair I occupied there were pretty comfortable, much better than my desk and chair at home, I could say. For that reason, I really enjoyed learning English there. Interestingly enough, with limited learning materials, I could concentrate more than I usually do with full resources in my home.
Because I found this ubiquitous learning very effective for me, when I went skiing again yesterday, I brought a couple of folded papers I printed from Steve's blog (oops! sounds like I am a brownnoser?? :->) , a red SARARA pen and iPod nano in my inner pocket. However, the weather was nice, so I just enjoyed skiing, which was also wonderful to me anyway.
When I participated Steve's group discussion today, he told us about an interesting subject, "informal learning". "Most of what we learn, we learn from other people. 80% what we learn informally, at work, from friends, watching people."
I forgot asking to him which webpage/webpages he visited, therefore, I have searched some pages by Google. I haven't read them yet, but I would like to write them down just for my information.
Informal Learning Blog
http://informl.com/
Internet Time Blog
http://internettime.com/
Informal Learning - the other 80%
http://www.internettime.com/Learning/The%20Other%2080%25.htm
The Learning in Informal and Formal Environments (LIFE) Center
http://life-slc.org/
While I was searching them, I also found an interesting website for Japanese language learners. Here is the link.
The Japanese Page.com
http://www.thejapanesepage.com/news.php
I would like to share another interesting podcast for English learners. It's called "English, baby!"
I found this site recently, and for the first couple of days, I just listened their show imported into my iPod nano. All of their conversations are quite fast for me, but still I can enjoy listning them. Luckily enough, they provide transcrpts for all of thier lessons, with really usuful vocabulary lists.
On Monday, I joined a new conversation group which Oxana kindly asked me to be one of her companies. This time, we were a party of four. We had Oxana, Marianne, and my new friend from Taiwan, Alicia. Since it was our fast gathering, everyone said a little bit about themselves at first. Our new group is a quite international, Oxana is originally from Rossia and now lives in Germany, Marianne is French, Alicia is Taiwanese and I am Japanese.
After each of us finished a self introduction, we moved on to our topic on that day, suggested by Oxana in advance, and it was about "books". I tried to tell them about a storyline of "Nothing Lasts Forever", a book I'm reading now. However, I'm not good at summarizing something even in my mother tongue, so making a summary of this story was quite difficult, so I gave it up and mumbled my answer. :-P
Our next meeting is going to be on next Monday. 3:00 p.m. in Europe, 9:00 p.m. in Taiwan, 10:00 p.m. in Japan time. Oxana is going to visit India for a month, so we will meet her again in November.
The day before yesterday, I talked with my brother, his wife and two adorable daughters (one of them were a new born baby, so she couldn't talk yet though) on Skype. They live in Tokyo, so we haven't met other so often, but occasionally have talked on the phone. My brother installed Skype into his PC on that day, and also connected an web camera as well. I don't have an web-cam yet, but I could see them all on the screen, and so interesting. I'll buy my own camera this weekend, and my mom is going to stay over night on Sunday, and we will have a family reunion on Skype.
Yesterday, as usual I joined the English conversation club. We did another two types of card game this time, one of them were "Old Maid". The other game was matching picture cards by describing those pictures to other participants. We asked one of them if he/she has the same pictures with mine, to explain what the picture like. If they has the card, I can get it from them and let those two cards go. This game is pretty good way to practice how to explain something as same as Taboo game we did last week.
lesson memo
roster : n. a list of names
Go Fish : a card game for two players who try to assemble books of cards by asking the opponent for particular cards
Today, again I took the English lesson at work. I brought an article and talked about it with other members. I also brought my MP3 recorder, and I recorded our conversation while I was attending the class. This recorder is a bit old one with only 256MB memory, and also the battery life is quite short. I haven't reviewed the lesson yet, but if this idea is work, I might buy a new MP3 recorder.
Listening : podcast/TL contents 120min
Speaking : 240min
Reading : Nothing Lasts Forever (p.190/p.384) 120min
Writing : only this blog 30min
Total : 510min/4 days
Umm, I need more writing exercise, and also reviewing words and phrases.
Recently my eyes are always tired and dry. It's hard to spend much time to read something on the screen. Maybe I have dry eyes, or I might have reached around the age I needs reading glasses????
Well, I still can read small letters, so maybe still my eyes are not getting old... I hope.
Yesterday's English class at work, we did three different activities. As Mr.K's request, we listened one of Elton John's songs called "High Flying Bird", then read lyrics and talked about this song.
Then we talked about how to guess and grasp the meaning of unknown words, using a Latin roots words list which was our tutor prepared for us. That was my request.
Also we learned about a little bit of business writing, which is also my request. This time, how to write an inquiry letter, but we didn't have enough time, so we just glanced down a sheet of paper.
Compared to the last couple of days, I haven't spent much time with English learning today.
Listning : podcast (Steve's Podcast, METPOD, NPR Your Health, Wall Street Journal) 60min
Writing : on Vox blog 20min
No speaking, not yet reading...
METPOD is one of my favorite podcast programs. I'm a big fan of Kamasami Kong. He is a wonderful DJ. I love the way of his talking.
Okay, it's Friday night. Yey! I'm going to do more activities on The Linguist this weekend. It's an absolute must!
We had an English lesson at work today. It's a regular course (twelve times) on every Thursday, for two hours during office hour.
Oh, it's getting late, I have to go now. Now it's almost midnight.
Listning : podcast 20min, NHK TV 10min
Speaking : 120min
Reading : Nothing Last Forever(read aloud) 10min
Writing : email and Skype chat 20min
Total : 180min
I went to an English conversation club this evening. I go there every week for over five years. We have an American tutor there, she is a very friendly, cheerful and yet a very kind young lady. She is an English teacher, working for a board of education of Miharu, and she teaches at all junior high-schools in the town.
These days, we have another American girl in our conversation club. She is an exchange high-school student living in the town. She is also cheerful and very smart. She said she studied Japanese only 4 weeks before she came to Japan this summer, but she can already use it with no problem. How amazing!
Our English club is one of cultural activities in their town (I live in the next town, by the way). So that is why, tuition fee is very affordable, or I would rather say, cheap. We pay only 800yen each for 90 min lesson, including a cup of (or more) coffe and a cookie.
We did an interesting game tonight. It's a kids' edition of Taboo game. I guess it's good way to practice how to explain something in English, and you can do listning practice as well.
Last week, we learned about some idiomatic expression there. Interestingly enough, the right next day, I have downloaded Steve's podcast which was talking about idioms, and Steve and Jill talked about how to use "get". As one of lower intermidiate learners on The Linguist, this "get" episode is very usuful for me, and I really want to know more about other phrasal verbs.
Listning: podcast (here and there during the day) 60min, EJ (while driving) 30min (I bought EJ's CD book about 7 or 8 years ago)
Speaking: attending English club 90min
Writing: this blog 30min
Reading: TL member's blog on Vox 20min, Japan Today 10minTotal: 240min
I took an English lesson at work yesterday. It was the second time. The course I have taken is twelve times in all, and once a week, two hours lesson.
The previous lesson we had was three weeks ago, and after a long interval, we started it again, and it continues until the middle of November.
There are four of us, and an American tutor, and he is living in Koriyama for almost six months.
The reason why I signed up this course is because a description in a syllabus seemed interesting, and a substantial volume. However, the last lesson was too easy for me. It supposed to be for the intermediate learners lesson, and before the course start, a manager of an English conversation school and us had a meeting, and told her what we would like to learn.
Maybe we asked her too vague requests, such as, build up vocabulary, daily usuful expression, and how to struggle with TOEIC (which was not my request though). Then the tutor prepared us, like 'Hi. How are you? What is your name?' kind of text, a words and phrases list for fifth grade kids, and some copies of TOEIC drill. What and how did the manger discribed about us to the tutor, I wonder. Also, I have to admit that our attitude the previous lesson as well as at the meeting was quite passive.
So this time, I told the rest of three members, what I would like to learn more specifically, and asked their opinions beforehand. Luckily enough, the tutor came 20 min earlier, so I told him about our requests (most of them were mine though), and also asked to deliver a sheet of paper I wrote down our requests in Japanese to the manager.
At the first 30 min, we discussed about what we would like to learn from now on, along with my request sheet, and they agreed with the plan.
Okay, it' already 11:10 PM. I must go to bed now. I'll keep continue writing about this.
Since this is my first Vox entry, I wonder what shall I write about, and how I'm going to use this interesting place from now on?
Okay, I put one of my writing assignments I applied to The Linguist. This essay has corrected by my tutor Tracey. She gave me a very detailed correction with a useful advice. As same as my speaking, I have to pay more attention to how to use articles, 'a/an' and 'the' properly. I also need to be careful with verbs and choice of words. To improve those skills, I have to spend more time for reading and listing.
................................................................................................................................................
(CORRECTED TEXT)
I have been learning spoken English for over a decade, except for my school days. Started with an almost zero level of English ability, I felt big improvements in my new language for first the two years. Since then, however, I have not seen any progress. I have reached a plateau, unfortunately.
The reason why I would like to be an English speaker is because I like the sound of English itself. It sounds like music to me, and it would be wonderful if I could use it by myself. Of course, I like my mother tongue, particularly the polite and elegant style of speaking. The idea is the same when it comes to English. I would like to be a fluent speaker with good pronunciation, if it is possible. However, this reason is a bit weak to keep continue studying alone, especially surrounded by a totally Japanese environment. I can procrastinate easily. Therefore, I need a guide and maybe learning companions, and that is why I am trying The Linguist now.
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