dijous, 12 de gener del 2012
diumenge, 8 de gener del 2012
dimecres, 21 de desembre del 2011
Speak up!
I want to hear your voice, speak up!
English language is wonderful and extremely important and if you speak it you may feel part of the world! So, let’s improve our speaking skill.
To speak a foreign language like English it’s important to be confident and sure of yourself as if you are shy and nervous you can’t say a word and even worse, let people understand you. If you need to leave your shyness and nerves behind you should practice speaking and interacting with people regularly.
You should also practice speaking in your classroom with your classmates by interacting with them. You must take the opportunity to speak aloud and improve your skills.
I recommend you to sing English songs and lyrics as it is a good way of listening to the pronunciation.
You should also speak English with your family or friends but if this doesn’t work, speak to yourself in English as a way of showing yourself the level of speaking that you have.
If you go on a holiday, try to make friends in order to have English conversations with them and see if you are able to communicate with them and make them understand you too.
You should take the following advice very seriously: do not think that the best way of improving your spoken English is talking with a native speaker; that is not true! English is English and you should talk it with people that are able to speak it, not only with native speakers.
Another way of improving your spoken English is learning English pronunciation or phonetics in order to speak fluently and pronounce the words correctly.
It is important to be very patient as you won’t speak perfect English without practicing and without being constant. You should think that speaking English fluently requires hours and hours of speaking, how will you improve your speaking skill, if you don’t speak?
You should also take into account this advice: don’t worry if you make mistakes while you are speaking because the important thing is to try speaking and then correct your own mistakes. If you are aware of your mistakes you will be able to correct them and do not make them again.
Please, don’t waste any opportunity to speak English and make a big effort to improve it.
If you want to improve and practice your spoken English enter this site, I think it is very useful and practical:
www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/topic-group/speaking-and-listening
Oral English
Listen on not to listen, that’s the question
Are you able to understand English when someone speaks to you or when you listen to it? If your answer is “no” I invite you to read this advice. When you do a listening activity, you should specify your objectives and then you can be called “good listener”.
To understand oral English you should practise all kinds of listening strategies: listening to songs in English, listening to the radio, listening to people talking in English (conversations), etc.
In addition, you should pay a lot of attention to the person who is speaking or to what you are listening to (radio, listening activities in the classroom, etc), to be able to understand the meaning of the speech and recognize the main points or ideas of the speaker. It is necessary to evaluate the speaker's message in order to understand the topic.
You should also integrate listening activities into daily speaking, writing, reading and different experiences.
As it is said in this site (www.sasked.gov.sk.ca/docs/mla/speak.html), I recommend you to plan opportunities to practise listening for different purposes in a variety of contexts (social situations, formal situations, face to face...).
It is also important to adjust the length of listening time to your listening skills as if you have a low level you won’t be able to understand a recording that lasts too much.
It will be useful for you, if you practise listening by using pre-listening, listening, and post-listening activities.
If you want to understand oral English effectively, you must get used to listening everything in English, as you will begin to understand new words, you will be able to understand what people say without translating it into your mother tongue, and after a while, you will understand and speak English fluently.
In my personal opinion, you should find enjoyable ways to improve your level of listening comprehension such as watching your favourite films, series, and programmes in English, listening to English songs, your favourite ones, if you have them, playing funny listening games in English, etc. It is better to learn things in a funny way as if it is too boring, you will stop doing it and you won’t improve anything.
Finally, according to (http://esl.about.com/cs/teachinglistening/a/a_tlisten.htm), teachers say that students should listen for short periods of time, (five to ten minutes), and they shouldn’t expect to improve their skills very quickly.
This webpage might be useful to practice your listening skill.
www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/topic-group/speaking-and-listening
Writing improvement
My writing is as good as Shakespeare’s
Well, if you have problems with writing in an interesting way read these useful advices!
To begin a good writing, you should have time to think about its characteristics (structure, topic, language…). In order to write something good, it’s important to think before writing. In a writing, you are able to re-write the essay o text again to see the possible mistakes and make sure it is more elaborated. A written text allows you to look up in a dictionary what you don’t know or understand. Moreover, it is more permanent.
To be an interesting reader, you need to make sure that your writing is correct and you don’t make mistakes in order to let people understand the text or essay.
Writing a text in a foreign language is not very easy. So, to make it easier and organized you should follow these instructions: first of all decide or plan your topic and make clear notes (key words, main points). Then write a first draft and train yourself to think in English, as you mustn’t compose a word or a sentence in your mother tongue and then translate it in English. Write directly in English as you’ll be practising the English that you already know and you’ll be able to take less time looking up words in a dictionary.
After that, read your first draft and see if it has a good order or structure, if it makes sense, if grammar and spelling are correct, etc. If something is wrong, you can cross things out as this is not the final version. In the draft, you can move things and add whatever you want.
I recommend you not to write your final version until everything is correct and you like it. You should also remember to read it and revise it to see if your text is correct.
If you’d like to improve your writing, you should:
- Learn useful expressions and vocabulary in order to have an interesting writing.
- Keep a diary.
- Revise the grammar and the vocabulary that you know and you have studied and use them in your essays, texts...
- Check your writing to correct your own mistakes.
- Read blogs or discussions and write your opinion.
Finally, if I were you, I would write essays using originality and supporting examples.
Search these sites to practise:
www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/topic-group/writing
http://eolf.univ-fcomte.fr/index.php?page=constructing-the-paragraph
I hope you find them useful!
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