Learning English Blog

The ABC's Of Learning English Or English For Kids

tulvit — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 10:02:37 +0000

If you're reading this, then I can assume that you're not a kid and your English level is at least higher than pre-beginner. And, consequently, you're not fond of elementary studying materials and books just for kids. But I assure you that kind of kids' stuff can be rather interesting, enjoyable and helpful for you too.

What I mean by kids' stuff is two kinds of materials.

The first one is different "Learning English for kids" courses and other things, such as educational books, different tests, video and podcastings, games (especially online flash games). It can be seems as a rather senseless pastime, but believe me, it isn't. Why? It's easy. Easy for kids, so, of course, it's easy for you. And when it's easy, it's more enjoyable and less tiresome.

Yup, surely you don't learn a lot of new and your English skill will increase not much at all. But some practice, some, maybe, new information... So, why not? And it doesn't mean you should buy educational books for kids, download different courses, and so on. No, just visit a few times some sites for learning English kids, play games, take a tests, read some articles, etc., nothing more.

Here is a list of some such sites:

And the second type of materials is all other stuff, but for kids for whom English is a native language. Books, textbooks, audio books, movies... Do you think this is pretty pointless too? Nope, it isn't. Are you sure that your English is already so good and you can understand all materials for 5-10 years old kids? I'm not sure.

Of course, you can read a lot of serious books, watch a lot of serious movies, discuss serious topics on forums. Your vocabulary can be huge. But it can be not only huge, but too specific. For instance, I read a lot of books, blogs and forums on programming or math regularly. Yes, I have a huge vocabulary. But this vocabulary concerning programming or math and doesn't contain many general words. I may think that I know a lot of words, but all this words are too specific. I can know for sure what "derivative" and dozens of similar words mean, but at the same time have no clue what does word "bench" means.

And in this case books for children are truly indispensable for you 'cause they provide you a basic general vocabulary. And you should read them until you start to understand practically each and every word in them. Of course, you shouldn't give up reading other books, just think of it as an additional way to learn English.

IMDb.com

tulvit — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 01:59:27 +0000

Are you a cinephile? I hope so!

And if it so, then IMDb.com (the largest Internet movie database) could be rather interesting for you.

IMDb is a really great project. As a movie fan, I'm loving it very much. I'm not fond of a kind of bestsellers movies, and in this case IMDb helps me a lot by providing an ability to find not so well-known movies but truly more interesting and qualitative ones (as for me, of course).

But wait a minute, how can it help us with learning English?

The answer is pretty obvious. Each movie on IMDb have list of the most memorable quotes and dozens of users' reviews. And I should admit - most of the top reviews (if you filtered them by rating, anyway it's a default filter) is a really great reviews. It's just interesting to read them. And it's, of course, more interesting to read them right after you watched the movie.

So what's the advice? Well, you should watch more movies (in English, of course). And right after you've watched some movie, you should read at least top 10 reviews and some of the memorable quotes. It should become just a good habit to you.

Let It Snow! by Frank Sinatra + Lyrics

tulvit — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 00:40:16 +0000

As I promised before, I'll post some music video with lyrics from time to time, approximately one video on ten other posts. And for today we have Let It Snow! by Frank Sinatra.

The song was written by lyricist Sammy Cahn and composer Jule Styne in 1945 and soon became a popular Christmas hit (nevertheless, Christmas doesn't mentioned in song's lyrics at all).

However many famous singers performed this song, the classic one without a doubt is by Frank Sinatra.

Enjoy!

Oh the weather outside is frightful,
But the fire is so delightful,
And since we've no place to go,
Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!

It doesn't show signs of stopping,
And I've bought some corn for popping,
The lights are turned way down low,
Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!

When we finally kiss goodnight,
How I'll hate going out in the storm.
But if you'll really hold me tight,
All the way home I'll be warm.

The fire is slowly dying,
And, my dear, we're still good-bying,
But as long as you love me so,
Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!

Synonyms

tulvit — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 00:00:24 +0000

For the English learning beginners the small vocabulary is a rather common problem. It's not so important in spoken language, but when you write it becomes a real trouble, especially if you write something longer than short posts or comments. The same words, repeated in each and every sentences, or at least rather frequently - isn't a good style. Furthermore, it's kind of hard to read such texts and, of course, poor vocabulary articles doesn't give any trust.

So, for writing well quality articles we should use synonyms everywhere it's possible to prevent repeating words. For finding synonyms we can use a historical thesaurus of English (the largest thesaurus in the world). Although it's the best and right way, it isn't like an easy-to-use site, and if we plan to use it regularly it can be rather tiresome.

Fortunately, there are a lot of other Internet services, which can help us to find synonyms rather quickly. Here is the list of some of them (most popular and qualitative, from my point of view).

synonym.com

As for me, one of the best. It's simple and user-friendly. In most cases you find what you want.

thesaurus.com

More "serious" service than the previous one. Gives you dozens of additional information. Can be rather helpful if your goal is not only to find synonym quickly but to get some extra information too.

synonyms.net

Another simple and easy usable service. With more information than the first one, but not so over functional as the second one.

thefreedictionary.com

And another service, dictionary plus thesaurus.

You can choose one which you consider the most suitable especially for you, or use them all depends on situation and requirements.

Reading Big Forms

tulvit — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 16:40:31 +0000

Unfortunately, it's need to admit that for success in learning English you should read a lot. No, really, a lot.

Blogs, forums, different articles and so on - it's all, of course, good and necessary... But not quite enough.

You should read books. Many, many, many books. Dozens of them. Regularly. Read over and over again for years. And yes, besides of getting a real progress in learning English, with every book you've read, you will become a more educated person as well. It cannot but agree that all well-educated people read a lot. And to know foreign language perfectly means to be well-educated too, isn't it?

Fortunately, reading books is not so hard as it can seem at the first glance. Furthermore, as for me - it much easier than reading bunch of articles. Maybe it's so because there is one main idea, one author style, one vocabulary and so on for the whole book.

And it's also important to read two types of books. The fist one - in which you're interested. It can be related to your work or hobby, or you can just want to read it 'cause somebody recommended it to you. And the second one is classic literature. It can be not necessary Charles Dickens, Alexandre Dumas or Arthur Conan Doyle, but something like Jerome David Salinger as well. To the point - one of the easiest author for learning English readers is Agatha Cristy.

Be sure - reading books is not tiresome or time-wasted business at all, but on the contrary it can be much fun and enjoyable rather than watching tv-shows.

Twitter

tulvit — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 22:22:10 +0000

The Internet gives us a great opportunity in many ways. And learning English is not exception. Last years' trend - social networks - can be rather helpful too. And they are.

Let's talk about twitter and reasons why it could be helpful for us.

Twitter is kind of blogging platform, or more exactly, "microblogging", 'cause the maximum length of each post is just 140 characters. But it's not a disadvantage. On the contrary, it's the main advantage. A really great advantage.

And here is why.

For success in learning English it's not enough just to listen and speak. No less important is to read and write. But it's often too hard to force yourself to read and write regularly, especially to write. And in this case twitter is a great solution to this problem - writing everyday 50-140 chars posts, what can be easier?

If you don't have a "normal" custom blog or don't communicate in forums, twitter gives you a real opportunity in improving your English. And even if you are a forums' frequenter, twitter can be as an additional help to you too.

And of course, besides of improving your writing skills, you can (and should!) improve your reading and vocabulary. All what you should do is to follow other people in whom you're interested and from time to time read what they "tweet". Reading other short tweets is not as hard as reading big articles or entire book and taking not so much time, isn't it?

So, use twitter and improve your English. It's more fun and much easier now. Enjoy!

Study English - IELTS Preparation

tulvit — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 13:13:49 +0000

"Study English IELTS Preparation" is an educational series which may help you to pass IELTS (International English Language Testing System) exam or at least give you a favour in learning English.

There are 3 series, 26 episodes in each series, ~10 minutes per series. The presenter is Margot Politis.

In the first and second series considered different topics such as global warming, electronic crime, eco-systems, etc., and after watching a little piece of TV news or other program, discussed vocabulary and grammatical issues being used in this video. The third series is more educational - vocabulary exercises, writing tasks and so on.

As for me, I find this study course one of the best. It's more enjoyable than other ones. Thanks to the presenter and authors, practically each and every episode is just interesting to watch, not only to learn English. All episodes' topics are interesting by themselves. Plus a really great educational presentation. So all series are absolute pleasure to watch and even to rewatch (I've already watched it twice and thinking about to watch it again).

The official site - australianetwork.com/studyenglish. You can also find this course on YouTube and ThePirateBay.

Wikipedia's Projects

tulvit — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 14:56:26 +0000

Wikipedia is a really great project, which can help us a lot with learning English. Practically all wiki articles are good quality with no grammar or other mistakes - it's worth to admit that it's a big value for the project with user generated content, on other social sites such as forums, blogs, social networks and so on, almost always nobody watching users' language and correct mistakes. With wikipedia you can be sure - all articles have no mistakes. And of course wiki in most cases contains well structured and useful information, so it's easy to find what you really want. And besides learning English, wiki helps you to improve your education as well.

As you know, wiki is not only a wikipedia.org but a bunch of different projects. Let's take a look at all of them (or at least at most important for us, as our main purpose is to learn English).

wikipedia.org

The main project. Approximately 4 million articles in English. It's a really great number. Furthermore, most of the articles are rather extensive. So, in my point of view, it will be a good practice to read wikipedia regularly. Not necessary every day, but rather often. And it's not a bad advice to read all the articles on subjects in which you're interested of. To the same, it's no secret that most of subjects have their own "vocabulary", set of specific words relevant to the specific topic. In this case if you're taking an interest in something, wiki is a good way to build or improve your vocabulary.

wiktionary.org

Just a dictionary. But as for me, one of the best. In additional to the word's meaning, wiktionary provides such information as etymology of the word, pronunciation (with audio sample), synonyms, derived terms and so on. Sometimes you can find also a link to the wikipedia (if there is an articles on this word), a picture (if a word is smt that you can represent as image), differences between UK and US pronunciation... In other words - wiktionary provides practically all information on each and every word that you can even imagine and not only a bare listing of the word's meanings.

Moreover, wiktionary have a bunch of very useful features, such as frequency lists, topical index and some another. For instance, what english words should you learn first of all? Obviously, the most frequency ones, and now you have a list with this words.

wikiquote.org

A well structured quotations' compendium. If you like quotes or a fan of some movie/person and want to read theirs quotes - so this site is especially for you. What is more, it will improve your mental outlook. Or your can think about it as a form a relaxation. Anecdotes or funny stories? Huh, quotations are better!

wikiversity.org

Another rather helpful resource, not very big as previous ones, but have some interesting materials too, for example English as a second language.

wikibooks.org & wikisource.org

As before, nothing special. But "nothing special" doesn't means nothing interesting or useful (for instance, some materials on "learning English language" in wikibooks.org you can find kind of helpful).

Watch, Rewatch and Rerewatch

tulvit — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 14:58:48 +0000

From my experience, rewatching something is a pretty useful thing for learning English.

It's so because of two main reasons.

First of all, when you watch some movie, tv-series or something like that, you don't even try to understand all speech, you're just watching it. If you understand more than, say, 60-70 percent of all talking, you simply enjoy watching movie and do not strain yourself to understand each and every word. But when you rewatching movie you try to watch it more attentively, 'cause you already know the plot and now try to follow all details which you didn't notice for the first time. So you try to understand more words, truly meaning of the words depending on the context and situations, and so on.

And of course rewatching is one of the best ways to check up your progress in learning English. If you rewatching some movie in a few months' time or even in a year and feel a really big progress in understanding - you are on the right way.

Certainly, it's applies not only to watching something (movies, tv-series, shows, etc.) but also to listening to (audiobooks) and reading.

So, if you don't know what to watch/listen/read next, it's highly recommended to rewatch/relisten/reread something that you watched/listened/read before.

Translation On The Fly? Just Use Google Translate.

tulvit — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 04:07:01 +0000

This is a very tiresome to find out meaning of each unfamiliar word in a dictionary. Its draw your attentions away from reading and, furthermore, takes too much time.

Fortunately, there is a great solution: Google Translate service and several tools based on its functionality.

I think you're familiar with Google Translate. So, it's time to use features to translation on-the-fly.

You can use official Google Toolbar or FireFox plugin. (Google Chrome must be with pre-build functionality to translate on the fly, but I don't know it exactly, so I'll consider only Google Toolbar and Firefox plugin, thought it's not the only solution, but the most popular one, as for me.)

Google Toolbar
It's official and have rather rich functionality. We're interested in "on the fly" translation and Google Toolbar can do it. After some customization, translation will appear instantly right after you hover cursor over the word you want to translate.
Link: http://toolbar.google.com/

FireFox plugin
If you use FireFox (I hope so, 'cause it's the best browser ever - I use IE, Opera, Chrome, Safari etc. and FF is truly the best) you can use special plugin. There are several of them and I try most of them too. So, the best one is "Google Dictionary and Google Translate" plugin.
Link: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-dictionary-and-goo...