Dear friends, I have just found this great page where you can find instructive and amusing on-line games to practice English and geography at the same time. They are very easy to use and there is a great choice.
Kacika's Posts (13)
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The great adventure happened one warm evening in the central square of Budapest called Blaha Lujza Square. I was standing at the bus stop when a foreigner turned to me and asked one of the most frequent questions, 'Excuse me, do you speak English?'
I wasn't a beginner that time. First I had learnt English by myself for a year by the help of a self-teaching book and the CDs belonging to it. I had a pretty good vocabulary and a basic grammar kowledge. Finishing my one-year-program I admitted a course to get the speaking skills because earlier I hadn't had a partner to speak to.
It was a really good course with 6 young people who had a lot in common and who wanted to speak about a lot of topics that we were really interested in. Our teacher had the sense of teaching. She didn't let us speak in Hungarian, we were forced to express ourselves in English only. So at first we suffered a lot with expressing our thoughts. We were excited and often irritated but after some weeks our talks and discussions started to be more fluent and we spoke English without being embarrassed.
I believed that I was already able to speak English when a handsome young man, who seemed mainly African, asked me a simple question, 'Excuse me, do you speak English?' It was the first time for me to be asked by a foreigner and there was no interpreter nearby. The only answer I could give him was shaking my head. I didn't say a word.
I had a prick of coscience because I hadn't helped a poor foreigner in my native city although he might have wanted to ask the direction or the number of the right bus. I suffered also from my failiure.
The bus arrived at the stop and both me and the young man got on. He sat next to me and tried again. This time I was prepared to utter some English words and at last I told him where to get off to find his way. Then he told me that he had come to Budapest from Benin to study engineering and started a conversation. I understood everything and I chatted with him 'like a linguist' for a quarter of an hour.
That was the breakthrough for me during my English studies. Since that day I have really been able to speak English. It was much more difficult than taking an intermediate level exam. But with some struggle I succeeded. The Benin boy was a good teacher.
Dictionary method
There are three stages of knowing new words. If you recognise a word by reading, it is in your passive vocabulary. If you can translate the word into English, it is already in your active vocabulary. And at the third stage you are able to use it in a sentence while speaking to a foreigner.
If you are at elementary level, your first dictionary is the vocabulary list of your English textbook you started to learn from. These lists usualy can be found at the back of books. When you have finished the book, revise this list until they are in your active vocabulary.
If you are an advanced learner, you can take a good bilingual dictionary and test yourself by reading it from "a" to "z". Mask the English side of the dictionary and looking at the side written in your mother tounge, try if you know the word. Use two signs, for exampe a small circle for the words you have already known and a small line if you decide to learn it.
You can write the words to be learn into your vocabulary notebook if you want. Study them for a while and start to read the dictionary itself again, but this time you have to test yourself by finding out the words only with the small line next to them. It is a shorter task. Make a new sign if you have found out a word, for example you can cross the small line. Next time you have to try only the words you didn't know at the fist revising. This process will be even shorter.
It seems as hard and boring as the galley-slaves' work. But during the procedure you will feel richer and richer as the dictionary is going into your head.
With this method you can get a great passive vocabulary. Don't forget to activate it later. And then the most difficult task for you to speak to a foreigner.
In my next blog I'll tell the readers what I answered to the first foreigner who was so unlucky that he had asked me something in English.
Reading English texts method
The first principle of this method is that you have to read texts you are really interested in. And read texts mainly written by native speakers.
You may read literature, news articles written or on-line, elaborations about your specific professions or anything else, the most important words should be looked up in the dictionary and written in your vocabulary notebook.
While reading the dictionary, control what you can find around the new word. In most of the cases you will see the root of the new word and many other members of the same word family. It is very easy to learn them together. You have to learn only the root, the others will almost stick in your memory.
In the dictionary compounds and expressions can be also found near your new word. And at the end it is worth learning a proverb if it contains your new word.
An easy example: friend, friendly, friendship, unfriendly
to make friends with sy
A friend in need is a friend indeed.
And now there is a very good way to use your vocabulary notebook in a creative way. As soon as you have collected a good sum of new words, don't start to read an memorize them, but mask the English side of the sheet and look at only the other side with the word in your mother tounge. Try to remember and find them out instead of looking at them and being sleepy in some minutes. If you succeeded, put a sign next to the word. If you didn't, read the solution and go on.
Decide how often a week you are going to revise the list of new words and put the second, third, fourth etc. signs next to the word.
Vocabulary teaching book method
There are a lot of vocabulary teaching books edited. You have to have a look around your local book shop and choose among them. Most of them classify the words by topics. For example they collect the most important words about "Family", "Describing people", "The weather", "Shopping" etc. They usually give you some filling gapes exercises and some pattern compositions. After learning the vocabulary and doing the exercises in a unit, now it is you who has to write a composition of your own. Then you will need a teacher to correct it. You also have to learn and tell your composition to your teacher, who will correct your pronunciation.
The best vocabulary teaching books also have CD-roms enclosed. They can offer you varied exercises even games with the new words.
Introduction
There are so many ways to learn vocabulary effectively and there is no rule about which of them you should use. First you have to be aware of your personal facilities and abilities. You must have time and silent circumstances, you need a good dictionary or/and a vocabulary teaching book, other books, internet access or CD-roms. Choose the means that are most lovable for you.
Among your personal abilities your good memory and strong willpower are the most important. If your memory is poor, you have to have even stronger willpower. If you don't have either of them, you won't speak English.
Learning vocabulary is hard work like wood cutting. Nevertheless, you should enjoy it. You are in a treasury and everything can be yours.
Some ways you can choose among:
1. Vocabulary teaching book method.
2. Reading English texts method.
3. Dictionary method.
An optimistic man can see the light at the end of the tunnel. A pessimistic man can't see the light at the end of the tunnel. A realistic man can see two lights in the middle of the tunnel. The locomotive engineer can see three crazy men on the rails.
God is everywhere. My father is also everywhere. Except for here.
(Péter Esterházy, Hungarian writer)
My third story
It was like a funny video on youtube. But I recorded it by my eyes only. This is the 'script' of the 'video'.
Looking out of my window, I can see the main street with very heavy traffic. On the other side of the street there is a parking zone. Last Wednesday I saw a one-month-old kitten sitting between two parking cars. I couldn't hear what it said but I saw it miaowing. It was a very dangerous place for a baby cat near those cars, really. It was totally lost.
A woman passed next to the cat, she stroked it and told something I didn't hear again. She went on. But only some steps. She stopped, paused, thought and turned back. She wanted to catch the kitten but this time it was scared and ran away. While the woman was chasing it a man arrived. He saw the woman's failure, ran after tha cat, caught it, gave it to the woman who put it into her handbag. The man and the woman left in different directions.
Dear readers, you can decide who was the winner among four of us: the woman, the man, the kitten and me.
I love my native city Budapest, which is very cosmopolitan involving tourists and citizens from all over the world. It is similar to ESL, you know. I have been going to the same shopkeeper for a long time because his shop sells cheeper and there is a great choice of goods. The customers call him as 'our Chinese shopkeeper' or 'Uncle Steve' although I don't think Steven would be his real first name.
One day just before Beijing Olympic games I went to him and asked, 'Do you think China will win the Olympics?'. And what do you think he answered?
He said he wasn't Chinese but Vietnamese.
I was ashamed.
I have a private student who indends to emigrate into Britain. She is 35 now and a tailor in Budapest, Hungary. Her English knowledge improves fast. One day I asked her to repeat one of the units. She said, 'I should repeat all my life'.
What kind of messages shall I send to the cyber space?
I have been taking part in ESL chat since 2005 and I have enjoyed its universal atmoshpere. So I'll write my favourite stories that can be taken into all over the world not considering asl, you know. They may be foolish or wise, give them some minutes, please.
Perhaps I should send messages into the cyber space. But will I get any answers?
