Tuesday, February 2, 2016

Good morning,

Here is a listening activity, click on this link and answer the following questions:

1.     What is the speaker’s name and expertise?

      Her name's Tristiam. 
      Her expertise is vocabulary acquisition.  

2.     List all the different effective ways to learn new vocabulary that the lady has mentioned in her talk; use present simple tense to write the steps.
     Firstly,  we can use reading materials as sources of new words.
     Secondly, she discusses strategies to help us remember new words.
     Finally, she gives us some examples how we make learning our new words fun.
   

3.     How many parts in the talk?
     There are three parts in the talk. 

1.       Where do you find new words? How do you know what they means?
2.       How you can make sure you remember them for more than a week?
3.       How to have fun when learning new words?

4.     What is a ‘Word Journal’? What you need to do with it?
     A word journal is where you can write new words down, and update, and review regularly. You can organize your words in different ways: alphabetically, by theme, group by parts of speech, in relation to a text.
    

5.     What were the examples that she has mentioned with the words family and collocations?
     For one word, you can list the group related word all belong the same word family. If your new word just a noun support, you can add verb to support, the adjective supportive, another noun supporter and maybe an antonym. The way you can increase lexicon exponentially. You can also learn word collocations. Collocations are words that occur together in order. For instance, we say black and white, not white and black.  

6.     Use the following table to learn the new vocabulary and then add any new word that you find it hard for you:

Word	Definition	Sentence
Demystify	remove the mystery from	I want to demystify some issues related to learning vocabulary.
Repertoire	the skill used in a particular field	The more you read, the bigger repertoire words and phrases.
Infinite	having no limits or boundaries	It's infinite source text choose magazines that interested you and challenge the mind.
Encounter	a casual or unexpected convergence	You should also pay special attention to unfamiliar words how they're used when you encounter them.
Lexicon	a language user's knowledge of words
Exponentially	in an exponential manner
Collocations	a grouping of words in a sentence

Hello, all. Thank you for inviting me to your class to talk to you about learning new vocabulary. My name's Tristiam. for years I've been teaching languages skills to students of different ages, levels, and needs. From young kids in grade 2, to journalism students at college level, to adult ESL learner. My area of expertise is vocabulary acquisition. So in my talk today, I want to focus on effective ways of learning new words. I'm sure all of you have experienced moments when you want to say something. Of course, this usually happens when you have detention the whole table of people and you forget that word. And make it worse, you can't think any other word whose meaning is similar or you try to have intelligent conversation on the topic that you are expert on and you really want to impress other people. But the sentences sound so simplistic poor vocabulary. How frustrating! We've all been there. I hope that my talk today will demystify some issues related to learning vocabulary and help you develop your own strategies. I'll begin by telling you briefly what I'm going to cover.

• First, I'll talk about how you can use reading materials as sources of new words.
• Then, I'll discuss strategies to help you remember newly learned words.
• Finally, I'll give you some examples how you make learning your new vocabulary fun.

If you have any question or want me to in-liberate something that interest you, just feel free to ask me at any time, okay? So, let's begin.

Where do you find new words? How do you know what they mean and how you can make sure you remember them for more than a week? Well, research show that you want to improve your vocabulary, you need become an avid reader. Most vocabulary is learned through reading stories, articles, books and other literature. It is important that you read different text on different topics. Use the word wide web. It's infinite source of text. Chose magazines that interest you and challenge your mind. The more you read, the bigger your repertoire of words and phrases. But simply reading is often not enough which brings to my next point: While you're reading, you should also pay special attention to unfamiliar words and how they're used. When you encounter an unfamiliar word, look it up! If you don't have access to a dictionary or the internet, then ask a friend or guess the meaning of the word from context the sentence. Often the words around it will help you to figure out the meaning of the word. The main thing is to read a lot and pay attention to how words are used while you are reading. That brings us to the next part of my talk: How you can make sure you remember the words you learned? Well,

• First of all, it's a good idea to write them down. Where you write them it's your choice. But it's good idea to keep word journal or some kind of list you can update, and review regularly. I think the pocket-size hard-cover journal is good choice. You can organize your words in different ways: alphabetically, by theme, group by parts of speech, in relation to a text...Whatever works for you.
• Secondly, you can write down not just new word but also words that go with it. For example, for one word you can list a group of related words that all belong to the same word family. If your new word is just noun support, you can add the verb to support: the adjective supportive, another noun supporter and maybe an antonym. This way you can increase lexicon exponentially. You can also learn word collocation if they're any. Collocations are words that often occur together in specific order. For instance, we say black and white, not white and black. Or make a mistake, not do a mistake. Write them down and if you have time, make your own sentence with them. This way you remember them better.
• Finally, I promise I'll talk about how to have fun whit learning new words. I think the best source of the fun activities with word is the internet. There are hundreds of vocabulary building websites with puzzles or quizzes. Work of the days, you can subscribe to, and even popular dictionary with on line services you can access. You can even go the website of national spelling bee, and listen to words. 

The possibilities are endless. Enjoy them and don't forget to use all those new words you just have learned. Write to your friends, on your blog, on Facebook, on twitter, by email or snail-mail and impress them with your new words. Just don't go over-board. It can be annoying when someone use big or complicated words when simpler ones will do. That's all I have to say for this topic. I'm sure you have many your own experiences with learning new words. May be you would like to share it with us here. Do you have any comment?