Archive for October, 2007
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Tuesday, October 16th, 2007How many months, years do we need to learn English? My story, Part 1.
Tuesday, October 16th, 2007Well, this question was very hard to answer many years ago. People used to say we needed a certain period of time to learn English. False! It´s been almost ten years since I started to study English and I can tell I still have so much to learn. Our life is our best school.
I have to confess I had to teach English to really be into it. I had a lot of fun. Every class made investigate and improve my pronunciation and teaching skills. This was one of the best ways to keep my goal of learning English.
Television
Do you have cable TV at home? You are lucky! . Let me tell you, if you do not take advantage of this tool, it would be a shame. This helped so much. The news, in English! , Entertainment, in English! Music, in English! Everything must in English. CNN, ABC, MTV, CBS, BBC and so many others helped to improve my listening.
By the way, do you know what CC means on TV? ![]()
This system is a powerful tool to practice your reading and listening. I still use it. can you believe it?
A question, how will I speak a language I cannot understand very clear? The best way to understand the spoken words is by listening. We must learn HOW to listen. It is not a matter of hearing. I can hear people talking, but I wouldn´t have a clue of what they are talking about. You know this point.
Music
Music helps me a lot. When I listen to a British singer, wow!!! or someone from Australia. It is a challenge! I don’t feel disappointed when I do not understand their accent very well. It is the opposite. I have to face new things. Of course, I am not saying we have to listen every noise. I mean some crazy music in the modern life.
Internet
I am subscribed to several newspapers, blogs and forums. These are good tools to practice our reading and reading comprehension as well. What if we find an unknown word or slang? Are we going to write it down and put it on a list? That is OK. I use an offline monolingual dictionary. Just click on it and that`s it.
Using Youtube.com to learn English
(To be continued)
You can bookmark my URL, Thanks
The English Dictionary I use
Friday, October 5th, 2007For many years I have been using a nice tool. This is a monolingual Dictionary. That is what we need !!! If we are learning English, then, we must understand all new vocabulary in English. Don’t you think ?
It is not easy at the beginning, but the key is we do not want depend on our native language.
Here’s a screenshot for you.
As you can see, it has many features . What I like the most is the explanations in the same language. You can also see the difference between a noun and a verb for the word you are looking up.
JUST CRTL + W on a word
From their website:
WordWeb is a free English thesaurus and dictionary for Windows, and can be used to look up words from within almost any program in just one click. It works off-line, but can also look up words in web references such as the Wikipedia encyclopedia. Features of the free version include:
| Definitions and synonyms Proper nouns Related words Pronunciations |
150 000 root words 120 000 synonym sets Look up words in almost any program |
You can visit their Website. Remember you can use the free version.
Free*. No SpyWare. No AdWare. No viruses. Works off-line.
THIS IS THE LINK : http://wordweb.info/free/
