Comments for John's EFL Cafe

Comment on Helping a Sincere Language Learner Solve a Puzzle by Sam Claxton

Sam Claxton — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 08:40:57 +0000

I agree. Using V.O.A or BBC should only be attempted by those who have already good knowledge of British or American domestic issues so as to understand the context of the words they are hearing, and so extract the right meaning. A prefered tool for helping listening comprehension could be to listen to English music. Although sometimes hard to understand, they can be a great help as the subjects are related to more social issues and so context can be more easily understood.

Comment on more on improving ‘listening comprehension’ by Núria and Tere

Núria and Tere — Wed, 28 May 2008 10:05:01 +0000

Dear John,

You mention the importance of the subtitles in language learning. We wanted to know, though, if the subtitles to be shown to pre-intermediate learners should be in English or Spanish.

Thank you for your attention
Tere and Núria

Comment on Follow up to ‘Listen harder and longer’ by jen

jen — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 02:40:01 +0000

John, you must be an amazing teacher! You have a great idea on how to explain everything in an interesting and challenging way.

I didn’t know about this before, to tell you honestly, from now on your recommendation will be my guiding star as I continue to learn more. By the way, I do love and know the complete lyrics of that two songs, which makes more interesting to me.

Comment on Follow up to ‘Listen harder and longer’ by Michael Yang

Michael Yang — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 06:51:47 +0000

Hey John, I love the English songs idea. And actually that’s how I’m making progress all the time. I started with a song called ‘Bridge Over The Troubled Water’ by Simon&Garfunkel and ‘You Are Not Alone’ by Michael Jackson, both are slow songs. And later I come into ‘She’ll Be Coming Round The Mountain’ (I really underestimated the difficulty of this song, since it’s for children.), which was fast enough to make my tongue twisted. Anyway, that’s my 14-years’ old story. I check the lyrics website and believe me, I got a better one -www.sing365.com- Let me explain why this is better. I like Lene Marlin’s songs. You cannot find ‘Still Here’ on the former one, but you can find it on the latter one. By the way, the learning ‘phrases’ instead of ’one word at a time’ is also part of theory of Li Yang’s. So I insist that simply saying ’shut up’ to him is a little bit unfair, what do you say John?

Sincerely

Michael Yang

Comment on more on improving ‘listening comprehension’ by Jan

Jan — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 17:33:51 +0000

Dear John,

I am from the USA and will begin a TEFL course in the coming year. Your information is invaluable for a newbie teacher like me. Gathering information like this and many other wonderful tips I have been reading from other teachers all over the internet is the reason I am here in the first place….to learn.

But….the best thing is that I can apply all of these wondefrul listening ideas to the Spanish lessons I am taking myself. I am teaching myself through workbooks and audio CDs at present and will soon begin listening to Spanish TV programs. Occasionally I have listened to radio programs, but they speak much too fast for me to comprehend at my current level of understanding.

Thanks again for all of your wonderful tips and encouragement to all of us who are learning a different language.

Warmest regards,
Jan in Kentucky, USA

Comment on Helping a Sincere Language Learner Solve a Puzzle by jini

jini — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 07:12:14 +0000

Hello John,
I have a problem.
When I write mails or articles, I can pay attention to tense and person. For example, I should use ‘He doesn’t’ instead of ‘He don’t’. But while speaking, I don’t have enough time to think about these details because I need to think what I should say next. I have tried to slow down my speaking speed to care these issues, but once I begin to speak, I forget this point. I also keep practising listening, but I found it is really difficult for me to improve my spoken english. Could you please give me some advice on this?
Thanks a lot.

Comment on something to think about by roger

roger — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 09:43:49 +0000

Hi, John,
I keep practising listening everyday whenever I go home on the road. But I become a little confused now because most of my materials are Radio, like BBC/VOA which are all about political news. I found these political news might not be suitable to listen because even though I can understand those, sometimes, I still can’t understand the oral English in the normal life, in other words, my listening and speaking proficiency are still not be improved. So, I was wondering whether I shouldn’t listen those Radio again? Is it better to choose another more suitable listening materials? If you think so, what kind of materials should I choose?

Thanks so much.

Comment on A very useful new habit - learning synonyms by Adah Huang

Adah Huang — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 14:40:42 +0000

Very good suggestion!

Yeah, it is a BIG problem that Chinese learners of English repeatedly use the same word. Sometimes I also found myself cannot avoid using the same word for several times. The reason behind this might be that we don’t have enough active choices in our vocabulary bank. Especially when we speak under tension or pressure, all we have on our mind are some highly frequent words (or active words). But as you pointed out, we should definitely try to avoid using the same word over and over again. That means we can always try to remember synonyms when we look up a new word in a dictionary.

Your entries show that you are very patient when explaining things. I also like the way you give examples! Very effective and direct!

Comment on more on improving ‘listening comprehension’ by johnslinn

johnslinn — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 00:35:52 +0000

Dear Tulika, thank you for your comment. You are like many other people I have taught over the years since I first came to China. In fact, it is people like you who have motivated me to create this blog in the first place. Do not be discouraged by your current results with your English. Keep reading this blog and think carefully about each entry I post and your English WILL improve. In fact, read each entry several times if you can. Your conscious mind can only grasp a small amount of what you are ‘taking in’ at any moment through your eyes, ears and other senses. Re-reading the entries here will allow you to understand at a deeper and deeper level - each and every time you re-read them. To help you improve your reading skills, pay attention not only to the ‘meaning’ of what I write but look at the ’structure’ - the way the words are put together to form phrases and sentences. I usually rewrite each blog entry four or five times. I write it and then I read it. As I read it I look for ways to make it clearer and better. I keep doing this with each blog entry until I feel it is helpful for the reader - you. Editing in this way by going over and over what I have written helps me to arrive at a better ‘end product’ which is what you read.

Unfortunately the school system indirectly trained you NOT to do this with your own ‘work’ because you were so loaded down with so much homework that you did everything as quiclky as possible so that you could move on to the next piece of homework. The result was that you developed a habit of doing things quickly and ‘moving on’ to the next thing without ever going back to edit or correct anything you had done.

Do yourself a favor, from now on, decide to s-l-o-w d-o-w-n and enjoy learning from one ‘thing’ by going over and over it - each time looking for MORE from the same thing- be it a movie, a song or an article you are reading.

I often tell students like you that it is much better for your language skill development to watch 1 English language movie 5 times than it is to watch 5 movies 1 time each. The reason is; as i have been telling you, that EACH time you re-watch the movie [or re-listen to an English song, or re-read a passage] your brain/mind will get MORE FROM THE SAME THING. Of course part of you wants to see the ‘5′ movies. That’s great for ‘fun’. But for purposes of learning, repetition [doing something over and over again] will bring you many more benefits. I promise this is true!!!!!!!!!!!!

By the way, when watching western movies, choose some with language that is not too quick and have the English subtitles on so your eyes will see the words as your ears hear them. This helps your brain connect the written word with it’s sound. Very useful!!!!

There is a site you may like to visit that may also give you some help. But please, before you click on this link and go there, STOP, Close Your Eyes For A Moment and Let your brain ‘digest’ what you just read.
————————————————————————————–
Here is the link i just mentioned: http://www.englishclub.com/listening/everywhere.htm

Comment on Hello world! by Alex

Alex — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 06:53:57 +0000

Hi John, nice to meet you in the virtual place.
Thanks your daily work for improvement our English capability. I’ll study your blog from the start. haha…

Have a nice Chinese National Holiday and take some beautiful photos.