English Learning and the Brain Theories

Language learning and the brain - a layman's view

Monday: Understanding a Non-Native Speaker

Understanding a Non-Native Speaker

Just in case?

Attendance in a course is something very important for one progresses and it demands a lot of discipline and responsibility. Unfortunately, those skills are not innate gifts; therefore, they need to be developed in order to help students to become learners.

As you all know, only learners of the language can master and manage better their success in their studies, however, not all students can be turned into learners as most of them seek a short-cut, an easy way to get what they want; thus, they usually head to a dead-end where they will have no other choice than return to the beginning of their journey and start everything over.

One might be misinterpreted if they start talking about the students’ lack of discipline and responsibility, mainly when it comes to a course which is paid by their company. It is known that when someone has to pay for their own studies, they get it more serious than otherwise. Of course, there are exceptions.

Needless to say that those students, who fail to attend the classes, wanted to study when they enrolled at the course, however, as the time passes, most of them realize that studying that subject was not their priority, therefore, it can be let in standby until they have time to return to it. The question remained is: why don’t they call their teacher to tell it so?

They don’t call their teacher because they think mistakenly that as the course is already paid, they don’t have to waste their time to let the teacher or the school know that they will be absent and so on and so further. By not doing that they make it clear that their course is not important, neither are their teachers.

This lack of respect could have been avoided if those students had had the decency of calling their human resource and warned them about their course abandonment and given their vacancies to somebody else who needs this opportunity. But no, they prefer to keep their teachers and courses waiting for them, just in case, just in case they need it someday.

source: http://www.afrankexperience.com.br/Portugues/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=59:just-in-case&catid=22:artigos&Itemid=20

Related articles: http://migre.me/8WPIv

English Slang – Be Careful When You Use It

by Robert Hewson

Millions of people around the world are trying to learn English or to improve their English.  There are a few things to be careful of when learning English.  

One frustrating thing can be learning how to use English slang properly.  If you learn to use it correctly, your English will sound very natural.  If you use it wrong, you might sound like you were raised in a bad environment and find it hard to get a job.

I remember when I was in the military and one of my fellow soldiers married a woman who spoke no English.  The English she learned was from him and his choice of movies.  The problem was, he spoke bad English slang and his choice of movies were full of colourful language (that means lots of swearing.)  After being married to this man for approximately a year, I had the opportunity to speak with his wife.  It was shocking!

We have a phrase in the USA – that person talks like a truck driver!  This is not an indictment on truck drivers.  We all know there are many educated and well speaking people who drive trucks, but the stereotype is that they are uneducated.  This woman, who might have spoken like an educated proper lady in her home country, had now learned such bad English slang that it was going to have a tremendous effect on her life when she got to the USA.  The jobs she could get would be limited and the friends she would acquire would also now be limited.  A typical American would be shocked to listen to her, and probably not let them near their children!   But this woman thought it was normal.  This is an example of what learning bad English slang can do.

 If you want to learn English slang so you can speak more natural, you need to make sure you know if it is good slang or bad slang.  People learn English so they can compete and communicate more effectively in the world.  Make sure the English slang you learn is proper, or else you will spend your time learning things that will make you less valuable in the business world rather than more valuable.

How should you learn good slang?  

A great way to do this is to watch the evening news from the USA.  CBS, NBC, ABC evening news programs are all available online.  If you are an advanced learner and they say some things you don't understand, chances are that it is slang.  Because it is used by respected broadcasters, it is acceptable slang.

Source: http://m.articlesbase.com/languages-articles/english-slang-be-careful-when-you-use-it-5168072.html

Taking the Frustration Out of Phrasal Verbs

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster -- English teacher Lida Baker joins us from Los Angeles to talk about phrasal verbs. The first word is a verb. The second word, sometimes even a third, is usually a preposition. Phrasal verbs have a reputation for being tough for English learners.  So what does Lida Baker think?

LB: "I think that is a myth."

RS: "Really."

LB: "Phrasal verbs are not hard to learn, as long as you learn them in a context.  I think what has given phrasal verbs a reputation for being difficult is the way they are traditionally taught, which is that students are given long lists of verbs -- you know, for instance every phrasal verb connected with the word 'go.'  So 'go on,' 'go up,' 'go out,' 'go in,' 'go away,' 'go through,' OK?  That's a very tedious way of learning anything."

RS: "Well, give us some of your strategies."

LB: "All right.  Well, one thing we should keep in mind about phrasal verbs is that they are used a lot more in conversational English than they are in formal English.  So you are going to find a lot of phrasal verbs in conversational settings such as ... "

RS: "Come on [laughter]."

LB: " ... television programs, radio interviews, and pop music is a wonderful, wonderful source for phrasal verbs.  I think the best way to learn, or one of the best ways of learning phrasal verbs is to learn them in everyday contexts.  One good one is people's daily routine.  We 'get up' in the morning, we 'wake up,' we 'put on' our clothes in the morning, we 'take off' our clothes at the end of the day, we 'turn on' the coffee maker or the television set, and of course we 'turn it off' also.  After we eat we 'clean up.'  If we're concerned about our health and our weight, we go to the gym and we ... "

RS: "Work out."

LB: "There you go.  You see, so as far as our daily routine is concerned, there are lots and lots of phrasal verbs.  Another wonderful context for phrasal verbs is traveling.  What does an airplane do?"

AA: "It 'takes off.'"

LB: "It 'takes off,' that's right.  And lots of phrasal verbs connected with hotels.  So when we get to the hotel we 'check
in,' and you can save a lot of money if you ... " 

RS: "Stay -- "

LB: "'Stay over,' right."

AA: "And you just have to make sure you don't get 'ripped off.'"

LB: "That's right!  I'm glad that you mentioned 'ripped off,' because a lot of phrasal verbs are slang, such as ripped off. And most of them do have sort of a formal English equivalent. So to get ripped off means to be treated unfairly ... "

AA: "To be cheated."

LB: "To be cheated, yeah.  And there are lot of other two-word or phrasal verbs that you might find, for instance, in rap
music.  For example, to 'get down' means to, uh -- what does it mean?"

RS: "It means to party, doesn't it?"

LB: "To go to parties."

AA: "Have a good time."

LB: "Right.  Another wonderful context is dating and romance. For example, when a relationship ends two people 'break up.' But when they decide that they've made a mistake and they really are in love and want to be together, they 'call each other up' ... "

RS: "And they 'make up.'"

LB: "And they make up.  Now, if your boyfriend 'breaks up' with you and it's really, really over, then it might take you a few months to 'get over it.'  But, you know, sooner or later you're going to find someone else ... "

AA: "To 'hook up' with -- "

LB: "To hook up with."

AA: " -- to use a current idiom."

LB: "Right.  Or you might meet someone nice at work to 'go out with.'"

RS: "So what would you recommend for a teacher to do, to build these contexts, so that the students can learn from them?"

LB: "I think the best thing for a teacher to do, or for a person learning alone, is to learn the idioms in context.  And there are vocabulary books and idiom books that will cluster the phrasal verbs for the student.  There are also so many wonderful Web sites.  I mean, if you go to a search engine and you just type in 'ESL + phrasal verbs,' you're going to run across -- and there's another one, 'run across' -- you're going to find lots of Web sites that present phrasal verbs in these contexts that I've been talking about.  And also grammar sites which explain the grammar of phrasal verbs, which I haven't gotten into because we just don't have the time to discuss it here.  But in doing my research for this segment I found lots of Web sites that do a really great job of explaining the grammar of phrasal verbs."

AA: Lida Baker writes and edits textbooks for English learners. You can find earlier segments with Lida at voanews.com/wordmaster. And that's WORDMASTER for this week. With Rosanne Skirble, I'm Avi Arditti

Source: http://www.voanews.com/learningenglish/home/Taking-Some-of-the-Frustration-Out-of-Phrasal-Verbs-107247254.html

The Seven Stages

- Teacher, afinal, o que eu preciso saber para aprender, de uma vez por todas, inglês?

- Well, não é o que precisamos aprender e sim COMO aprendemos isso. 

Depois de observar por anos, a jornada de vários estudantes tentando aprender inglês, percebi que os que conseguiam dominar o seu aprendizado efetivamente tinham sete pontos em comum: structuring, savoring, taking risks, tuning, recasting, self-study e going further. 

Para falar inglês é preciso mais que gramática e vocabulário - é necessário, antes de qualquer coisa, saber construir a idéia mentalmente, formular a frase e estruturar aquilo que se quer dizer (structuring). 

A gramática dá dicas de como podemos construir a nossa estrutura, o vocabulário dá palpites e nomes para que possamos usar ao nos comunicar, mas para somar a gramática ao vocabulário e ter o resultado chamado "é isso que eu quero dizer", o aprendizado requer um esforço mental e um trabalho muito bem feito que só terá mesmo efeito se o aprendiz da língua saborear o processo de construir significado - savouring -  e enfrentar o desafio de trabalhar a sua própria motivação para se arriscar além da zona de conforto do ter medo de errar -taking risk - zona esta cheia de desculpas (sou tímido, tenho vergonha, nunca vou aprender, etc), muletas ( livros e cadernos) e boicotes (esse curso é uma %#^*, meu professor é um %#^* - vou desistir!!!).

Uma vez que conseguimos construir  essa fase da nossa trilha e estruturamos a nossa comunicação numa linha satisfatória que dê asas à nossa confiança; a jornada continua, pois o desafio agora será compreender também a estrutura dos outros e esse desafio beira a missão impossível dependendo da origem da pessoa que conversa conosco. Por isso, compreender a diferença entre ouvir e escutar e saber como calibrar e nivelar a nossa comunição e a do outro - tuning - é uma técnica que requer do aprendiz uma compreensão e uma prática real que livro nenhum consegue ensinar.

Para isso é preciso aprender a se auto-corrigir - recasting - muitos estudantes dependem tanto da correção de seus professores que não se perguntam porque estão errando em primeiro lugar. Ora, como é possível aprender algo que erramos sem compreender o PORQUÊ do que erramos? 

De todos os pontos em comum, percebi que o Self-Study era o conceito ideal porque para ser um verdadeiro Learner é preciso sempre ter um pé na escola e outro na independência - autonomy - e para isso, precisamos todos mergulhar profundamente em nosso estudo - go further - e compreender, de uma vez por todas, que o professor não é o Google tradutor nem é dicionário; e muito menos, o professor não é a pessoa que deve vir preparada para a aula. Quem tem que se preparar para aprender é o aluno!!!

Sem seguir esses estágios - The Seven Stages - estamos perdendo o nosso tempo em cursos de línguas. 

Escola boa não ensina - ela ajuda você aprender e não depender do outro sempre que precisar saber algo novo. 

Well... Esse é o segredo para aprender inglês - o único problema é que a maioria escolhe o caminho mais fácil e menos trabalhoso que é continuar, como diria Renato Russo, com as "suas aulinhas de inglês"...

 

Professor Frank

Rephrasing

Sometimes we say things that other people don't understand, or we give the wrong impression.

This is an example conversation where one person says something that the other person thinks is strange.

LUIZ: "English is a very easy language to learn."

IRENE: "What do you mean?"

LUIZ: "Well, what I meant to say was that it is easy if you practise every day."

IRENE: "Oh, right."

Rephrasing expressions
"What I meant to say was…"

"Let me rephrase that…"

"Let me put this another way…"

"Perhaps I'm not making myself clear…"

Back to the beginning
If you're explaining something, and you realise that the other person doesn't understand, you can use the following phrases:

"If we go back to the beginning…"

"The basic idea is…"

"One way of looking at it is…"

"Another way of looking at it is…"

If you forget the English word
If you forget the word you want to use, you can say:

"I can't find the word I'm looking for…"

"I'm not sure that this is the right word, but…"

"What I want to say is…"

Speaking Tip
Don't be afraid to repeat what you're saying, especially if you can do it in a slightly different way.

Source: http://www.english-at-home.com/speaking/rephrasing/