Party Time

Ready for a "False Front Party" (Halloween Masquerade), Hangzhou, China, with Picasso the calico (2005).

Can you be a good distance learner?

Learning online is not always easy. It takes discipline and commitment.

Here's a link to a great article on six qualities of highly successful online learners:

http://www.distance-education.org/Articles/Are-You-Cut-Out-For-Distance-Education--27.html

Can you say you have all of these qualities?

Families held together by love and Skype

Do you ever stop to think how life was for separated family members in the days before technologies such as Skype enabled free long distance phone calls?

Please click the link to see some fascinating portraits of families "held together by love and Skype". Photographer John Clang captured these "strange moments of togetherness".

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/09/here-but-not-here-photographs-of-families-held-together-by-love-skype/262053/

Do you think virtual communication contains an ambiguity; a sense of being here but not here?

How do older members of your family feel about technologies like Skype?

Can families remain intact despite the pressures of modern living?

How the atmosphere affects the way people eat

A study has found that people consumed 18 percent fewer calories when the music and lighting in a restaurant was softer.

"When we softened the lights and softened the music in the restaurant it didn't change what people ordered, but what it did do was lead them to eat less and made them more satisfied and happier,"

The study has implications not only for restaurants but for everyone who wishes to eat more healthfully.

"If softer music and softer lighting seem to get people to eat less in a fast food situation, why not try the same thing at home?" said psychologist Wansink.

Read the whole article here: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/31/uk-restaurants-atmosphere-idUSLNE87U00Q20120831

Official IDP Australia IELTS Facebook Page

IDP Australia's official Facebook page, with information and tips,is at https://www.facebook.com/ieltsessentials.

Check it out now!

Free online education

Getting into debt to study at university is becoming less and less necessary as free, high quality online courses from Universities such as Yale, Harvard, MIT and many more become available.


Below is a link to a list of 144 such free courses in areas ranging from computers and engineering to law and English language.


Thank you once again, internet!


"All education is self-education. Period. It doesn’t matter if you’re sitting in a college classroom or a coffee shop. We don’t learn anything we don’t want to learn.

Those people who take the time and initiative to pursue knowledge on their own are the only ones who earn a real education in this world. Take a look at any widely acclaimed scholar, entrepreneur or historical figure you can think of. Formal education or not, you’ll find that he or she is a product of continuous self-education.

If you’re interested in learning something new, this article is for you. Broken down by subject and/or category, here are several top-notch self-education resources I have bookmarked online over the past few years."


For the list, go to http://www.marcandangel.com/2010/11/15/12-dozen-places-to-self-educate-yourself-online/


(*"A dozen" means twelve. We usually buy eggs by the dozen or half dozen).

Take breaks to help your mind process information effectively

Do you have difficulty learning and reviewing new vocabulary? Are you looking for ways to improve your memory? Research shows that REST is key to memory. "Psychologists have found that brief resting periods after learning aids memory. In studies, when people take a little rest after learning, say, a string of numbers, they do better in recall than other people who've been given another task straight away. It is thought that this little rest helps consolidate the memory, making it easier to retrieve. On the other hand if you go straight on to another task, the memory doesn't have a chance to solidify." After a period of reading or learning, it's important to take a short break of five to ten minutes before moving to the next challenge. Relax and switch off for a while. In fact, during this period, your brain will be very busy sorting and storing data. The complete article is at: http://www.spring.org.uk/2012/08/memory-enhanced-by-a-simple-break-after-reading.php?

Environment, Australia -- Listen and read

Many of my "best" students improve their English almost without trying. It's because they have many interests outside language - in technology, sport, fashion, music, world issues and more - which they follow online in English.

As these students follow their interests, their thinking broadens and deepens, their circle of English-speaking friends widens, and their language skills develop, too.

Here's a link to an interesting story one student sent to me:


http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2012/s3574584.htm

It's about the use of an insect to control a destructive, introduced plant species in Australia.

You can listen, then read, listen and read again -- or find whatever combination works best for you!

Tips for IELTS Speaking Test

Tips for IELTS Speaking Test

Tip 1 In Part 1, the questions will mostly be about familiar topics: personal information and daily life. Take the opportunity to relax, adjust to the examiner and answer the questions as naturally as possible.

Tip 2 Candidates shouldn’t just provide one-word answers in Part 1, but it isn't necessary to stretch one question out for minutes either! The answer to 'Do you have any brothers or sisters?’ should not be as short as 'Yes', nor as long as 'My eldest sister is 5 foot 2 inches tall and her birthday is 7 weeks after mine. I last saw her at New Year, together with my younger sister, who has long dark hair and blue eyes and who works a nurse, and my brother, who is an excellent soccer player and who... (etc.)!'. Again, be natural. Neither of those responses would feel right in an interview or other semi-formal exchange, would they? For different questions, slightly longer or shorter answers will be appropriate. Part 1 takes 4 to 5 minutes in total.

Tip 3 Avoid giving "rehearsed" answers. Examiners can recognise these very easily. Prepare and practise for the Speaking test but do not over-prepare.

Tip 4 Focus on meaningful interaction rather than the display of language. Remember to make eye contact and use your face and body language to help communication.

Tip 5 Practise with a friend and record your speaking on a cassette. This will help you to find your weak points and improve. Listen for bad speaking habits such as repeating words or sounds when you are thinking, overuse of certain words (like "so" or "for example") and basic grammar errors. Your friend can also tell you about nervous habits, poor body language and whether you are speaking loudly enough.

Tip 6 You should practise speaking English every day. Talk to yourself if nobody else is available. Practice both the test format and everyday speaking.

Tip 7 Listen to the news and read magazines and newspapers in English as much as possible. This will help not only your language but also give you ideas of what to talk about.

Useful websites:

http://www.ielts.org/   (You can also order practice materials from this website.)

Be in the present!

IELTS Reading – 10 top tips IELTS Reading – 10 top tips |

Adapted from Dominic Cole's IELTS Blog http://www.dcielts.com/ielts-reading/10-top-tips/#ixzz1yjjMyv8Z

For many academic IELTS candidates reading is the hardest paper and the one which requires most training. Following are suggestions for different ways to make that training as efficient as possible. These pieces of advice are fairly general and are designed to help you think about the best way to train yourself in IELTS reading and how to avoid some common mistakes.

1. Beat the fear – read as much as possible

My first suggestion is to read as much as possible. By this I don’t mean do endless IELTS practice tests, I mean do as much general reading as possible. I suggest you focus on reading short articles on topics that interest you or on topics that are common in IELTS – newspapers and magazines are a great resource here.

One reason why this is such a good idea is that many candidates freeze in the reading believing it is too hard and so fail to get their band score. If, however, you read enough “native English” before the exam, you will become more and more confident in looking at texts where you don’t understand every word. Confidence is a very important concept in IELTS. Find something that interests you and read. That’s all.

2. Improve key skills – skimming and scanning and reading in detail

A major problem in the exam is the length of the texts and you will not have time to read them all carefully. You need to train your speed reading skills so that you can read as efficiently as possible. Two important skills are skimming which is reading quickly for general meaning and scanning which is looking for specific information.

You may sometimes see advice saying that you don’t need to read in detail. Incorrect. Bad advice. You shouldn’t read the whole text in detail but you will need to parts of the text in detail – if you want to get the right answer. Put simply, skimming and scanning are useful skills to help show you where the answer might be: reading in detail tells you what the answer is.

3. Time management – experiment to see what works

Because the texts are so long you need to have a definite strategy for how you manage your time in the exam to make sure you finish on time. This means deciding:

how long you look at the text before answering questions

how long you spend on each question

how long you spend on each group of questions

how long you spend on each text

do you leave time at the end to go back at look at unanswered questions?

There is a lot to consider here. You will find books and websites that insist you do it their way. They may claim to have a magic formula and that you must do this or you must do that. Ignore them. Their advice may be good for some people but not for you.

The key point here is that different learners have different styles and different needs. Much the best advice here is to experiment and try different approaches and see what works best for you.

4. Focus on the question – avoid careless errors

The texts in IELTS are typically quite hard, so candidates spend as much time as possible reading the texts. Mistake. Why? Well, a huge amount of mistakes are made by not focusing enough on the exact question. It can be easy if you are in a hurry to miss a word such as “always” or “often”: the problem is those sorts of words can change the meaning of questions.

There is an easy solution to this problem: it is to go back and look at the question before you write in the answer. Make sure that the question says what you think it says. You will normally save yourself 2/3 marks this way.

5. Learn the exam – know the different types of questions

There are 8/9 different types of reading question that examiners may use. Before the exam, you should make yourself familiar with each type of question as they are slightly different. Look at the different types of reading questions as a first step to see what the question types are. The next stage is to experiment and see what techniques you are going to use for each type of question.

This may mean that you approach different types of questions differently.

Details of question types here: http://www.ielts.org/test_takers_information/test_sample/academic_reading_sample.aspx

6. Train yourself, don’t test yourself

One common mistake candidates make is to practise exam questions too much. Exam practice is important to learn the timing (3 above) and learn the question types (5 above), but that does not mean that every time you practise reading you need to do it in exam conditions. My suggestion is that you do some “open book” tests where you can see the answers as you do the questions. This way you will learn how examiners set questions and how to find the answers. If you just test yourself, this may not happen.

7. Learn how to underline

This is a very specific piece of advice. You may believe it is wrong to write in books and generally I’d agree with you, but IELTS is different. A very strong suggestion is that you should underline words in the text in the exam. There are at least two reasons for this:

if you underline key words in the text, it can help you organise the text and this will save you time in the exam

if you find an answer, it is sensible to underline the part of the passage that relates to the question as a check (see 4 above) and to write the number of the question next to it in case you find a better answer later

How you do this will depend on you and your style. Some people underline different types of words in different ways. I’d only add that less is more: if you underline too much, it can become confusing.

8. Beware word matching – be careful with key words

One very common mistake is to match a word in the question with a word in the text and to think you have found your answer. It is almost never that simple and I am tempted to say that if the words do match, then that is not your answer. What you are normally looking for are either synonyms (words with a similar meaning) or paraphrases (short bits of text that say the same as the question.

One reason candidates make this mistake is that teachers (myself included) tend to say look for key words in the question. This is helpful advice to show you where the answer might be and which paragraph it might be in. After that you need to go back and read the whole question carefully to see what the answer is.

9. The questions follow the text – normally

This is a very practical piece of advice and could save you a lot of wasted time. Typically, the questions will come in the order of the text: so the answer to question 3 will come after the answer to question 2. This can be very helpful in the exam if you are a quick worker who goes through the questions once for the easy ones and then a second time for the harder ones. If you have answer 4 underlined and answer 6 underlined then you know where answer 5 must come.

One word of warning. In certain types of question (eg paragraph matching) the order of the questions are jumbled (not in the order of the text).

10. The questions or the text – which do you read first?

There is no one right answer here.

Text books tend to advise you to read the text quickly first so that you know how the text is organised. This helps as you will save time later by knowing which paragraph will contain the answer. This can be a good approach, particularly for high level candidates provided you don’t spend too much reading and you have notes/underlinings afterwards.

Many teachers say that you should read the questions first and not read the whole passage. There is logic here, too. Normally, you do not have to understand the meaning of the whole passage to answer the questions, so why waste time reading it? This approach can work, especially for lower level candidates who might not understand too much of the passage anyway.

However, there is always a third way. Life is not black and white. It is quite possible to decide to use different strategies for certain question types. In paragraph matching you are going to have to read the whole passage, so you might decide to read first then. In the short answer questions, you might decide you look at the questions first. As ever, you decide.

The only bad piece of advice is the one that tells you you must do it their way. Ignore them. The only right way is the way that works.

11. Fill out the answer sheet

Okay, this is an eleventh tip. Practise filling out the answer sheet before you get to the exam. Too many  avoidable mistakes are made this way. I’d go further: whenever you practise IELTS reading, use an answer sheet. Two points:

when you go through the answers in your practice book, make sure that you have written the answer exactly as it is in the book – anything else will lose you the point

you need to fill out your answers in the 60 minutes.

IELTS Reading – 10 top tips | Dominic Cole's IELTS Blog http://www.dcielts.com/ielts-reading/10-top-tips/#ixzz1yjjMyv8Z 

IELTS Myths and Rumours

IELTS Myths and Rumours -- here's a good summary:

 http://www.ieltsessentials.com/know_the_test/myths.aspx .

What's The Best Way To Learn A Foreign Language? 


The wrong and right way to learn a foreign language                 Source: http://ht.ly/1kC1bM                    


By Valerie Strauss

This was written by linguist Stephen Krashen, professor emeritus at the University of Southern California, is an educational researcher and activist. He has written hundreds of articles and books in the fields of second language acquisition, bilingual education, and reading.

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By Stephen Krashen

In a recent issue of the Washington Post Express, Andrew Eil, a staffer who works at the U.S. State Department on international climate change, recommends that foreign language students start with “boot camp:” Study grammar very hard, drill vocabulary every day, and force yourself to talk. This regimen, he claims, put him in a position to develop high levels of competence in several languages; he now speaks Russian and French fluently and can converse in Mandarin and Kazakh.

Most of us who have taken foreign languages classes that emphasize heavy grammar instruction and memorizing vocabulary would disagree with his recommendations, and so does the research.

The results of studies done over the last few decades by a wide variety of researchers and published in scientific journals support this view: We do not master languages by hard study and memorization, or by producing it. Rather, we acquire language when we understand what people tell us and what we read, when we get “comprehensible input.” As we get comprehensible input through listening and reading, we acquire (or “absorb”) the grammar and vocabulary of the second language.

Studies show repeatedly that intensive grammar study and memorizing vocabulary are of limited value: Students in classes that provide lots of comprehensible input (e.g. methods such as TPRS) consistently do better than students in traditional grammar-based classes on tests that involve real communication and do just as well, and often better, on grammar tests. These students have acquired the grammar and vocabulary of the language naturally, and can use what they have acquired in real communicative situations. They are also more likely to continue foreign language study.

Grammar

The complexity of the grammatical system to be mastered makes it highly unlikely that it can be taught and learned: Linguists have not even described the grammatical system of any language completely and many rules are forbiddingly complex, with numerous exceptions.

Even very complex rules, however, can be acquired (or “absorbed”) through comprehensible input, especially through reading. Here is one of many examples from the research: In one study, English speakers who spoke Spanish as a second language were tested on their ability to use the Spanish subjunctive in conversation. The subjunctive is of interest as it is considered a difficult structure to master. Researchers considered a number of predictors of subjunctive proficiency: amount of formal study of Spanish, amount of formal study of the subjunctive, years of residence in a Spanish-speaking country, and the amount of reading done in Spanish. The only significant predictor was reading in Spanish.

Vocabulary

There is a substantial research literature showing that vocabulary knowledge comes largely from comprehensible input, especially reading, in both first and second languages. Many second language speakers acquire enormous vocabularies, and it is highly doubtful that they did it through vocabulary study: In one study, it was reported that speakers of Spanish as a second language who were avid readers in Spanish had larger Spanish vocabularies than native speakers of Spanish who did not do a lot of reading.

Forced speech

Should language students force themselves to talk, as Eil advises? Research informs us that at beginning stages, highly successful second language acquirers often experience a substantial “silent period,” a time when they produce little or no language. The silent period is nearly universal for children acquiring a second language, and there are entire cultures in which second language acquirers are expected to experience a silent period. Also, successful comprehensible-input based methods do not force students to speak.

Forcing language students to speak before they are ready not only makes them extremely uncomfortable but does nothing for language acquisition. Speaking doesn’t cause language acquisition; rather, the ability to speak is the result of comprehensible input.

Comprehensible input at all stages

Andrew Eil has clearly done well in foreign language acquisition, and he acknowledges the value of the experiences he had during his residence in Russia, Kazakhstan, France and China over several years, from the reading he did, the movies he saw, the many conversations he had with others, and other kinds of “informal, friendly interaction.” In other words, he improved thanks to comprehensible input.

Current research strongly suggests that comprehensible input is the way we acquire language at all stages. The kind of “boot camp” Eil recommends is neither necessary nor desirable.

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Sources:

Comprehensible input: Krashen, S. 2003. Explorations in Language Acquisition and Use. Heinemann.

Effectiveness of comprehensible-input based instruction: Krashen, op. cit.; TPRS studies: Varguez, K. 2009. Traditional and TPR Storytelling instrution in beginning high school Spanish classroom. International Journal of Foreign Language Teaching 5 (1): 2-11; Watson, B. 2009. A comparison of TPRS and traditional foreign language instruction at the high school level. International Journal of Foreign Language Teaching 5 (1): 21-24.

Acquisition of Spanish subjunctive: Stokes, J., Krashen, S., and Kartchner, J. 1998. Factors in the acquisition of the present subjunctive in Spanish: The role of reading and study. ITL: Review of Applied Linguistics 121-122:19-25.

Highly successful second language acquirers often experience a substantial “silent period”; Krashen, S. 2000. What does it take to acquire language? ESL Magazine, 3(3), 22-23. (available at http:www. sdkrashen.com)

Cultures in which a silent period is expected: Sorenson, A. 1967. Multilingualism in the northwest Amazon. American Anthropologist, 69 (6), 670-684.