What Is This Blog About?
There is an old saying: “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”
We want to teach you how to fish. Actually, we want to help you improve your English. But we don’t just want you to sit in classes listening to your teacher. We want to help you understand how to learn English, so you can learn effectively on your own.
Looking for something new to read? Well, the news is always new! And you can use the news to improve your English and keep up with world events.
Reading the news can be quick, but it’s not always easy. Read on and find out how to learn some new words, some abbreviations and lots of useful colloquial expressions quickly and easily.
There are many websites where you can practice your listening skills. How many websites do you know that allow you to practice your speaking skills online?
With English Central, you can use to do both these things at once. On English Central, you:
To me, this is the part that makes English Central interesting. The site uses cutting edge computer technology to evaluate the accuracy of your pronunciation. It tells you how clearly you’re speaking, and if your pronunciation is not clear, the site lets you record yourself again, until you get it right.
In an earlier post, we told you about the International Phonetic Alphabet, also known as the IPA.
The IPA is useful for language learners because it tells you exactly how a word ought to be pronounced. For example, when you look up the word “foreign” in the dictionary, the phonetic spelling will appear to you like this:
/ˈfɔrɪn/
The phonetic spelling tells you exactly which vowel to use (/ɔ/) and it tells you where the stress should be (/ˈfɔr…). In other words, it tells you exactly how to pronounce the word.
So how good is your phonetic spelling? Do you think you’re pretty good? Why don’t you take the Phonetic Challenge and find out?
The Phonetic Challenge is one of the exercises on the Language Link Online web site, available to all Language Link Vietnam students. For those of you who are not students, we’ve presented it below.
Please note: you need a browser with Adobe Flash software to play this game. If you are using an iPad or a computer with no Flash, we’re sorry.
Ugh, grammar. Does anybody like grammar? I sure don’t. However, if you want to learn English properly, you can’t ignore the basics. And grammar is a BIG basic!
This is the first article in what we hope will be a series of monthly posts on grammar. We’re going to take one grammatical headache each month and shed a little light on how you can make it work.
Understanding Time
One of the key points about English is that for every verb we use, for every action we describe, we need to be clear about WHEN it happens. English language learners often say things like:
I go Lenin Park.
This drives listeners crazy. WHEN DOES THE ACTION OCCUR? Did you go in the past? Do you go every week? Are you planning to go next weekend? You must make the time clear: is it past, present, or future? Your listener NEEDS to know.
With more than 800 million users, Facebook is the world’s most popular social networking site. Most people use Facebook to connect with friends, play games, and post photos, news about what they are doing, or interesting things they find on the Web.
All these things are good, but have you ever thought of Facebook as an educational tool? Can you use Facebook to learn English? Well, why not?
Here are five ways you can use Facebook to improve your English.
In our earlier post, Tips for Success in Foreign Universities, we talked about how important it is for students to develop skills that will help them succeed when they study abroad. This is what Language Link Vietnam’s International Foundation Year (IFY) Programme is designed to do!
In this video, Todd Lando, LLV’s IFY Programme Manager, tells students how they can enter the program and develop the academic skills they need to study abroad.
Students often ask me how they can lose their accent when speaking English. I have two things to say on the topic.
My first point is that you don’t want to entirely lose your accent. Accents protect you. When you’re in an English-speaking environment, an accent helps people know that you are not a native of their culture. If you make any mistakes, people are more likely to forgive you.
The second point is, of course, if your accent keeps people from understanding you, then you must try and reduce it as much as possible. Keeping in mind my first point – an accent is not always a bad thing – here are TEN TIPS that will help your pronunciation improve so that your accent does not interfere with understanding.
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I want to ask you four questions that will help you think about whether you are a good language learner. Answer these questions honestly:
For years, researchers have known that some people are better at learning languages than others. The question is why.
While it is true that people have different learning styles – and some methods may not be appropriate for all learners – it is also true that there are some qualities that all effective language learners share.
Here are four qualities shared by all good language learners.