Comeback

OK. I’m back. After the holiday break.

Yes, I haven’t written here, but I’ve been learning English without any breaks. Maybe I just need to change the formula of this page? I think I should rethink it for sure and make it more suitable for my life now.

As I said I was learning English intensively using some interesting tools. And I want to tell you about some of them.

I have some stimulating experience with e-book readers, with exchanging languages apps, with film and much more. So if you are interested in any of this, please stay in touch with my blog. More posts soon.

Working on pronunciation

Recently I’m quite concentrated on developing my pronunciation. I’ve been trying a few things which you can find interesting.

Today I’m going to tell you about the first I tried.

I used an interesting app prepared by British Council and called LearnEnglish Podcasts.

 

It took my attention because it’s about podcasts – as you know I use them a lot.

The app includes three Series with ten episodes each. Every podcast lasts 30 minutes, so we have plenty of audio materials to listen to.

But with the app you can not only download podcasts to listen to them, but also to see scripts synchronised with audio.

How can you use it to practise pronunciation?

First of course you can listen to the whole episode. Without looking at text. After that you can check your understanding by doing some exercise.

Then you can listen to it once again with reading the text. You can also try to read aloud with native speakers if you like. But first just listen to the native pronunciation.

The next step is to use pause button – Listen to a short part of the podcast and try to repeat it, recreating sounds as aright as it’s possible.

And the last step – read the text first and that listen to the recording to check if your pronunciation was OK.

The app has some other useful tools for listening and repeating sentences. You can set an appropriate recording speed. So the app is both for more or less advanced learners.

Although the podcasts can look a little bit too easy for advanced English speakers I thing it’s perfect for pronunciation  exercises.

It’s half of the year now.

I’ve been dealing with my project Englishfor365days for a while (if you want to know more about the idea of the project read this).

I’ve just checked and discovered that my first post was published on 29^th of November 2014. So it’s more than a half of the year now.

Of course I want to know if my ideas work. If my English is becoming better and better. And definitely it is.

First I can feel it – I know what you think, feelings don’t proof anything, but bear in mind that more advanced learners often can’t see that they really develop their language – it’s easier to notice it on the more basic levels. But I definitely can see the difference.

Second – I decided to check how my English is going and I repeated some of the tests I’d done at the beginning of the project. Of course I can’t be sure that results are true, but there must be something.

How many words do I know?

My results at the beginning:

After 4 months:

And after about 6 months: 

A pearl among BBC Drama of the Week

Listening English podcast sometimes can give you some extras.

That happened when I found “My Dear Bessie” audio material - one of BBC Drama’s episode.

You can read more about it here, but unfortunately it’s not available anymore.

Actually I found the material on BBC Drama podcast webpage (where podcast are accessible for everyone and for a little longer) - Drama of the Week. 

As I wrote before I found “My Bear Bessie” there and the podcast turned out to be a real pearl for me:

• First because it’s a real love story told by letters of two separated by Second World War.
• Second because the story is beautiful, full of warmth and passion and it’s a real proof that a true love exist.
• Third because in the podcast star Benedict Cumberbatch and Louise Brealey who you could see in the new adaptation of Sherlock Holmes (I like them both a lot).
• Fourth because I found much more materials about the story which made me really hooked on it.

Here you can find some of them:

http://www.simongarfield.com/pages/books/my_dear_bessie.htm - the book website

Some films with letters read by Sherlock Holmes stars:

So I strongly recommend you to check the podcast regularly. Maybe you, like me, find a real pearl, a material created for you (which suits your interests and needs perfectly). 

A word of the week – smug

Here is a mem which can be useful for remembering the word:

And here some other information:

A word of the week: SMUG
Category: aspects of character
You can find "smug" sentence examples in this dictionary:
http://sentence.yourdictionary.com/smug

Spelling can be easier than you think with my recent discovery

If you like me have problems with spelling, you’d be glad to know some new ideas of dealing with it.

I’ve found some interesting tips on The spelling blog which I think you also find quite useful.

http://thespellingblog.blogspot.co.uk/

Here are some examples of posts which can show you how good the material on the blog is:

Definitely this post is worth to see. You can find there some useful tricks and learn how to spell the word DEFINITELY and what to do to remember spelling other words too:

Learning to spell Definitely

 

You can find out how different difficult words  are spelt and how to remember that spelling:

10 commonly misspelled words -and how to remember them (1)

And last example. You can find here some rules, multimedia and some interactive tools which help you to remember them:

word beginnings

'i before e' rule - Stephen Fry and friends

 

There are so many interesting things that you just have to check it by yourself and find what is more important for you.

Thank you Johanna Stirling for that excellent blog.

Another word of the week mem

A word of the week: SLOB
Category: aspects of character

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