Day #41 - Describing career

A few posts ago I wrote about Quizlet. As I said before I use it quite often. Sometimes I prepare sets of flashcards with Polish, sometimes with English definitions.  This time I tried to prepare the whole sets of words connected with the actual issue I’m just studying using only English.

I think that it can be useful for you so I decided to publish it here. This time a collection of words about job and career. 

Day #40 - A word of the week idea

I have to thank Jola for her demand for a text about rhymes. It made me more interested in that subject and let me came up with an idea – I decided to prepare for you (and of course also for myself) a word of the week mnemonic.

Creating graphical mnemonics is nothing new for me, but this time I added rhymes and that made it … much better.

You can check it by yourself. Here you are - my first word of the week. 

You can find  Sly Sentence Examples in this dictionary:

http://sentence.yourdictionary.com/sly

And what do you think? Leave a comment.

Day # 39 - English karaoke? Why not.

I think that it’s not a secret for you anymore that I like to sing in English. Maybe somebody else from you is not afraid of singing and find it enjoyable to learn English this way. If you are good at singing you would like to try karaoke.  I’m sure that there are plenty of karaoke services or apps. Until now I tried only one.

Do you remember the Demi Lovato’s “Let it go” song from last post? If you like it you can try to sing it using the service called iSing. It’s Polish website but I put it only as an example. If you know any similar karaoke service – let me know.

Or … you can use this one. 

Just click the link

http://ising.pl/demi-lovato-let-it-go-piosenka

Scroll the side down and choose Zaśpiewaj (Sing) button.

It’s that easy.

You can of course search for other songs and try to sing them.

Have fun!

Day #38 - Ones again - English singing and vocabulary building

In last post I wrote about excellent service called Lyrics Training - very useful for learning with lyrics.

This time I want to introduce you a second service which has quite interesting features to help you learn with songs.

The service is called FluentU and can be find on this website: http://www.fluentu.com

All you have to do to use it is creating an account and sign in.

Then you can see that the service offers you not only some music videos but also wide range of shorts films.

This time we are looking for songs so we’re browsing for them.

There is one, but very unpleasant nuisance – the service can be used for free, but most materials are available to paid accounts. You can easily recognise pro materials – they are signed with the logo of the service in their right corners. However I found the service worth to use.  

Even this minor free part is interesting enough to give the service a try. It doesn’t make a big problem for me, I’m usually bored with tools quickly and like to change them often, so there is only small possibility than I would use more than the free part of the FluentU.

OK. So let’s look more carefully what we have here.

There is one, very suitable feature – learning new words with definitions, examples of use and pronunciation. So you not only learn lyrics with the service but also can understand them with its help.

You can memorise vocabulary by doing exercises. 

And all this with the music video as a main subject.

The service use some elements of gamification to motivate us more, with can be very importent for some of us.

Of course you have to decide by yourself if you like it or not, but it's good to know that you get something like this service.

I found learning with songs very entertaining and efficient so I looked for other possibilities and tools helpful with it.  I’m going to write about them in next posts.            

Day #37 - Learning English through songs

The most enjoyable way of learning with rhymes are songs and their lyrics.

I’m sure you already know how easy it is to memorise even whole sentences if they are parts of songs.

Byt you can learn faster and have much more fun if you use ICT tools.

First which I want to introduce you is

http://lyricstraining.com

This is an internet service with music videos and games which let you play with song’s lyrics.

After creating an account you can sign in to the service and search for the right video for you, by exploring genres or by looking for your favorite song or singer.

Once you choose the song you have to decide which mode of the game you prefere.

It’s good to begin from karaoke mode if you don’t know lyrics yet.

After singing for a while or if you know the lyrics you can try to play. All you have to do is just put the right words into the gaps. It’s not so hard because you can hear the song and you know how many letter is messing. But you have to be fast.

Because you are logged in you can collect points and track your progress.

Day #36 - Reading and writing or translating poetry

Reading poems can be interesting, but first you have to find a right poem. Not too complicated, not too boring, a poem which can relate to you. If you add some emotions, and poetry actually is created with emotions, you can more deeply experience the language and this is what it’s all about, isn’t it?

Finding simple rhymes or read poetry is one but write a poem is something quite different. Of course it’s more complicated but can bring you a lot of fun too. Sometimes it’s worth to try. What can you lose? Discover that you have a talent?

A few years ago I discovered a very interesting online poetry service. I used it in Polish, but I’ve just realized that it’s also good for English.

eMultipoetry (http://www.emultipoetry.eu/en/main/) is an excellent place for finding something for reading, for writing your own poems and for translating poems.

Here is an interesting example of a poem written in English. Something for young people:

My date - http://www.emultipoetry.eu/en/poem/12241,my-date

If you want to write your own poem try this tool: http://www.emultipoetry.eu/en/game

Day #35 - Using your own rhymes for learning English

I know, creating rhymes even in your own language can be difficult. But it can be fun as well.

It will be easier with a dictionary. For example something like this one www.rhymezone.com

So think about it like some kind of puzzle or brain game and have fun.

How creating rhymes can be useful for learning English? They can become audio mnemonics, which can let you better remember new words or whole phrases:

An example:

I wanted to remember the word “clogs”, so I created the sentence

I usually wear clogs when it rains cats and dogs

If you have luck you can find already created rhymes. To do that you can also use the same site www.rhymezone.com

Look how I find the one, for memorizing the word “apparel”:

I would rather wear a barrel
Than conservative apparel

First you have to find the word:

Then you go to the Examples section, and click for more of them:

 
Now you can cross your fingers browsing  through the examples. If you have luck, like me, you can find something for you:

As you can see "my" rhymes are from the Spiece Girls song. 

But remember:

The problem with memorizing new words using rhymes is that you have to find rhymes which use words already familiar for you. You can’t use new words for better remember something – it won’t work.

Because of that sometimes the trick with rhymes doesn’t work. Sometimes it’s to difficult to find proper words.