Kristi

I'm more interested in speaking and vocabulary building at the moment.

... you dream in a foreign language

Hi, I thought this would be a useful topic. So how about sharing some of our experiences in learning a foreign language? Can be both negative or positive. What techniques, ways or materials helped you the most? For me reading and watching movies boosted really quickly my skills.

'Whom' is mostly used in writing. If you are unsure use 'who' for subject and 'whom' for object.

For me it always worked when I wrote some sentences with the word I was trying to memorize. This way I saw it in context and remembered it. And also learnt other words

What about this one?

You can write down some questions on pieces of papers like "What do you usually read?" Then organize the students into pairs and give each a piece of paper with the questions. The questions ahould be the same. Obviously they would have to ask the questions from each other. If it's a lower level, make sure you model what they have to do. Make sure they can ask back after they answered, but point out that they shouldn't ask the same questions, just ask - ...and you? - How about you? etc. When they finished you can pick students to tell the class what his or her pair likes to read etc.

I don't think it has anything to do with motivation. I think the question is whether it helps language learning better or not. I may be old-school here but I think you learn more if you have to go through a real dictionary yourself. I found that my vocabulary startedimproving significantly when I started using monolingual dictionaries.

I think in the first example "most" is an adverb, and in the second one "the most" is a superlative. I think the difference between the two sentences is in meaning. "Most" does not imply comparison while "the most" does.

Hi, Can you recommend some useful way to start learning Japanese? I've always been interested in Japanese, now I know I won't be able to learn it very well and use it on a high level because of work and family reasons (don't have much time unfortunately), but I still want to learn some of the basics.

Well, it's not the best, but you can give it a try. 1. Give the students some categories like favourite actor, Favourite band etc. 2. Tell them to write at least 5 names in each category. 3. Put them in pairs and make them ask questions like "What do you think of Brad Pitt?", the other student can answer like "I don't like him." or "I love him" etc. This way they will learn how and where to use the object pronouns. 4. You can also give them some additional adjectives, extra phrases so they can give more elaborate answers. Hope that helps!

We had to draw similar trees in linguistics classes. In English syntax to be more precise. You basically have to break down a sentence into individual elements.

I have the "Spanish Touch Trainer", it's very good and easy-to-use.

I think the easiest way to memorize this is if the letter with "Dear James, Sara etc." use Yours Sincerely if it starts with "Dear Sir/Madam" use Yours Faithfully Sometimes people tend to use "Yours Faithfully" even if the person's name is known, but you haven't yet met in person previously.