takibari

I'm not sure if my observation is correct, but I seem to observe that study guides are available only to select titles. Generally, titles that are required reading in high school or college. After school, I haven't had the chance to use those study guides.

My one-stop website for grammar and writing reference is this website called: Guide to Grammar and Writing: http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/ It's sponsored by the Capital Community College Foundation, of Hartford, Connecticut. It's the most comprehensive guide I found on the net. It discusses thing from the Word & Sentence Level, Paragraph Level and so on..

It is indeed a fun and useful way to learn a new language! I'm Filipino, too. So yeah, there's no need to translate the phrases in Filipino. I'm Cebuano, though so here's the translation of the phrases in our local dialect (Bisaya). Good afternoon - Maayong hapon! Where do you live? - Asa ka gapuyo? What is your nationality? - Unsa imong nacyonalidad? What is your job? - Unsa imong trabaho?

Wow! Thanks again^^ I don't see any problem re.opening the poll again. That was actually my intention when I reset the button. I thought it would give me the option to change the closing date and extend it further. Unfortunately, it erased the answer of the three that answered. Please be my guest in re.opening the poll. I'm still really interested to know people's ideas on them. I do understand why this is a difficult question to answer. Most of us are just exposed to one proficiency test. If not for my work, I would not have learned of these proficiency tests myself.

That's right. Only use 'whether' when presented with two alternatives. Use "If" when presenting a conditional situation. I'm attending the party whether you are going or not. (two options presented) I'm coming to the party if you are going. (a specific condition is presented)

Sidney is right! I don't think there's such a case between English and Tagalog. I'd say this phenomenon is however applicable between our main language Tagalog and a dialect called Cebuano/Bisaya. Below are just two examples In Cebuano a 'langgam' is an "ANT"; but in Tagalog it's an animal that flies; a BIRD In Tagalog "nalibang" means having fun; but in Cebuano means "defecating"

I'm much like you! As much as possible I avoid using shortcuts when sending SMS. So yeah, I only make an exception if I'm in a hurry. While I understand the need for shortcuts, I actually prefer spelling out things. I'm often teased for being old school because of it.

I haven't really checked out Goodreads. A friend once recommended it, but I totally have forgotten about it until now. Based on everyone's comments, it appears to be something worth checking out.

I'm in agreement with the other members that it's quite difficult to recommend books by virtue of age alone. I was around 17 or may be younger when I read The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery and Jonathan Livingston Seagull. These books, while they were required reading in HS, did help a lot. I always recommend these books especially to those who haven't developed the habit of reading yet. Next, I'd go with Letters to A Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke and Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet. They're not like novels that are too thick to read, but they do have ideas that I believe are great for people your age. Kenneth Blanchard's Who Moved My Cheese is an easy read too, but full of insights.

Hi! You failed to mention your partner's interest in acquiring the language. I understand that both of you have a goal of acquiring a certain certificate. The reason I brought up the question on interest is because I believe this is the KEY to him acquiring the language. As many of the members pointed out, there are A LOT of means to help one improve their English, but I believe no method is good enough if the person is not interested enough. But I assure you that what the other members suggested are effective, if the right amount of interest is present.

hello linguaholic admin! Thanks for putting a sticky to this topic. While I'm genuinely interested to know the answer to the poll, it appears majority don't share my interest, haha! Plus, I erroneously pressed the wrong button. So, the answers of the 3 who did participate in the poll were reset to zero. All 3 voted for TOEFL, btw. In any case, I've initially set the closing of poll to Nov. 2 and that date has passed. So, feel free to remove the topic. Truly appreciate putting a sticky to it. HUGE THANKS!

Really? :amazed: It's my first time to hear that a lot of native speakers misspell this word. Errors like this, I attribute it to how we acquire language. As a native, you aren't really taught how to spell things as language becomes natural to you. As I'm not a native English speaker, spelling is given prime importance to our classes. But for the love of me, don't ask me to write in my native tongue (Cebuano), chances are I'm definitely going to have a lot of spelling errors!

Wow! This is tricky! I can't exactly pinpoint what's off in the given sentences. I'll just give it a try, though. My best guess in what's off is the sentence structure. All the sentences (1-8) require the use of adjectives, not nouns. My comments are in blue.

Hmmm, I'm not sure that I understand the question. But off the top of my head, the given sentence is a run-on. Thus, it appears confusing. It's better to break down the sentence to make its meaning clearer. ===================================================== A commonly drawn distinction is between pre-history and history. (This is the most basic sentence). So what does pre-history mean? Pre-history is the period before written records EXIST. What about the meaning of "history" in its narrow sense? (=the simplest or the general meaning of the word "history") History, referring to its narrow sense, means the study of the past. (written evidence is not necessary in the sentence as you are talking about the "general' meaning of "history". (History can be relayed thru 'oral tradition' or 'written record/evidence. ===================================================== So, if you want to put the individual meanings of pre-history and history in one sentence, then it should be written this way: A commonly drawn distinction is between pre-history, which refers to the period before written records exist, AND history, referring to its narrow sense, means the study of the past. The sentence in blue is the basic/simplest sentence. The ones in green are just additional details to explain or differentiate the words "pre-history" and "history" I hope this helps clear things up.

While I earlier said that etymology did help me learn easily, I also agree to the points mentioned by Baburra. New information can really either help you learn more or it paralyzes you. Learning etymology might just be TMI for a new language learner. In psychology, we call it information overload. So when you take in so many things all at once, there's tendency that you won't remember what you're studying.

Learning a language through apps vs. having a human teacher has its own advantages and disadvantages. I agree with one of the comments that both are effective methods of acquiring a language. At first glance, it's easier to say that the human factor is definitely the more effective one. But as one of the comments mentioned, you will be amazed with how technology can help. I can say this as much as I work for a company that helps develop language learning programs.

I definitely won't say that it's weird. I think it happens to most of us. We had this discussion in one of my classes called The Psychology of Language. Unfortunately, I can't remember the exact explanation that my professor gave the class. Sorry, that was back in 1998,

I've only been to my neighboring Southeast Asian countries and Seoul, Korea. English is widely spoken in the SE countries I've visited. Thus, I'd say that it's not necessary to learn said countries' languages. I've had the most difficulty in Seoul, though. Although I managed to get by, I also got a lot of "Sorry, No English." It was difficult every time it happened. On the one hand, it's also much helpful if you learn some key phrases to help you get by. In Bangkok, my friends and I didn't have a problem with just knowing English. But it was a different story when we went to Ayutthaya. We went on a tour group, but decided to go to a one place not part of our itinerary. The tour guide agreed, but made us promise to still meet the group at the drop off point (the Elephant Park, something). However, we sort of lost our way and tried asking locals to help us. None of the locals we asked spoke English. So, we ended up doing Charades. But it turned out, we were so bad actors that the locals would just shake their heads in confusion. Good thing there was someone who passed by carrying a box with a picture of an Elephant in it. We kept pointing to the elephant picture, until one local finally got it and helped us find our tour group. It is funny relating it now, but I assure you it was very frustrating when it happened.

This is something I would do myself. If I notice an error with someone's pronunciation, I normally just ask in the guise of a hypothetical question. What if you said something wrongly, would you want a person to point it out to you? If the answer is positive, then I'll go ahead with making the correction. Otherwise, I would just let it slide. But normally, when I do ask the question I readily get a "why? did i say something wrong?' The question itself already serves as a hint to the person who mispronounced the word.

I definitely agree that this app is an excellent app to learn vocabulary. I've mentioned before that with this app, you would really have second thoughts about your vocabulary bank. You'll start with the notion that it's an easy enough game because you're fluent with English, until the game proves you wrong. This game generally helps me figure out the name of a certain picture, by merely recognizing the name of a different picture. (That is, the 4 pictures share the same name!)

With YouTube being a free site, there's bound to be limitations to the quality of materials for language learning. Like what the other poster mentioned, there's bound to be a channel where you can learn from. You only need to browse. Like herself, I also don't subscribe to any channel as I would just randomly search if there's something I need.

I agree that it is worth the money if you are serious about learning the language. My boss once asked me to use it to learn Chinese (Mandarin), but as I wasn't interested in learning that language yet, I truly found it useless and frustrating. Frustrating because, it was purely taught in Chinese, no translations whatsover. But to someone who's interested, it's a good tool as you are forced to really learn it.

I just checked the site. It does have a potential. I just tried the Chinese version. I understand that it's meant to improve one's listening skill, but if it's possible to include the romanized? text, that would be a helpful tool that a user can use, too (especially, if they wish to mirror what they heard, and for some reason can't make out the words clearly yet)

I agree with this a 100%. You can never go wrong by reading a lot of books! I remember I had a Korean boss before who likes to play vocabulary games with me. He often asks me to throw a word at him, and boasts that he could give me the meaning for it. It's true that he never fails in giving me the exact meaning of the BIG words i threw at him. But every time I get back at him by asking him to use the word in a sentence, he always just gives me a smile as he couldn't make a sentence using the word. This only proves the importance of learning the word by context. Otherwise, it just won't work knowing the word meaning alone.

My very simplistic advice: Do NOT forget you are a teacher, not a buddy. While it's great to be friends with your learner, being too friendly with them sometimes get in the way of the student's learning. So, do not lose focus on your teaching goal for the day because of unnecessary chitchats. For example, if your student's weakness is writing. Then make sure that your session tackles your writing lessons for the day. Because if you do, and you end up chatting more than doing the writing exercises, you'll only achieve on improving your students speaking skill, and not his writing skill.