Vocabulary Sci-Fi

Have you ever thought about enormous benefits which knowledge of English brings you?  Not only you can chat with people from different countries and have small talks with your foreign friends but also talk business with partners at work. That is why almost everyone is learning English no matter what his/her mother tongue is. Undoubtedly, today process of learning is easier and funnier than it was 20-30 years ago and it’s not very difficult for me to tell the difference between ways of learning foreign languages nowadays and few decades ago. If I had an opportunity to write a letter to my peers from the past it would probably be like this:

Dear friends,

I am writing to you from the year 2014 to tell all about the most efficient ways of improving your level of English. I’m trying not to be out of touch with modern techniques needed to master my language skills so I can talk non-stop about it.

To begin with, the best way to learn a language is to communicate with  native speakers. Having an Internet connection, you can always get hold of your pan-pals from English speaking countries by writing e-mails to them. If you like having conversation face to face and think that you will not be able to convey your feelings through an e-mail, don’t worry. Today we have a special programme called «Skype» using which you can actually see a friend, smile or wink at him.

Secondly, a highly effective way is watching English movies where you can hear different regional accents and simply learn how to understand different speakers because everyone has his own peculiarities of pronunciation. Also listening English songs is really helpful and almost effortless, you simply whistling the melody and automatically remembering words.

Moreover, there are billions of sites you can bump into while surfing the Internet that can help you memorize new words. One of them is English Thesaurus where you can make a map with any word and see all collocations with it.  It looks like this:

If learning long lists of words is so boring for you that you are sitting and yawning, you can use such sites as «just the word» or «fraze.it» which helps you visualize words.

If to speak my mind, «Quizlet» is the site that I like the most. I can practice new words doing different tests and also create my own flashcard set. I’ve already tried it. Here you can see how it looks: http://quizlet.com/49786812/theatre-for-the-deaf-flash-cards/

As you can see, modern technologies simplified process of learning very much. With help of online dictionaries, sites where you can improve your vocabulary you can make your English so perfect, others would think that it is your first language. I wish you good luck! Hope to hear from you soon.

Best wishes,

Margaryta

            Fairy tale about two dictionaries

On the third floor of a huge dormitory in the room 210 on a bookshelf lived two young but highly intelligent dictionaries – John and Sean. Despite the fact that they were living on a same bookshelf and looked like two peas in a pod, their lives were completely different. Dictionary John was occupied with work and hardly ever had time to rest, while dictionary Sean was lying on the shelf all day long and no one was even paying attention at him. That was because these two dictionaries had two absolutely different owners. John’s owner was assiduous and hard-working student and Sean’s owner was indescribably lazy boy.

      Every evening dictionary John was telling different stories about his eventful days at work and bragging about his owner. That evening wasn’t an exception.

     Dictionary John was talking non-stop: «My owner excels at languages. He just absorbs all new words and expressions. I can assure you that he will become a reputable interpreter. »

     Dictionary Sean sighed deeply and said: «You are so lucky! My owner is hardly comparable with yours. He doesn’t even think about studying and working with me. I feel so lonely and useless. »

«This boy is heartless. How can he do this to you? » - said John angrily.

«It’s so hard for him to make a commitment » - Sean answered.

«Then we should simplify it for him. We need to make him reflect on his behavior! » - John exclaimed.

«But how can we do this?» - Sean raised his eyebrows in surprise.

«In such circumstances we should act quickly but don’t worry, you can count on me. In fact, I already have a plan.  What if you will be constantly reminding your owner about yourself? » - suggested John.

«So you think we can handle the situation in such way? It seems to me that whatever will we be doing it’s all pointless.»- mumbled Sean.

«Just do me a favour, listen to me and do as I say. We will make him apologetic about his behavior very soon.» - said John.

    Later that evening Sean’s owner was sitting at a table and playing computer games. Two dictionaries were laying on the bookshelf which was right above the table. The time had come for dictionary Sean to remind about his existence. So Sean pushed himself and fell straight on the boy’s head.

«Oh dear! It hurts!» - exclaimed boy, scratched his head, put dictionary back on the shelf and continued playing games.

    The next day boy decided to take a walk in a park instead of going to the university but as soon as he opened a wardrobe to get some clothes, the dictionary fell on his head again. «How this dictionary turned out on the top shelf of my wardrobe??» - the boy shrugged his shoulders and went out of the room. He was out all day and returned home late in evening. Of course, he wasn’t even thinking about doing his homework and began watching a movie. That time dictionary Sean became furious. Sean fell off the shelf and hit boy so hard that he fell off the chair. The boy decided to lie down. He was thinking about inexplicable fallings of his dictionary and soon fell asleep.

   The boy saw a strange dream. In that dream his dictionary was talking to him. «You may think that all my fallings on your head happened coincidentally but I should make a confession. I did it on purpose. I want you to study hard and become an excellent student. If you don’t do it I will fall on you many-many times! » - said his dictionary.

  The boy woke up frightened. That evening he took his dictionary and did all homework not only for the next day but for the whole week.  From that time a noticeable change happened to the boy. He became so hard-working that teachers and students were wondering all the time and his dictionary became the happiest dictionary in the world and never felt lonely and useless again.

On the t

              My first lesson of English Vocabulary

Hello everybody!

My name is Rita Sukhodolia. In my first blogpost I will tell you about my first lesson of English Vocabulary. 

We were sitting in the classroom talking and waiting for our teacher. The noise died down as soon as she appeared. As the door was opened I saw a familiar face. Inna Viacheslavivna was helping us with our perfomances for the Shakespeare's Day last year so we've already known her. 

We usually start all our new lessons with a new teacher by introducing ourselves but this time we had an opportunity to do it with a help of a very interesting game. Everyone had to make a real effort to find words for each letter of our names to describe ourselves and our characters. To be honest, I hadn't have considerable diffuculty playing the game because there are only four letters in my name. 

After that we reached a point when our teacher had to explain to us what we are going to do during this course. I knew we might face the prospect of making a blog and our teacher made it clear that it is exactly what we are going to do. Besides that we need to comment each others' blog posts constantly. I hope that my blog won't face a strong criticism. 

Another task is to have a special notebook for our vocabulary. As there is always an utter chaos in my notebooks I should do my best this time because I don't want this one to be a real eyesore. 

However, my main concern is how I am going to remember this huge amount of words and expressions. In brief summary, there would be a lot work to do but I won't back down anyway. 

All in all, our first lesson of English Vocabulary was great. It's a classic example of lessons I love because it is connected with English and extremely useful for me. So I'm entirely satisfied that we have this course.