The Power of the Audio Book
A wonderful way to practise listening you new language every day is through audio books. And I don’t mean an audio version of your textbook, but an actual story.
As a lover of books and someone who has worked in libraries for many years, I was surprised it took me so long to discover audio books as a form of entertainment and education. Now I am hooked on them!
Audio books, which are also known as the spoken word, are normally voiced by actors who read clearly in a manner easy to understand; this is perfect for a language student.
Even if you don’t understand all of the words you can replay the audio over and over again chapter by chapter and write down those words that you don’t understand to check with your teacher later or look up in your dictionary.
Another suggestion would be to find a translation of a story that you are already familiar with so at least you know the plot.
Take the book with you when you travel each day or listen to the story while walking or making dinner. What a great way to practise every day!
By Vicky
How can you Improve Vocabulary Daily?
Learning a new language can be very overwhelming in the beginning when your vocabulary is quite limited. However, the excitement builds as you learn more and more words and can start to use them yourself.
Some quick and easy suggestions on how to improve you vocabulary on a daily basis includes:
Reading – Read anything that you can get your hands on; it doesn’t have to be a book. Magazines and graphic novels with lots of pictures can be really useful. You may not understand the word but will get a feeling for it through the pictures.
Writing – Write a simple story with the words that you already know and add pictures to help you associate the two. It doesn’t matter if the story is silly but it is fun to have a go and will definitely help you remember new words.
Listening – Try listening to the radio in the language of your choice (eg. BBC World Service), watch a movie or something fun like YouTube that can be spontaneous and harder to understand than a usual language learning CD.
Speaking – Practise your new vocabulary out loud by making up simple sentences and phrases with the words you have learnt. It doesn’t matter if the cat is the only one listening!
Remember, if you make it fun then you don’t feel like you are working so hard at studying.
By Vicky
My Best Korean Students and Their Special Wednesday
Hi my name is Ashley Jang and I am teaching Korean language at SLS. As a teacher, I am always very proud of all my students as they are proactive, fun and dedicated to learn my first language. Today, I would like to introduce one of my special Beg1 classes and their Wednesday regular dinner which happens before their Korean class each week.
Every Wednesday, before the 6.30pm class, my students (and I sometimes join too!) are meeting for an early dinner. What’s the menu? Korean food indeed! They meet at 4.30pm (normally Café Cya but they are always looking for some yummy ones!), eat dinner together (their favourite is KimChi Chigae), exchange Korean dramas and talk about K-pops as well as other cultural topics. Last week, we tried to order foods in Korean and I was shocked by their positive attitudes which made their mission accomplished (we haven’t even started that lesson yet!). Their last destination is Korean supermarkets for buying some Korean treats and drinks for sharing in the class and bringing it to their family. I found that their Korean is dramatically improving. Hence I have no doubt that they will speak my language fluently in no time! Are you a hungry K-pop fan? Come and join this group!
Written by Ashley Jang (Korean teacher)
What is Mandarin?
As we know, China is such a big country with 55 ethnic minorities. And most of the minorities have their own dialects. Besides, people from different regions of China have different accent as well. So, the Chinese government promoted Mandarin all around the country for a purpose of better communication and education from 1956.
Here are some background information about Mandarin. I hope it will be helpful for your understanding and learning.
In Chinese linguistics, Mandarin refers to a group of related Chinese dialects spoken across most of northern China. Because most Mandarin dialects are found in the north, the group is also referred to as the "northern dialect(s)" .
A northeastern-dialect speaker and a southwestern-dialect speaker can hardly communicate except through the standard language, mainly because of the differences in tone. When the Mandarin group is taken as one language, as is often done in academic literature, it has more native speakers (nearly a billion) than does any other language. For most of Chinese history, the capital has been within the Mandarin area, making these dialects very influential. Mandarin dialects, particularly the Beijing dialect, form the basis of Standard Chinese, which is also known as "Mandarin".
Be careful with your Cantonese!
In English, the length of vowel is quite important. If you are not cautious, “sheet” will become “shit”, and “beach” will become “bitch”. Same as English, length of vowel is important in Cantonese. Other than that, tones are very important in Cantonese too. If you change the tone, you change the whole word. The combination of wrong length of vowel and wrong tone in Cantonese can be hilarious, which is the case in the following.
This Tuesday night, my Cantonese beginners’ class was working on the unit about occupations. Teacher was one of the occupations. Its Cantonese is “Gaau6 si1”. As a native speaker, I had never thought this word could turn into something hilarious. When the class practiced its pronunciation, one of the students pronounced it as “Gau2 si2”. I just couldn’t help and laughed. Then the class asked:”Why is it so funny?” I explained:”Well, ‘Gaau6 si1’ is teacher, and ‘Gau2 si2’ is dog poo!” Then everyone just laughed.
This is more than just a funny story. It also shows one of the difficulties of learning Cantonese, especially for speakers of non-tonal language, such as English. There are six tones in Cantonese, and it is quite difficult for English speakers to distinguish them because English is not a tonal language, and its speakers are not trained to pick up tones. Some people may worry about this. However, I think it is just a matter of time and practice. If you put enough effort into it, it is not difficult at all. At the end, these six tones are actually distinguishable.
Chinese character as a kind of visual art
Learning Mandarin usually starts from Pīnyīn, which is a phonetic system that helps people to speak Chinese language. However, Pīnyīn is only part of Chinese language because Chinese language actually consists both sound (Pīnyīn) and symbol (Chinese characters). Chinese character has a history of almost 5000 years, which is almost as long as Chinese history. The different writing systems of the world can be divided into two categories, which are alphabetic writing system and semantic writing system. Chinese writing system is semantic system in which people differentiate the meaning of words according to their forms.
Some Chinese learners said that Chinse characters were like pictures. I would say they are right, considering that pictographs are an integral part and the foundation of Chinese characters. Let’s have a look at some pictographic examples in Chinese characters as follows. You may notice that they are developed from concrete objects and can be regarded as a form of visual art.
1.1. The development of the Character “rì”, which means “sun”.
1.2. The development of the character “yuè”, which means “moon”.
1.3. The development of the character “shuǐ”, which means “water”.
There are a lot other examples about pictographic Chinese characters and we will be discussing them in the later sessions.
-Anne Ma
Letter from our IELTS Student
Hi Na Pham,
I am Deepak Agrawal, a student of your writing module training for IELTS. I am writing to express my heartfelt thanks to you on achievement of my IELTS 7.0 on all Modules.
I’ve received my results today, which just made me happier by seeing a score of 8, 8, 7 & 7. This does not only mean that I can apply for my VISA now but it also marks the end of the exam trauma. Attempting exams again and receiving undesirable results was making me little nervous about myself.
My learning journey with you would have continued had I been continuing to stay in Australia. It was not mere preparation of IELTS for me. You boosted my confidence (and I believe of everybody else’s as well) by your honest rating of the essays and pinpointing the problem most of the times. I am trying to practise writing in the “Na Pham” format all the times now.
I wanted to say you thanks for your efforts. Most of us choose a profession to pursue a living but your profession is changing lives for many peoples.
Thanking You….
Yours Faithfully
Deepak Agrawal
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