(1) Write the topic (episode number) and your listening note in your blog, and (2) comment on the site.
ESL Podcast 459 – Watching Political Commentary Shows
political-relating to politics with the government does policies their actions
commentary-giving your opinion or your view about something
purportedly-supposedly it’s what someone says they are doing but usually isn’t true
commentator-a person who gives his or her opinion usually someone who is paid to give opinion
biased-having strong opinion for or against sth
pundit-a person who gives his or her opinions about sth usually on a radio program or a video show
spectrum-range of opinions from liberal on the left to preservative on the right
arguments-reasons why you believe sth
party line-the official opinion or the generally accepted ideas of certain group
predictable- you know what is going to happen
poles apart-very different from one another
roundtable-type of meeting or discussion where people sit around at table and each person talk for a small amount of time
debate-talk about what you think and the reasons why you think that
contempt-a feeling that someone or sth is not important and you do not need to respect it
loath-to hate, to really dislike sth
talk over each other-speak loudly before the other person is finished talking
stimulating-exciting, interesting, making you think a topic in a different way
on screen-on television
(2) Comment on the site
The website is updated on a bidaily or tridaily basis so the new materials just keep being added to it. All the lessons in the site are sorted by its topic, such as Daily life, Entertainment, etc, Students can visit the site and learn a lesson of their interests on a daily basis. Day by day, they can gradually upgrade their English proficiency. In addition, the explanations of the bolded words in the audio clip provide learners with an easier way to understand them. It is also considerate to beginners that at the start of the clip, the conversation goes rather slowly than the repetition after the bolded words explanations. In this way, beginners can better understand the content and have a bit more time to guess the meaning of those unknown words. All in all, the English-learning site is regularly renewed, motivation driving and user-friendly.
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
2009 International Conference on Applied Linguistics & Language Teaching in NTUST
During the three-day conference, I work as a staff member of book fair, which is held near IB101, the room where major talks are delivered. I attended three of the speeches but only one of them is highly related to Computer Assisted Language Learning—Corpus Linguistics & Its Application, the panelists of which are Jason S. Chang, Hao-Jan Chen and Zhao-Ming Gao.
The panel discussion is mainly about the introduction to some linguistic corpora and the utilization of them. Jason S. Chang talked about corpora and applications in language teaching; Zhao-Ming Gao error mining in learners corpora using; Hao-Jan Chen more effective use of combining two corpora.
Among all the presented online resources about corpus, I found TotalPhraseBook and writeAhead useful either in English learning or teaching. TotalPhraseBook is a concordancer in which you can enter an English or Chinese word to find out possible translations that are in example sentences. writeAhead, on the other hand, is a writing assisted system for academic writing. There is a column on the left of the homepage where you can start your piece of writing. As you type in words, the columns on the right suggest words you can use with the very last word you enter, phrases that you can proceed with and transitions that are commonly used in academic paper.
Duo to the time constraint, the panel discussion went too quickly to catch up with every idea that had been talked about. I had tried my best to jot down important information of the presentation. If the briefing had gone more slowly, I would have learned a bit more useful information. But overall, the presentation did benefit a lot the audience looking for English learning or teaching resources.
The panel discussion is mainly about the introduction to some linguistic corpora and the utilization of them. Jason S. Chang talked about corpora and applications in language teaching; Zhao-Ming Gao error mining in learners corpora using; Hao-Jan Chen more effective use of combining two corpora.
Among all the presented online resources about corpus, I found TotalPhraseBook and writeAhead useful either in English learning or teaching. TotalPhraseBook is a concordancer in which you can enter an English or Chinese word to find out possible translations that are in example sentences. writeAhead, on the other hand, is a writing assisted system for academic writing. There is a column on the left of the homepage where you can start your piece of writing. As you type in words, the columns on the right suggest words you can use with the very last word you enter, phrases that you can proceed with and transitions that are commonly used in academic paper.
Duo to the time constraint, the panel discussion went too quickly to catch up with every idea that had been talked about. I had tried my best to jot down important information of the presentation. If the briefing had gone more slowly, I would have learned a bit more useful information. But overall, the presentation did benefit a lot the audience looking for English learning or teaching resources.
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