Comments on ESL Pod.com

(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.

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.

Comment on the Corpus-based Reference Tools

I have used Cobuild Concordance before but I find it hard to be put into use without reading the query syntax in advance. When I was confused about the use of a new or difficult word, I resorted to Cobuild Concordance. The list of sentences clarifies the words that go before or after the word. The clarification enables me to understand how to use the word in a sentence. The program “TOTALrecall”, for example, can help English learners find the English vocabulary or phrase that correspond to the exact or similar Chinese word or phrase. The search results provide the user with possible word s/he is looking for. Overall, I like corpus-based reference tools because they offer many more examples of how to use a word than ordinary dictionaries. Despite the advantage of a large amount of text database, corpus-based reference tools still have some drawbacks compared to dictionaries. Corpus-based reference tools do not inform the definition and part of the speech of the word to the user; rather, it shows the way to use it. On the other hand, a well-written dictionary includes pronunciation, part of speech, definition and even etymology and picture of a word. In my opinion, to fully understand a word, one needs to look it up in a dictionary to know the meaning and then use corpus-based reference tools to familiarize oneself with the use of the word.

The Major Difference of "Big" and "Large" in Use

In general, the use of the two words “big” and “large” have no big difference. However, when it comes to number, quantity or sum, we use “large” instead of “big.”
a large amount of money
a large number of problems
a large quantity of goods
Analyzing the concordances for “big” and “large,” you will notice that the word used to modify amount, number and quantity is “large” rather than “big.”

Knowledge about Dictionary That You Must Know

As an English major, I have been using electronic dictionary as a tool to look up words because it is fast and convenient. However, after viewing the article ”你不可不知的字典知識,” I found that print dictionaries actually provide many more examples, idioms and phrases. Though a print dictionary might not be so convenient as an electronic one, a print dictionary contains a CD-ROM which you can use in the computer, the tool almost accessible 24 hours a day, and which saves flipping work while looking up a word and holds even greater database than an electronic dictionary. Actually, I have three of the five dictionary kings－Longman, Collins Cobuild and Cambridge－on CD-ROM. When I cannot understand one word by the definition in one of the three dictionaries, I resort to another one. More often than not the definition of the word can be understood. The three dictionaries really works well for me and I believe I can upgrade my English proficiency as long as I keep making good use of it.

Self-introduction

Hello, my name is Brian. I am easy-going, warm-hearted and responsible. I always wear a smile on my face. When people get well known to me, they usually think I am a nice person to be a good friend. In addition, helping people is my happiness. If one of my friends asks me for help, I must do what I can to accomplish it. Finally, my responsibility is nurtured after taking positions as group leader, class president or vice president of our departmental student association.
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