Text 2 Mind Map: A great tool for vocabulary management

Are you one of those students who has a lot of notebooks from past courses? Are you one of those students who makes lots and lots of lists of words, but you don't know how to use them once the class is done? Trust me, you are not alone. You'd be surprised 

One way to solve this problem is to filter out the vocabulary and identify the words that you will actually use. (Just because you wrote a word down in your book a year ago doesn't mean that you will use it a year from now.)  

Once you've done that, group the words according to common concepts - things you find in the kitchen, verbs related to studying, verbs that use subjunctive.  

Why is it useful to do this? First, it helps you reduce and filter the old photocopies and notebooks: if you're not using your old class materials, cull them and get them out of the way. Second, it's a lot easier to remember words and ideas if you understand the context behind them. The more you understand the reason WHY a word is important, the easier it will be to remember it and use it again in the future.

This is a word map that I created for basic verbs for TOEFL iBT using a website called Text 2 Mind Map. I like this website because you can use it with both Macs and Windows, it's free to use (we like free! Free is good!) and you can download the word maps and share them. (I don't know if you can collaborate with other people to create a word map - I'm still waiting to hear on that.)

I'll probably update this word map over time: consult the latest version by clicking here.

This is definitely worth using - I'm going to think of ways to incorporate this into my classes.

New vocabulary? Try photos!

As I've mentioned before in class, not everybody works well with "The List". You know what I'm talking about...that very long list of words, expressions, collocations and phrasal verbs that you write down in every class, highlight, maybe translate...and never look at again...so that when you need the vocabulary, you've got to go through the entire process again so that you remember why the words on "The List" were important!

If you're like me, and you DO find that a picture IS worth a thousand words (or that it's a better option than "The List"), try this. I did this with Penultimate for iPad, but it's just as useful with a pen and a picture from a magazine:

FREE English course for medical people!

No, not me, unfortunately. I can't afford to give my stuff away for free (yet.)

It's from someone who's a lot better at teaching medical English than I am: the University of Pittsburgh, through Coursera.org, is offering a six-week course for medical people who want to learn more about English and medical-clinical terminology. It's free (though there are limits to the number of people who can take part), and there's no start date for the next session.

For those of you who are looking to practice abroad, however, this might be an excellent place to start fine-tuning your medical English.

FCE Vocabulary: Right word, wrong word

If you're doing the First Certificate this year, you've probably noticed that you are expected to understand the difference between words that seem really similar, but are used in different circumstances.

Here's an example of something I did in class with Irene last night (and with Juan Francisco on Thursday). Can you describe the differences between these words?

FRIEND

PAL

CLASSMATE

CO-WORKER

BUDDY

SOUL-MATE?


I'll post the answer tomorrow (Saturday.)

==========================

UPDATE - Saturday:

Right! Here are the answers. Thanks to everyone who wrote in with ideas and explanations.

The OALD defines FRIEND as: a person you know well and like, and who is not usually a member of your family.

A PAL is closer to the idea of ACQUAINTANCE - someone you know, but not very well. Put another way: If you were in jail at 4AM on a Saturday, you would call a friend to help you (not a pal...unless you have no friends, I guess.) 

BUDDY is similar to PAL, but it's a slightly older term. Your parents, for example, would use "buddy", but it's not a word that you hear teenagers say these days.

A CLASSMATE is someone who's in your class at school (or university or a night or language class): you share the common context of education (and it doesn't automatically mean that the person is your friend.) CO-WORKER has the common context of work. Spanish speakers of English might find CO-WORKER easier to pronounce than "colleague" (which comes out sounding too much like "college".)

SOUL-MATE has the idea of: "a person that you have a special friendship with because you understand each other's feelings and interests".   It's often (but not always) used in romantic contexts.

Is "newspaper English" a totally different tongue?

There's an excellent article in this week's "The Economist" newspaper (don't ask me why, it calls itself a newspaper, not a magazine) about the problem with understanding the kind of English newspaper writers use.

If you've ever tried to read a newspaper and didn't understand what the writers were trying to say....maybe it's not YOU!

(Thanks to Kristine Pommert of the BBC for the link.)

New video!

A couple of months ago, I described the sticky note method of practicing and recycling vocabulary. I got working yesterday and created this video to show you how to do it...

And yes, that is my toothbrush!

Is he...? No he isn't. (Part 1 of....)

Just one note (I thought of this as I was working on a new exercise:) do not use "sportsman" to talk about someone (male or female) who plays a sport.

If you're speaking about sports in general, you can call someone an "athlete" (it's not just for athletics), use "player" with the name of the sport (volleyball player, tennis player, hockey player) or use the noun that goes with the sport (cyclist, jockey, runner).

"Sportman" (singular) does not exist in any dictionary that I consulted.

Business phrasal verbs!

Here you go - 64 phrasal verbs related to business! (Note that they're not exclusively for business - you could use quite a number of these in regular social situations, too.)

Remember to write down the ones you need the most (or the ones that give you most trouble), and practice them as often as you can!

How to swear like a native, Part 1

True opinion: One of the things that most people want to learn first, when they learn a language, is the swear words. The academic part of me thinks that this is because swear words signify extreme emotions, which you usually want to avoid when you speak a language. The same problem exists here as with any other vocabulary: it's important to use it properly, to show what you mean.

"Shit" creates special problems for Spanish speakers of English for several reasons. First, it's not used as commonly in English as it is in Spanish; maybe it's because I live in Madrid, but I hear people here saying it a lot more frequently than I did back home...and, trust me, people where I come from swear a lot.)

Here are some basic guidelines that you can use when you're using this word:

shit - "a swear word that many people find offensive, used to show that you are angry or annoyed (OALD)". English speakers do NOT automatically use it to describe everything that works badly (Better: "This is useless" or "This is a useless piece of junk"), tastes bad ("This is disgusting/awful/horrible"), or as a countable noun. Similarly, if your boss lands you with a stressful, last-minute task, that is not called "a brown" in English.

There are various variations of the word that, when combined with the name of an animal, gives another idea of "extreme emotion", but be careful because they are used in very specific ways:

bullshit - a swear word that many people might find offensive, used to show that the person thinks the information is highly incorrect or deceitful. ("He told you that he's going on holiday with his grandmother? Bullshit!")

apeshit - (esp. to go apeshit) - to become extremely angry, especially when you receive bad or shocking news.

batshit - (esp. batshit crazy) - extremely irrational or crazy. (The politician may have some good ideas about the economy, but I'd never vote for her; she's batshit crazy.)

(One note: don't try looking up definitions for these words in either Wikipedia - which will direct you to "anger", instead; or UrbanDictionary, which has no filter process that eliminates useless or incorrect definitons.)

A cool (and cheap) new study tool

TIGER stores, that chain of bargain shops that combines Ikea designs and Todo-a-100 prices, has started stocking these fun sticky notes in the shape of speech balloons. They cost €1 a package and are a great way to organize new vocabulary and new collocations.

Best Five Websites for Intelligent Reading

Since Ana's not continuing her classes this semester, I sent her a list of websites where she could practice her reading (advanced level.) I thought I'd share them with you, too.

The New Yorker - The website also features a number of very interesting podcasts - the monthly fiction/short story podcast is especially good.

The Independent - Good, in-depth reporting.

The Atlantic Monthly - A wide variety of different subjects, but especially strong on economy, American history, politics and urban planning.

Parents Monthly - A favourite magazine and website for my friends who have kids.

The New Internationalist - A British magazine dedicated to topics about global development. If you enjoy thought-provoking articles about the world at large, you'll probably enjoy NI. It's also an exceptionally good source of vocabulary for people who need vocabulary that focuses on international relations and economics.

Some of you will ask why I didn't include "The New York Times". Unfortunately, the "Times" has adopted a new policy that only gives you twenty free articles per month, and while most students won't read more than twenty articles, I think it's a good reason to start looking elsewhere for things to read.

YUCK!

I know that I always tell my students that it's important to use clear, specific verbs. The Daily Dish has a good example of how you can have too much of a good thing.

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/06/poseur-alert.html

Gerbils...water bottles...kissing? Ew!!!

To blog or not to blog...that is the question (kind of)

Everybody who studies and uses English knows that there are some words, like contract, train, present and look that can be used as both nouns and verbs. However, there are times when it seems like there are no rules with neologisms - words that have recently come into use. Why is it that we can text someone, for example, but "Facebooking" someone sounds strange to say?

The Economist's Intelligent Life magazine has some insights on how verbing happens:

http://moreintelligentlife.com/content/ideas/anthony-gardner/youve-been-verbed

Word of the Year!

Well, English may not have anything like a Royal Academy, but it does seem to have a LOT of popularity contests. Dictionary.com has published its choice for Word of the Year:

http://hotword.dictionary.com/woty/?t

Who says you can't practice English over Christmas?

Blogger/teacher Alex Case, over at TEFL.net, takes a funny look at how your English skills can be useful during the Christmas holidays:

http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/tefl/xmas-tefl-skills/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

It's probably a LOT more true than some of us are willing to admit.

Note-Taking for TOEFL: 9 November 2010

It's a fact: Students who learn how to take effective, comprehensive notes have a better chance of scoring higher on the TOEFL iBT exam. But how do you manage all that information that comes at you? How do you practice and use the transition vocabulary that shows you how the information is organized? What are the best ways of keeping track of the most important points, so that you can use them on the tasks?

If the TOEFL iBT has got you worried, we have the solution. On Tuesday, November 9th, STOP SPANGLISH will be holding its Introduction to Note-Taking for TOEFL workshop.

In five hours, you'll learn the techniques which will get you through the exam and teach you how to deal with what you'll read and hear:
º Mental warm-ups: How to anticipate what's coming at you
º Ten efficient ways to practice your listening skills
º How to listen for important information - and eliminate what doesn't matter
º The five most effective ways of organizing notes
º Refine your notes to score high on the speaking and writing papers

Cost: €129 (€99 for current STOP SPANGLISH students)
Time: 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM
REGISTER BEFORE 1 NOVEMBER AND RECEIVE A FREE COPY OF "THE ENGLISH LEARNER NOTEBOOK"!

Remember: Failing to prepare is the same as preparing to fail. Don't let it happen to you!

Get the help you need.

Juan and I just had an interesting chat about the whole Bolonia treaty. I don't fully understand the ideas and consequences of the treaty, but it promises to change the way university students in Spain are forced to work.

One of the things Juan always mentions: Students in Spain could use a lot of help developing and refining their study skills. As teachers, we always try to offer continuous feedback and improvement. But don't just listen to us. There are lots of useful resources on the internet that can help you study smarter, not just study better. Here's one I found this morning which is positive, upbeat, and has tons of great information.

http://www.studygs.net/

Remember the quote from "The Matrix:" I can show you the door, Neo, but YOU have to walk through it.

It's hurricane season...

Ever wonder how hurricanes and tropical storms get their names? There's an excellent description here on the US National Hurrican Center website:

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/aboutnames.shtml

Don't let Paper 3 of the First Certificate freak you out.

Most of my students don't really like the Use of English paper (Paper 3) of the First Certificate exam. But I'm surprised at how many people really, really loathe it. They find it frustrating because they don't know how to manage the new words they learn, and they can't always remember why one words is more appropriate than another word in a specific context.

Remember this: 50% of the words in the Multiple Choice Cloze are not possible for technical reasons. It could be for several reasons: maybe they've given you an adverb form when you need an adjective; maybe that adjective needs a dependent preposition that isn't in the body of the text; maybe it's a word that we use in relation to people, not ideas. Or maybe it's a false friend. Whatever.

If you're doing practice exercises to help you with this part of the exam, try this:

a) Print out the "Right Word, Wrong Word" worksheet and write the name of the exercise at the top of the first page, along with a brief description of the topic of the text. You can find the worksheet here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/37990867/RightWordWrongWord-1

b) Your first job is to look at the options and if you know that there are one or two words that aren't possible, get rid of them.

c ) Now you're down to the remaining 50% - two - options, but you don't know which one is the right one.
- Get out your English-only dictionary. (A translating dictionary will not always provide the information that you need to do this properly.) Look up the word, then look at the structure of the sentence, and look at the ways in which you can use the word (or phrase).
- What does the dictionary say? Look at the possibilities and use the one that fits with the information the dictionary tells you.
- Once you're done, don't second-guess and don't change your answer if you're not sure. Nine times out of ten, your first reaction will be the correct one.
- If, after all this, you're still not sure....guess. Really. You have a 50% chance of being right and the examiners won't take points away for any wrong answers you have.

d) When you're done, check your answers and DO NOT ERASE ANY WRONG ANSWERS. Instead, write down the explanation next to the wrong answer and make a mental note to practice the word/phrase most often.

Good luck!

Phrasal Verb Thought of the Day

If you don't stand up for something, you'll fall for anything.

What do the phrasal verbs "stand up" and "fall for" mean?