Monday, May 9, 2011

How I learn English?

Well, I remembered learning English at the age of 7. Still the real learning started when I was in Form 1. I still remembered how "jealous" I was with my friend whose uncle was generous enough to give her English story books as presents.

So how did I learn my English. Well , I have Mr Ong as my English teacher when I was in Form Five. During his time, we would always do exercises from the text book, and he will always be sitting at the teacher's table , marking our essays, I suppose.

Still my learning didn't stop there. I think it was my informal learning that helped me improve my English. For once, i had two pen-pals from Australia. They were Mandy Leigh Vale and i have forgotten the other one. We would always be writing to one another, exchanging gifts like T-shirts and so on. I love the friendship back then, it stopped when I furthered my studies overseas , in USA. She wrote to me, but i was too busy to reply back... I regret that.. Wonder where she is now..

Another thing I remember doing was reading novels. I loved reading novels... I could finish a 300 page book in only 2 to 3 days. Imagine reading while having my lunch or dinner, or way into the night.. Couldn't imagine those days???

Well, I have acquired a wide vocabulary then but one thing that i couldn't master was grammar. It was not until I took my KPLI course that I really learn my grammar. What I can say is that nobody likes grammar but it is very important that you learn it so that you can write well.....

That's all for now.....

Lesson taught today...

What did I teach the students today?

Well, today it's all revision , but i also taught this technique called Power Writing. Maybe you have heard it somewhere or you could just surf the internet for more info. Still i think that what i taught today is something unique, taken from a book that i really like referring to... but sorry to say I forgot the title of the book.

This technique teaches the students to be more organized when writing. Organization in any essay is very important to ensure they get high marks.
What students must understand is that b3fore they start their essay they must already have organized their points.
(p2)For each point, they must elaborate it, ... i.e. elaborating each point and using connectors such as "besides", "the first benefit is ","another benefit is .." , "in addition", "next", etc.

(P3)For every point, there should be examples. To show the examples, connectors like "for examples", "such as", "for instance", "in other words" are used.

There might be more than one example for every point. So for every paragraph, there might be 2 or 3 examples.

A paragraph will look like this...

P1 Internet brings many benefits.
p2 One of the benefits is we can easily search for information.
p3 For example, to find more information on Thomas Edison , we can just type the name in the search box and the list of websites will appear on the screen. We can just click on any of the websites to get more information.
P3. In other words, finding information is as easy as abc.

P4. Thus, internet definitely helps us in making our life easier.
(P4 usually appears at the end of the essay / or paragraph - if there is only one paragraph).

So, a paragraph will look like this :
P1
P2
P3
P3
p4

An essay will look like this :

p1 Topic
p2 Point 1
p3 Example 1.1
p3 Example 1.2
p2 Point 2
P3 Example 2.1
p3 Example 2.2
p2 Point 3
P3 Example 3.1
p4 Conclusion

Any questions???