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Advanced ESL Team Thread - TAC ’14 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4666 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 33 of 45 10 January 2014 at 12:21am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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To return briefly to the idea of "books entrenched in Anglophone culture", one category
that didn't occur to me until I was reading to my son tonight was, of course, children's literature. Most people will have had (at least) some books read to them by their parents and then perhaps gone on to read for themselves for pleasure. Many parents will then (hopefully) have read to their own children. I wouldn't choose to read Roald Dahl for myself, but I did enjoy reading them to my kids. "The Wind in the Willows", "The Wizard of Oz", "Black Beauty" "The Jungle Book" and "Treasure Island" were all popular when I was growing up. You might prefer to watch the films of the TV adaptations though if all you want are the cultural references. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Emily96 Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4429 days ago 270 posts - 342 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Finnish, Latin | Message 34 of 45 12 January 2014 at 11:55pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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What a great idea for a TAC team! I'll definitely be checking in on this thread to see how it's going from time to time.
As for books, the first things that come to mind are the big ones that you've probably already read or are familiar with: Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Chronicles of Narnia, and more recently Twilight and the Hunger Games. Thinking back to children's books, some that come to mind are Charlotte's Web, Bridge to Terabithia, Because of Winn Dixie... More "grown-up" books that i've read recently and enjoyed are The Kite Runner and Water for Elephants. Then there are classics like The Great Gatsby and Life of Pi. If anyone has a specific genre they're interested in, i'm sure we could brainstorm books to fit that. Good luck with your studies this year! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5348 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 35 of 45 13 January 2014 at 11:48pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Hi Emily96!
It’s very nice of you to take part in our thread! You’re more than welcome to come by any time you like. RE: children’s literature. It seems that in the Anglophone world children’s literature has higher status than, for instance, here. Apart from constituting an essential part of the cultural heritage that native speakers share, in the past decade there have even been university courses devoted to it. In Italy we know the classic fairy tales (‘Snow White’, ‘Cinderella’, ‘Red Riding Hood’, ‘The Little Mermaid’, ‘Puss in Boots’ etc.) and then of course there’s Pinocchio, but that’s about it. When I was at University I tried to read up on British children’s literature (Alice in Wonderland, Treasure Island, Tom Sawyer, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, The Wind in the Willows, The Hobbit and that sort of titles) but I didn’t particularly enjoy them. Probably being a young adult with no children in sight made reading those books a disconnected activity from anything that I really cared for at the time. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5227 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 36 of 45 22 January 2014 at 2:53am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Better late than never. As my mates from my other teams know, I'm alive and trying to catch up. My log is here, but I don't go on in much detail about English there, as I felt it would be more appropriate to do so here. So here's my story with English, medium length version...
If anyone feels such a text wall would be better back at my own log, please say so and I'll move it there. I studied English from the last years of primary school and all through high school, totalling seven years. I was always in the head group of my class, and because I trusted the system and myself I was never afraid of reading a book or watching a film or trying to speak to somebody... in English. Hadn't I studied English? Then I should be able to English*, shouldn't I? Well, I had paid attention in my classes, so it turned out I actually was, as confirmed by a few experiences abroad. Silly me, at the time I regarded the inability of most of my peer's regarding English as 'accidents' that would require just some work to get going. I even ignored how my brilliant college fellows couldn't barely read it properly right before graduation time -- English hadn't been a requirement for us, and all the technical literature we had had to read in English was, linguistically speaking, rather simple. So many people couldn't speak English, yet to me they all were mere, trivial accidents of some kind. Many years later, still in my bubble, I faced the possibility I could have to send my CV to potential employers -- I still thought, 'what am I going to say? everybody speaks English, probably better than me', and I hadn't bothered to get any official qualifications. This was circa 2008. So, off I went on a mission to get some official qualification. Every mock test for every level I could find (I had finally learned what all those A1...C2 meant) was astonishingly easy, and I became suddenly aware of how few Spaniards speak English at all, let alone at a decent level. Someone suggested, half-jokingly, that if I was so f***ing good at English, why didn't I teach it? I applied for a CELTA course, and that's the first language certification I ever got. Later on I found out that holding a language teaching qualification doesn't imply I'm any good at the language in the eyes of some stupid employers, and I went on to get a B2 and a Cambridge CPE (C2) qualifications with different degrees of recognition. I taught English for a few years until I became half-sick, half-bored of basically saying in a thousand different ways that black is white and bowing to employer's creeds and, and I got back to private tutoring. Not that I ever left my English unattended (i.e. stopped using it) for long, but now I'm considering teaching it officially, so I thought it could be a good thing to 'pump it up' a bit again... and here I am. What do I plan to work on? Well, I planned to come here to get some ideas in the first place, so please give me a couple more days for that ;) *Although I'd like to encourage any knowledgeable person to correct or suggest how to improve my English, please let me say that I know "math", "English", and "godfather" are not verbs :) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4666 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 37 of 45 23 January 2014 at 12:39am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
In the UK I think it would be "top group" (although "head of the class" would be quite natural, but with a slightly different meaning).
No apostrophe in "peers" there, unless you only had one, in which case you'd have to recast the sentence I think.
"might" sounds better than "could" here to me.
The OED agrees with you about "math", but it does admit "to English" as a verb (although not with your usage above, which I quite like BTW) and "to godfather" (in exactly the sense you would expect). 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| stifa Triglot Senior Member Norway lang-8.com/448715 Joined 4874 days ago 629 posts - 813 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, EnglishC2, German Studies: Japanese, Spanish | Message 38 of 45 23 January 2014 at 1:13am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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This sounds like a thread for me! Despite being a second year student at uni here in
the UK, my English proficiency has not developed as I hoped it would... Writing is no problem at all, neither are the passive skills. My major issue is speaking; I usually make a mistake in at least every other sentence. Since I'm applying for placements, this may be a real obstacle if I'm planning on getting past the interview stage (should I be lucky enough to even reach that stage)... EDIT:
Just keep in mind that you'd have to apply for that at least 6 weeks before the examination itself, and you'd also need a doctor's note, and it might take a couple of weeks to get that as well. Because of my impaired vision, I was granted 25% extra time and the use of a computer. Edited by stifa on 23 January 2014 at 1:35am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5227 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 39 of 45 29 January 2014 at 4:14am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
First, thanks padrino for your corrections :) Most of the mistakes above just show the retypo effect in action, though -- for a change, I went to sleep instead of re-reading my post after a few minutes. Next time please don't correct me until the post says 'edited' -- I'm not sure how much energy you can spare so hopefully I can help you save some. The 'English as a verb' part is a pitiful attempt at humour by referencing the "can't math" meme, and how in German one can say stuff like "Ich kann gut Englisch" and totally omit "sprechen" at the end. I think :) Wrt "godfather" I imagined it could double as a verb, as is often the case with English nouns, but I looked it up and I couldn't find it -- I don't remember where, though. Can the OED be used without registration? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4666 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 40 of 45 29 January 2014 at 2:51pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I'll try to remember, although, since I posted at near midnight I'm don't think it got in the way of any effective language learning :-)
I presume not, but head over to oed.com and have a go. I initially started to use it because I'm a member of my local library and all members get an OED login (based on the library number). I've just gone and looked up "godfather" again and it didn't ask for me to re-enter my login details, but they could be cached ina cookie somewhere. It probably won't work for you, but if it does then it's a really useful resource if you want something authoritative and also some idea of how long a word has been around and its etymology. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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