POONJAR BLOG: സംസ്ഥാന സിലബസിന്റെ മേന്മകള്‍ തിരിച്ചറിയുക ..

POONJAR BLOG: സംസ്ഥാന സിലബസിന്റെ മേന്മകള്‍ തിരിച്ചറിയുക ..:       അടുത്തനാളില്‍ മലയോരമേഖലയിലെ ഒരു വീട്ടില്‍നിന്നുണ്ടായ ഒരനുഭവം.. അച്ഛനും അമ്മയും കൂലിപ്പണിയെടുത്ത് കുടുംബം പുലര്‍ത്തുന്നു. മൂന്നു സ...

How can you improve your spoken English ?

     A lot of my students ask me what is it that they should do to improve their Spoken English. So here is a post to tell them what I feel can improve their English skills.

     I stated thinking about it and realized that I was lucky to be born in a family where, despite being Indians, English was the language of choice. Since my father rarely spoke Marathi and my mother only ever used Gujrati to discipline me in public, I only ever heard them speak to each other and me in English. Hence fluency in the language just came naturally to me. I only picked up Hindi once I started schooling.

     A lot of people don't have such a family environment. The first language they learn is their mother tongue. The next will be Hindi, if they are based in North India. Then when they reach school they finally learn English as the third language. In South India the second language is English, which is the reason why despite accent trouble they are much more comfortable speaking in English.

As a result, here are a few tips that I have collected to help improve Spoken English.

Tip No # 1 Get comfortable with the language. Read for 20 minutes in English. It can be a newspaper, a short story, a poem, or even a novel.

Tip No # 2 Develop your written language. If you don't have the requisite vocabulary you won't be able to communicate.

Tip No # 3 Start Speaking. Try out your spoken English on anyone who will be able to respond to you. Don't be afraid of making mistakes.

Tip No # 4 Keep your ears open for the accent. Watch the English news on Television. Watch BBC for the British Accent, CNN for the American Accent and NDTV 24/7 for the urban Indian Accent.

Tip No # 5 Record yourself. Listen to your voice and catch your pronunciation mistakes. Make a deliberate effort to avoid them.

Tip No # 6 Grammar is important. The parts of speech, tenses, form of verb, articles and modals all contribute to fluency. Make an effort to learn them.

Tip No # 7 Make the Dictionary your best friend. To date I head for it when confronted with a new word. Familiarize yourself with its meaning and use it in a sentence that very day.

Tip No # 8 Have someone proficient read aloud to you. A storybook or a newspaper article will do. Watch how they move their lips while pronouncing certain words.

Tip No # 9 Learn one new word a day. To increase your active vocabulary start memorizing the meaning of a word you had heard but were not sure of. Use it regularly to absorb it into your vocabulary.

Tip No # 10 Start writing a Diary. It will allow you to practice the language in a totally non threatening environment. Write one entry of at least 100 words everyday.

     Consequently your Spoken English will improve, but not if you are lacking in commitment. It's all very well to be pumped up today about learning the language and forgetting all about it tomorrow.

     Always remember the skills involved in any language are Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing. Any single one can't be developed in isolation

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/2295546

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By Cashmere Lashkari 

A great Cheat-Sheet for mastering English Tense

Dear Teachers,
                   I think it would be nice if we could include a "learn grammar" link on our site's home page, alongside the links for various classes. You sure must have seen sites like englishpage.com.

                    I think there is no point in having separate packages for bright and weak students. If our idea is to keep things simple, why split it into easy and hard? Everything gets a bit harder as we move along; we should just focus on getting the basics right. A more practical approach, I think, would be to have separate material for UP, HS and HSS.

              I'm sending you, for your feedback, a pdf of a cheat-sheet I prepared for explaining English tense to my students. (The title is intentionally flashy; the kids do hate tense and grammar, after all ;-)  When I attempted teaching tense, I found it nearly impossible to sustain their interest and attention as I explained the 12 tenses individually.

                 So I tried an alternate method - first I would explain the three SIMPLE TENSES in one go, and then introduce the rest of the tenses as the THREE ASPECTS. I have found it to be a more intuitive way to explain tenses. I just tell them that one aspect is for actions in a complete state (PERFECT), another for actions in an incomplete state (PROGRESSIVE) and the third for actions in a prolonged state of continuity (PERFECT PROGRESSIVE). I found it better to avoid the term continous tense, because students tend to confuse it with the perfect continuous tense which actually shows continuity.

                         I could explain it all in an hour, without having to write down the "Subj.+ aux + verb + @#$!... "  formulas for each. I put all these points down on print and give them photocopies. I added quiet a few sample sentences for each tense to illustrate my point. The students tend to grasp the idea better using this method. Then I included other things like irregular verbs and Auxiliaries. Then added a reference chart for passive voice and interrogative sentences, on the last page.

                  It's a bit confusing to the uninitiated learner. But after a few weeks of refering back to it in between regular lessons, they would get the idea and then, each item on the cheat sheet would become handy as a memory aid and reference chart. At least, I hope so.

I would value your feedback a lot.

Regards,

Anoop MS
Santhigiri Vidyabhavan HSS
Tvm

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Please tell others about English Blog

Dear Sir / Madam / Parents / Students,

           English Blog was started on 5th September 2011. Since then English Blog has been providing study materials for Kerala Syllabus classes 5,6,7,8,9,10,11 and 12. We have also tried to include materials for Std. 1,2,3 and 4 (though not successful). We were one of the first of educational blogs that published SCERT First Term and Second Term question bank in 2011. SCERT First Term question bank was password protected yet we made it available for the general public when the time of secrecy was over. Thus we started providing study materials for Kerala Syllabus Malayalam, Hindi, Social Science, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Maths and I.T.other than English.

           It is 2 years and 8 months now..... What made me write this post is the surprising fact that 95% of the English Teachers of our state do not know that there exists such a blog for their help. I realised this when I went to the valuation camp at Kottayam, this year. There were around 200 teachers there but not more than 15 knew about English Blog !!!!!!!!! From a person who visited all the valuation camps I came to know that English Blog is popular in some northern districts like Malappuram and Palakkad.. From the rest of the districts very few enquired about it. 

          What adds to my surprise is the reality that if an English teacher searches something related to any of the chapters in our English Texts, the Google will display English Blog in the first 10 search results. This being the fact if there are a huge number of English teachers who do not know about the existence of such a blog for them. That means, either they don't search for materials in the internet or they are indifferent to such a blog. 

           Then the question arises... Who are we blogging for ? What is the use of running such a blog spending money from my pocket ?

Miss my school days @ St. Thomas H.S. Erumely

Erumely St.Thomas School started as an L.P. school in 1926 became a Middle School in 1937 and a High School in 1949. The school and its oldest buildings are pre-independence ones. Those buildings are part of the nostalgia of many generations in Erumely and those scattered all around the world. One (Amaravathi) was demolished two years back. The remaining two will be demolished within months. This video is the first of a series of videos in memory of this beautiful campus which will from now on remain in the minds of the former students....