Student Boris's corner

Students can post their diaries and notes here.
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admin
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Student Boris's corner

Post by admin »

Have a good day!
I want you to post a short essay about yourself and your aims here. It will help us to pick up an individual plan for you.
I'd like to see answers to the next questions in your essay.
1.How long you have been studying English?
2.What kind of skills you have now? Are you able to express all your thoughts in plain English (in text messages and verbally)? If you cannot then write approximately in percentages how much, you think, you can express.
3.What books (children literature, short stories, poems, novels, fiction, (also it can be some specific like programming, science, engineering books...) etc.) you can read without looking up words in a dictionary? Give us examples (if you have it) of books you read recently.
Browse our website and tell us what was easy (you can read it without translation) and what was difficult for you to read.
Examples (A-D from easy to difficult)
A dual-language-book-f5/english-diary-t3.html (read 5-10 posts from there)
B poetry-and-literature-f9/english-writin ... s-t28.html
C health-lifestyle-f7/what-is-good-for-he ... h-t12.html
D biology-f16/encyclopedia-of-molecular-biology-t412.html
E Three men in a boat (read 2-3 excerpts from there)
4.How often you have to use Google translate, English dictionaries to write or to say something? Do you need more time to make a good sentence or you do it rapidly?
5.Tell us of your listening skills. What do you do to improve them? Can you understand some dictations or audio books? (which audio books were easy for you).
6.Listen to "Learning English Broadcasts", "As It Is" in our website and tell us if you understand what is broadcasted there (how much in percentages you can understand).
Broadcasts (scroll down when you are on the webpage)
broadcasts.png
7.What do you do to improve your speaking skills? Do you have a language partner or someone you can talk to? Have you ever made speaking monologues or recorded your voices?
8. What are your strengths and weaknesses in English?
You can talk about:
Grammar
Vocabulary
Pronunciation
Reading
Writing
Listening
Speaking
Accuracy
Confidence
What do you want us to train you more?
What do you expect to get from English courses?
9.How do you see your ideal English (being able to read everything, to watch English TV, to speak with natives etc.)?
10.What kind of skills you use or you are going to use in your work and daily life (reading articles, listening to some audio or video content, speaking with colleagues, friends in English etc.)?
12.Do you want us to make your own diary private (visible only for you and teachers)?
13.Do you want to get emails with a mention "Study English" everyday?
Boris
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri Feb 26, 2021 2:59 pm

Re: Student Boris's corner

Post by Boris »

I'm beginner in my English, but I'm going to improve my skills.
I can read books and write letters as beginner, but I'm not good at listening to English.
I like reading books, talking about politics, travelling around my country.
===================================================
I'm A beginner in LEARNING English, I'm going to improve my skills.
I can read books and write letters as A beginner, I'm not good at listening IN English.
I like reading books, talking about politics, traveling IN my country.
admin
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Re: Student Boris's corner

Post by admin »

Nice, very good!
Excellent.
Let's improve your writing at first, then we will add more listening lessons with time.
I want to post something about mistakes, since many English learners fear very often when they do mistakes. Many learners think they may look like kindergarten children and all people around laugh at them when they say something wrong. I will answer sincerely.
"Will I have mistakes?" My answer: "Yes, you will have mistakes. You cannot master a foreign language without making mistakes, it's unavoidable. "
"Should I be worried about mistakes?" My answer: “No, not at all. You shouldn’t worry about mistakes. Take learning the language as something like a game, something not very serious. It will then be more easier for you to study and you will not take criticisms so personally. Do children think of mistakes when they play games? No, because they are involved in gaming process. After all, you can learn through mistakes, wrong sentences are memorized better than sentences without mistakes."
Let's make our disadvantages our advantages.
I want to post a few words about a grammar and learning English in general.
A grammar of the English language is very large. You can study it for many years, decades or even a whole life may not be enough to master it perfectly.
However, do you need to master a grammar at a high level if you are not going to be a specialist in an academic English?
Yes, basics of grammar would be good to learn. The best way of learning a grammar is reading short grammar rules and taking many exercises.
You can start from learning Present, Past, Future (Present Indefinite, Past Indefinite, Future Indefinite), then you can also add Present Continuous and Present Perfect. It's more than enough for a month or even a year.
=================================
It would be good to know something about Passive Voice. You can often encounter Passive Voice when you read books, however, English teachers like to leave it for the end of grammar courses. Even if you do not use Passive Voice in chats and live conversations, you still need it for reading books.
In sentences using Passive Voice, the subject is acted upon. The subject receives the action of the verb. The verb is said to be in passive voice.
This bookstore was built two years ago.
The car is being washed.
This parcel has been brought by the courier.

Note the difference. It wasn’t the bookstore that built something, it wasn’t the car that washed itself, it wasn’t the package that brought something, as in the original Active Voice.
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Knowing grammar perfectly doesn't make you fluent in English, because a foreign language must be practiced and trained like any work in principle.
The principle of learning is simple. If you want to read well in English - read a lot, if you want to write well in English - write a lot, if you want to understand English - start listening to English content a lot, if you want to speak - speak a lot, you can start with monologues if you don't have conversationalists yet.
And, of course, post everything to your personal diary to keep track of your progress.
Do this work regularly. You may not think of mistakes at first and forget of their existence for a while, just immerse yourself with an English world as much as possible!
admin
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Re: Student Boris's corner

Post by admin »

Many people do not even assume they already know a large number of English words, without even learning English.
Here is the link to the well-known English words that are presented and ingrained in almost every language in the world.
learning-english-together-f26/well-know ... -t519.html
I think you can count up to a hundred or more the well-known words there, and the list goes on ...
Post if these words are familiar to you?
admin
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Re: Student Boris's corner

Post by admin »

In principle, even without knowing a grammar or knowing it bad, you can say a lot using so-called template phrases. We will learn some of them in this lesson.
Let's tell what we have in our room, in our house and in our life
I have [something]
about my room
I have a desk, I have a chair, I have a pen, I have a picture, I have a TV.....
about my relatives
I have a sister, I have a father, I have an uncle...
about my animals
I have a cat, I have chickens, I have a hen...
about my house
I have a house, I have an apartment, I have a room, I have an attic, I have a kitchen, I have a bathroom, I have a shower, I have a living room, I have a yard...
about my trees and plants
I have a tree, I have a rose, I have an apple....
about my food
I have a meal, I have a bread, I have a sandwich, I have porridge, I have a sausage, I have soup...
about my clothes
I have a sweater, I have a shirt, I have socks.....
about my feelings and interests
I have a life, I have interests, I have feelings, I have a love, I have my views.....
....................................
Not bad? as for one useful phrase.
Type in your post what do you have, what do you see around you, use the template phrase. You can look up unknown words in a dictionary or translate them using an online translator.
admin
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Posts: 3118
Joined: Wed Dec 11, 2019 8:31 am
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Re: Student Boris's corner

Post by admin »

Here is the link to sound flash cards
Flash cards
Try to do 15 flash cards per day, you can enter a memorizing word in the field or replay it in your memory, do what is more convenient to you, you have to choose an answer Again, Hard, Not hard, Easy. Mention exercises in your diary here.
See you in the next lesson.
Cheers!
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