English Recordings

2010 looks like it's going to be a great year for music festivals. The big festivals such as Glastonbury, Leeds and Reading festival and V festival have announced some huge artists and continue to add some of the world's best bands to their line up. However, with over 400 organised UK music festivals to choose from, smaller festivals such as Cropredy, Download, Cambridge Folk Festival and festivals specifically for genres such as blues, country, metal, world music and folk festivals there’s a lot to choose from. There are also some very interesting eclectic events occurring such as the Mighty Boosh Festival, Hop Farm and Green Man or the beautifully located Hydro Connect Festival. This looks set to continue as younger generations are brought into the festival atmosphere with family orientated, better managed and more diverse festivals to choose from, including underage festivals. To help you find the best festivals in your area, budget and to your tastes, you can compare our unbiased reviews of music festivals and see what other music lovers had to say about festivals they've attended. If you're a little more adventurous you can also read reviews of musical festivals in Europe and the USA such as South By South West, Benicassim and Roskilde.
With so much choice, which one to go to, or in many cases, which ones, writing a review of your festival experience can really help others choose the best one. Make sure you include factors such as, atmosphere, toilet facilities (always a cause for concern) and what you got out of the festival, be it seeing some of your favourites bands, laughing at great comedy, finding the odd hidden gem, or just soaking up the atmosphere.

Hi Jarda,

I saw your notices up at the BNE building at UWE and thought I'd get in touch. I'm a full-time postgraduate student there, but I'm also a qualified TEFL teacher and have a fair bit of experience teaching English and tutoring one-to-one. If you're still looking for a tutor then get in touch and we can arrange to meet sometime.
Usually I would charge £15 for an hour's lesson, once a week, but if you wanted to arrange more lessons than that then obviously we could settle a lower price. At the moment I only have classes at Frenchay campus every Tuesday, maybe the best thing would be to meet up and discuss things. However I have university and other work to fit in, 3 times a week may be difficult to manage. The only other days I can really be free at the moment are Monday and Thursday, and we could do a lesson after classes on Tuesday. I would usually just do lessons of one hour, because people often get tired and stop concentrating but if we find that's too short we could make the lessons longer! If we were doing 3 hours a week I would probably say £40.
I think we should meet either tomorrow or on Tuesday at UWE, when are you free?
Regards,
Harry

10 Things Your Language School Doesn’t Want You to Know

1. You don’t need a teacher or school to learn a foreign language

There is an important distinction to be made between learning and schooling. Those who believe they need formal training in a language are making the false assumption that the two are one and the same. To reach fluency in a language, you need to acquire a great deal of tacit knowledge, that special kind of internalized, experience-based information that you may not be conscious of. The sad truth is that most teachers focus on explicit knowledge (e.g. facts about the language such as grammar rules), which has very little to do with one’s ability to speak a language. Explicit knowledge is easier to teach and test, however, which probably explains why it makes up the bulk of school curricula.

2. You don’t need to learn grammar rules

At some point in history, the education establishment convinced society that they needed to be “taught” languages. This was quite an amazing feat considering that all human beings are endowed by evolution (or God if you prefer) with the ability to automatically acquire any language they hear in adequate quantities. The problem for most learners (and the reason they buy into the “I need more schooling!” mentality) is that they never get an “adequate quantity” of language input. The irony is that this input deficiency is often caused by the very classes that are supposed to provide it. With a focus on memorizing grammar rules, most learners end up spending the vast majority of their time learning about a language instead of the language itself.

3. Tests and grades do more harm than good

Ideally, formalized testing and grading systems motivate students by providing competition and objective feedback. In reality, however, most grading is far from objective (teachers tend to reward students they like and penalize those they don’t), and tests do little more than demonstrate one’s ability to memorize facts. Feedback is important, but it needn’t be in the form of traditional testing or grades. Ask your teachers to evaluate your performance by giving specific examples of things you said right or wrong, not with multiple choice tests.

4. Classes go as fast as the slowest person

The bigger the class, the wider the range of abilities, and the slower the class will have to go. Schools know that students are more likely to stick with something too easy but will quickly throw in the towel if something is too difficult. And despite placement tests and numerous class levels, it can be very difficult to appropriately group students by their actual skill in the language. With finite time slots mutually convenient for all students in a given group, some students will inevitably be placed in classes that are above or below their actual ability level. Also, placement tests come with the same problems mentioned in # 3: they test one’s memory and knowledge (especially of the written word).

5. Reading out loud does not improve your pronunciation or speaking ability

Teachers often have students read out loud to allegedly “practice pronunciation.” The truth is that your pronunciation improves only from massive amounts of listening input and then massive amounts of speaking when you’re ready. Reading aloud does little more than show what words you are unfamiliar with and often reinforces mispronunciations instead of fixing them. While some teachers genuinely believe in the read aloud method, others just use it as a zero prep activity to count down the clock.

6. Oral drills do not help you learn how to speak; they only demonstrate your ability to do so

Just as reading aloud does not improve your pronunciation or reading skills, oral drills do little for your speaking fluency. We improve our speaking ability through increasing the quantity and quality of listening input (e.g. podcasts about your favorite topics), and then applying what we have heard in natural, contextualized conversations.

7. You will be encouraged to move up to the next level even if you aren’t ready

This is all about business. Schools make more money when you buy new books, take level tests and re-enroll in more classes.

8. Your progress reports are meaningless

Teachers hate writing progress reports. They are usually an exercise in creative writing, not meaningful feedback on your actual performance and progress in the language. Not knowing what to say (and not wanting to waste time on a task they don’t get paid for!), many teachers will just cut and paste canned comments, or come up with general, vague statements and overly technical descriptions of your grammar and pronunciation problems.

9. You should be the one who chooses the material

Despite being widely used, standardized textbooks are bad tools for a number of reasons. They build on the myth that schooling equals learning, as discussed in # 1 above. They lull students into a false sense of accomplishment, where completion of chapters is confused with actual internalization of the content. And with content written not to entertain but to avoid offending anyone, they are typically boring and sterile. Interest in the material is essential for effective language learning, so make sure to choose schools or teachers that allow you to choose materials that float your boat.

10. It doesn’t take years to learn a foreign language well if you do it right

If you like the language you are learning, believe you can learn it, and get as much listening and reading input as possible, you will learn the language well enough to communicate in a matter of 6 months to a year. Most students, however, end up paying tuition for years and years despite a lack of progress. Students blame themselves (backed up by the bogus comments found in their progress reports), not realizing that the problem lies not in them, but with their school’s materials and methodologies.

Coleman

How do you relate to other people so as to get along well with them?

I think human relationships are an essential element for us to live, and we can't get by if we avoid them.

No matter where you are, no matter what you do, you'll be with people most of the time. Of course you rely on human ties at home as well.

In my opinion, the most important factor of maintaining a good relationship with others is self-awareness and self-acceptance.

People often look away defensively get in touch with themselves, because they fear to see their downside.

You need to be courageous to take a close look inside yourself. Sometimes you'll be disappointed to find traits that you think are negative, and you might try to act as if you don't know you have them.

Bad beannie sellers always benefit from big nosed Aussies on a low travel budget.
Opening sets in Dunkin and in the streets of Myeongdong can make you feel like King Kong.
Many have heard, of the benefits of negging birds.
At the end of the day, it’s all trial and error
Life is just a dream. Nothing too extreme. It melts away like ice-cream.

I need this dialogue for my students who need basic listening skills. It requires 2 speakers.

Dialogue 3

A) Excuse. How do I get to the art festival?
B) Where is the art festival being held?
A) It’s being held in the Art & Culture Hall.
B) Ok, go straight for about 300 hundred metres then turn left when you see Family Mart, walk for another 100 hundred metres and then you will see it on your right.

I need this dialogue for my students who need basic listening skills. It requires 2 speakers.

Dialogue 2.

A) What are you doing tomorrow?
B) I’m going to the zoo.
A) Who are you going to the zoo with?
B) I’m going there with a friend.
A) What animals are you interested in seeing?
B) I want to see monkeys, lions, tigers and bears. But what is the best way to get there?
A) You should take the number 4 subway line and get off at the station Zoo Park. Then walk straight for 500 metres from exit 7 and you will see the zoo on your left.

I need this dialogue for my students who need basic listening skills in English. It requires 2 speakers.

Dialogue 1

A) What do you want to be?
B) I want to be a lawyer.
A) Oh, are you interested in Law?
B) Yes. I’m interested in Law and I think that if I become a lawyer I can help people.

Multi-national personnel at North Atlantic Treaty Organization headquarters near Paris found English to be an easy language ... until they tried to pronounce it. To help them discard an array of accents, the verses below were devised. After trying them, a Frenchman said he'd prefer six months at hard labor to reading six lines aloud. Try them yourself.

ENGLISH IS TOUGH STUFF
======================

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.

Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it's written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation's OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.

Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.

Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.

Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.

Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.

Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.

Pronunciation -- think of Psyche!
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won't it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.

Finally, which rhymes with enough --
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

-- Author Unknown