Bacteriemia Zero

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Tips for English Language Learners

Introduction

What is this resource?
This is a document written collaboratively in Google docs by a group of Advanced level students of English in the INAP, on a course about New Technologies. The document is divided into sections, each dealing with a specific aspect of the skills and knowledge needed for successfully acquiring English.

The emphasis is on offering practical ideas and tips for learners that really work. Whether you are working on improving your reading, writing, listening or speaking skills; or looking for creative ways to learn more vocabulary and grammar, improve your pronunciation or find ways to effectively measure your progress, then we hope this document can help you.

How to improve your vocabulary

1. Reading, listening and speaking
2. Choose a semantic field, and learn and use the words of this field in a dialogue. Practise with different fields.  Work with vocabulary trees . http://esl.about.com/library/lessons/blvocabtrees.htm: vocabulary charts.
http://www.englishclub.com/english-for-work/ : specific vocabulary for work.
3. Pay close attention to context: it is important how words are used.
4. Try to learn in a funny way.
http://www.vocabulary.co.il/ : vocabulary games.
http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/vocabulary-games: another web of vocabulary games.


Links:
Interesting tips to improve your vocabulary
http://www.enhancemyvocabulary.com/improve-expand-vocabulary.html
http://www.spellingcity.com/ you need to pay to use some applications
http://www.howjsay.com/

How to improve your pronunciation
Speaking a lot. Record your speaking and listen to it.
Listening and paying attention to the pronunciation.Training with podcast, for instance, can be a good way. You can find poscasts in: http://www.podbean.com/
Learning the phonetic alphabet might also be useful for you. Here, a useful page: http://audio-class.ru/english-phonetics.html Once you get used to it, it is very helpful to enhance your pronunciation skills.
Getting into real situations. Have a conversation with a native English speaker and see if you get understood.

And now some tips we have found on internet:

1. English is considered a stressed language while many other languages are considered syllabic.
2. In other languages, such as French or Italian, each syllable receives equal importance (there is stress, but each syllable has its own length).
3. English pronunciation focuses on specific stressed words while quickly gliding over the other, non-stressed, words.
4. Stressed words are considered content words: Nouns e.g. kitchen, Peter - (most) principal verbs e.g. visit, construct - Adjectives e.g. beautiful, interesting - Adverbs e.g. often, carefully
5. Non-stressed words are considered function words: Determiners e.g. the, a - Auxiliary verbs e.g. am, were - Prepositions e.g. before, of - Conjunctions e.g. but, and - Pronouns e.g. they, she
6. Read the following sentence aloud: The beautiful Mountain appeared transfixed in the distance.
   Read the following sentence aloud: He can come on Sundays as long as he doesn't have to do any homework in the evening.
   Notice that the first sentence actually takes about the same time to speak well!
   Even though the second sentence is approximately 30% longer than the first, the sentences take the same time to speak. This is because there are 5 stressed words in each sentence.
7. Write down a few sentences, or take a few example sentences from a book or exercise. First underline the stressed words, then read aloud focusing on stressing the underlined words and gliding over the non-stressed words.
8. Be surprised at how quickly your pronunciation improves! By focusing on stressed words, non-stressed words and syllables take on their more muted nature.
9. When listening to native speakers, focus on how those speakers stress certain words and begin to copy this.

Extra Tips:

1. Remember that non-stressed words and syllables are often 'swallowed' in English.
2. Always focus on pronouncing stressed words well, non-stressed words can be glided over.
3. Don't focus on pronouncing each word. Focus on the stressed words in each sentence.

How to improve your grammar
English grammar may seem boring at a first glance, but it can be interesting if approached in the right way. Remember that learning English grammar will help you understand the language, as well as making your speaking more fluent.


The following webpages are quite useful to train on your grammar:
http://www.howtolearnenglish.co.uk/english-grammar-category.html
http://www.ego4u.com/en/cram-up/grammar
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/grammar/grammar_challenge/
http://www.better-english.com/grammar.htm


How to improve your listening using audio materials

Listening can be frustrating when you have no results, and it’s very difficult to hear “proper” material. You can enter the BBC website and download content but the problem is that this information is focused to English learners. So, how can I get real English, from real people? The answers resides in technology again, because podcasts have become a great help to do that.

First, what is podcasting? Podcasts are real radio programs made for amateurs, or not amateurs, it depends on the source. These programs are uploaded to the web and can be downloaded.

How can I get podcasts? The first source may be itunes, the apple service, where you can subscribe and download programs for free, but you have sites like http://www.podbean.com/ where you can download hundreds of different podcasts made by ordinary people. That’s the best way of listening real English. If you have an account you can subscribe and download podcasts and you have lots of categories depending on your taste.

How to improve your listening using video materials

The same can be applied to videocasts, podcasts recorded in video. Youtube http://www.youtube.com is a main source of videocasts, but Podbean also has interesting videocasts.

Nowadays is easy to find apps from sources as CNN  http://edition.cnn.com/video/ BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/ or other television companies with embedded video casts from different types of news.

It’s important to mention that other source of video materials are movies or tv-series. You can download or watch them in streaming from sites as NBC or BBC, if you are in the country. You can also change the audio source while watching our TDT.

Also you can rent movies and listen to them in original version.

How to improve your reading

We need a good collection of English books  and also a collection of links of libraries where you can  read or download them from for all range of English students. Then you can tag them in www.delicious.com

.

We fullly recommend to buy an ebook reader, for 2 main reasons. The first one is that you can access to thousands of free books online. The other is that some of these devices have an built-in dictionary and a text to speech option that allows you to read and listen to your book at the same time.

A useful tool would be audio books ( listening audio). http://www.gutenberg.org

How to improve your writing skills

The way to improve your writing skills comes from some of the other chapters of this text:

1. Improving Your Vocabulary for writing

A good writer has a good vocabulary — one that is both broad and deep — because a good vocabulary is essential to clarity, power, and precision. If you have a large stock of words, you can choose the most effective word. The more words you know, the easier your words will flow.
The best incidental learning comes from reading good books and associating with people who have a good spoken vocabulary and written vocabulary.

2. Improving Your Spelling for writing

Learning to spell is integral to good writing, because correct spelling ultimately helps you communicate your message to others.

3. Improve Your Reading Skills

Better writing usually comes from doing — that is, through practice. Reading also gives you writing styles to emulate. You can improve your writing by not only doing, but also seeing how others do it.

4. Improve Your Grammar

Good grammar prevents ambiguity. By contrast, bad grammar confuses your reader, slows their reading, and shows your ignorance, which can lose you respect, influence, and credibility.

5. Write, write and write...

Practice will give the best level to your writing skills.You can write different kind of texts like compositions, letters, written messages, cards,applications for a job,etc...
It´s essential to know the structure of every text according to its character. In this sense is needed the know- how of using introduction expressions, how to build up paragraphs and the way we need to put idiomatic terms in a text and so on.

Tools to improve your writing skills

- Netspeak.org
Useful tool to find a missing word, the order two or more words are commonly written, or simply a synonym.
- Improve your english
Improve your written English with this quick reference easy-to-read Android app, covering every stage of the writing process from "Pre-Writing" to "Proofreading".
- The Learn English Forum
Learn more English by practising what you know
- Lexipedia
Is the best way to know the meaning of every word. All the words on that page are categorized in order to get easier the learning process.
-After the dead line
We use artificial intelligence and natural language processing technology to find your writing errors and offer smart suggestions.
-Fire and Knowledge
“For a good writer, there is only one measure of success,and that is found in his honoring the complexity and richness of his subject while telling his story in a lucid way”.Joseph Epstein.
- Writing skills
Worksheets and printables to practice with.
- 50 Free Resources That Will Improve Your Writing
We collected over 50 useful and practical tools and resources that will help you to improve your writing skills. You will find copywriting blogs, dictionaries, references, classes.



How to improve your speaking skills

Improving your English speaking skills will help you communicate more easily and effectively. But how do you become a more confident English speaker?

1. Practise where you can, when you can. Any practice is good – whether you speak to someone who is a native English speaker or not.
2. It's important to build your confidence. If possible, use simple English sentence structure that you know is correct, so that you can concentrate on getting your message across.
3. Try to experiment with the English you know. Use words and phrases you know in new situations. Native English speakers are more likely to correct you if you use the wrong word than if you use the wrong grammar. Experimenting with vocabulary is a really good way of getting feedback.
4. Try to respond to what people say to you. You can often get clues to what people think by looking at their body language. Respond to them in a natural way.
5. Try NOT to translate into and from your own language. This takes too much time and will make you more hesitant.
6. If you forget a word, do what native English speakers do all the time, and say things that 'fill' the conversation. This is better than keeping completely silent. Try using um, or er, if you forget the word.
7. Don't speak too fast! It's important to use a natural rhythm when speaking English, but if you speak too fast it will be difficult for people to understand you.
8. Try to relax when you speak – you'll find your mouth does most of the pronunciation work for you. When you speak English at normal speed, you'll discover that many of the pronunciation skills, such as linking between words, will happen automatically.

Links to practise:
http://www.speaking24.com/: free English conversation lessons online.

http://www.puebloingles.com/index.asp: Pueblo Ingles translates literally as English village but this merely sums up what the program is about. We take beautiful locations and flood them full of the English language. The program was designed to be, and has evolved into being, the quickest and most effective way for students to improve their English listening, understanding and conversational proficiency.

Videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohJCdihPWqc&noredirect=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=ohJCdihPWqc


How to know you are making progress

http://rliberni.wordpress.com/tag/making-progress-with-your-English
This is a very complete blog made by an author specialised on English.

How are you going to monitor your progress?
If we take the specific goals above;

• You will know if you’ve learned new words.
• You may be able to find suitable jokes from presentations you’ve heard or by asking colleagues but will you know if you are telling them well?
• With pronunciation can you really know how to improve it? There are some online tools and you can decide to use these, or use a voice recorder. You may decide that you need some help from a teacher.

The key here is to be honest and really look at the detail. Think carefully about how to measure progress and decide on the best strategy for this. You must be open and balance the reality against the dream. How important is the dream?


Official tests:

You can measure your progress in English certifying your knowledge with official tests recognized all over the world.

ETS Global offers academic institutions, companies, government agencies, professionals and students a range of assessments and testing solutions to certify language skills and enhance international competitiveness. These include:

• The TOEIC® Listening and Reading test: certifies competence in listening and reading skills (business English)
• The TOEIC® Speaking and Writing tests: certifies competence in speaking and writing skills (business English)
• The TOEIC® Bridge test: certifies competence in listening and reading skills of beginners (business English)
• The TOEFL® iBT: certifies competence in academic English skills
• The TOEFL® ITP: for in-house evaluation and practice of academic English skills

...and a joke to finish:
There's a story about a teacher who told his students: You know you're making progress in English when you speak in English, think in English, and dream in English. One day a student came into the class very excited and said, "Teacher, Teacher, last night I dreamt in English." The teacher said, "That's wonderful. What did you dream about?" And the student said, "I don't know, it was in English"