Marmara Elt Resources

A large part of learning to speak English is to improve your vocabulary. Improving your vocabulary will help you feel more confident when speaking English. It will also help you understand what you are hearing when others are speaking English. There are many tools you can use to improve your English vocabulary.

• Get a dictionary. There are some good English dictionaries available online. A good dictionary helps you learn more words. The following are some of the ways to use a dictionary to improve your English vocabulary:
o Write down words that are new to you. Look the words up in a dictionary, and then write down the meanings of the words. Keep all of your words together so you can look at them when you need them.
o Pay attention to the definition. Some words have more than one meaning, so be sure to read the whole definition. Many dictionaries will also give examples of the word in a sentence. This helps you understand the word and learn to use it.
o Find new words and learn what they mean. If you learn 10 new words each day, Monday through Friday, you will learn 200 new words each month. Saturday and Sunday can be used to review your new words to be sure you know what they mean. Read the rest of this entry »

Taking Control of the English Language by Steven David Bloomberg
You speak English at an advanced level. You speak it fluently and you use it every day, yet you aren?t satisfied with your ability. You feel like you can?t express yourself the way you want to. When you can?t say what you want to say or need to say in the manner that you would like to, it might not leave you with the best feeling you could possibly have. There is only one thing to do about it. You must take control of the English language. What does taking control of the English language mean? It does not mean taking control of the entire language. It means taking control of the English language that is yours; the English language that you have. It means using the English that you already have to get more. It means taking responsibility for your own learning.
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Here’s a useful tool to assist in the learning of a new language or just communicating with people around the world in different languages. It’s called Meglobe, it is a web based instant messaging (IM) application that also performs language translations.

It’s very easy to use, just type in your own langauge and Meglobe will translate your message into the language of whoever you are chatting with. I recently had an opportunity to test Meglobe with an uncle in Mexico who I’ve never spoken to because of my poor Spanish and his almost non existent English skills.

My initial impression was that we were going to have some trouble communicating because of the poor translation quality you normally get with Machine Translation (MT) products but actually I was impressed. There were only a couple times when some of the translations didn’t look quite right but when that happened we used Meglobes contribution feature to make some quick edits to the translations. Since the UI is very crisp and easy to use and there’s nothing that needs to be done in order to use the translation features my uncle didn’t have any problems using Meglobe the first time out.

You can take a look at: www.meglobe.com

Making vocabulary stick (by Rolf Tynan)
I have noticed in recent years that the level of vocabulary required to pass an exam seems to be one of the main problems that students comment on. They say that they couldn’t understand the question words, or that the reading texts were about subjects they didn’t know a lot about. This problem recurs in all the skills components in any test. If your students have a problem retaining and using vocabulary, the following activity will offer a different way of looking at the problem.
First, learners are asked to write down 20 (or 25 or 30) words that they know on a particular topic in one minute. It is important that the number required is greater than you think the class can think of under pressure. This gives students a goal to aim for. Repeat the activity with up to six different topics.
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