Marmara Elt Resources

12 Great Memory Strategies For Better Grades by StrongLearning
STRATEGY 1. CHUNKING

It is easier to memorize information when you break it up into small chunks. This is called chunking. You may not realize it, but you use chunking often, like when you memorize your friend’s telephone number, a locker combination, or your social security number. It’s easier to remember long numbers when you “chunk” them into groups of threes, fours and fives. That’s because most people can only remember about three, four or five bits of information at a time.

Here are suggestions on how you can use “chunking” to remember information as well as numbers.

• Chunk vocabulary words by grouping them by parts of speech or other attributes.

• Chunk history by time periods or events.

• Chunk foreign language by grouping words into categories like household items or occupations.

• If there is no pattern to the information you need to study, just group the items into three, four or five at a time, and that will help a lot.
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What the Good Language Learner can Teach Us?

What makes a language learner an effective acquirer of a foreign language? What methods and approaches do they use that enables them to become fluent more quickly than the average language learner? What can we learn from their techniques that we can pass on to other language learners?

They take and create opportunities to use the language
Many language learners avoid using the language in the early stages for fear of a breakdown in communication. The good language learner, on the other hand, uses the language at every available opportunity. They are forever seeking out opportunities both to use and to hear the language, e.g. chatting with storekeepers (rather than just purchasing the goods they have gone there to buy); asking people at the bus stop how to get to where they want to go (even though they are clear on this already!) instead of just getting on the bus; asking someone in the street to explain some unusual object or event (rather than just passing it by); asking someone on the bus or train to explain something in their Chinese textbook, etc.. All the while, therefore, they are taking and creating opportunities to use the language.

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Teaching Effective Presentation Skills to ESL/EFL Students
Yin Ling Cheung
ycheung (at) purdue.edu
Purdue University (West Lafayette, Indiana, USA)
This article discusses some practical techniques that ESL/EFL teachers can use in teaching effective academic presentation skills. It is suggested that macro organization, micro organization, thesis and support, strategies to involve the audience, response to audience input, non-verbal communication, use of visual materials, and pacing should be taught explicitly to the students.
Introduction
Being able to present oneself precisely and concisely is a key to success in one’s course of study. In what follows, I suggest some practical tips on academic presentation skills that are easy to use in teaching your ESL/EFL students.
Macro Organization
The first step is teaching macro organization. The organization of an academic presentation should consist of purpose, objectives, outline, introduction, and conclusion. The purpose is a statement that suggests the general goal of the presentation. The objectives are the specific goals that you want to achieve by the end of a presentation. The outline refers to the different parts, sections or components in your presentation. As regards the introduction, you may teach your students to start off with a word origin, an interesting question, a definition of a term, an analogy, or even a personal experience. Concerning the conclusion, no new information should be introduced to this part; the conclusion only summarizes the key points of your talk. You can begin the conclusion using the phrases such as in a nutshell, the bottom line is…, what it boils down to is … or other similiar phrases.
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As video and other digital media compose a large portion of the time students spend interacting with varied images and sounds, we are beginning to see a parallel development in the number of studies looking into how these might affect language learning. However, no specific studies were found which investigated actual language acquisition benefit from video production.

Many second language teachers and programs include elements of video production in their lessons. Recently, with the advent of digital technology, camcorders have become cheaper, smaller, and simpler to use. Free or reasonably priced editing software can arrange even the crudest video footage into a finished product that students and teachers can be proud of. Narration and music can be added in a controlled manner. Visual images can be enhanced with transition effects or other creative techniques. Teachers and students willing to invest the time can create very enjoyable productions for relatively little expense.
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