Things I've Learned About English

During my time in Vietnam I've learned a lot about the differences between American English (AE) and British English (BE). For example,

• Americans drive down the street and make a right (or left) turn. Brit's make a right (or left) turning.
• You leave your car in "a car park" in England but in "a parking lot" in America.
• AE calls the place where you're supposed to walk across the road "a crosswalk." Because of the wide lines painted parallel to the sidewalk, BE calls it "a zebra crossing."
• A dot at the end of a sentence is called "a period" in AE. In BE, they call it "a full stop."
• BE prefers to say, "I haven't got ". Americans are much more likely to say, "I don't have ." (That topic was my most confusing class ever because it was hard to avoid switching back and forth between the two.)
• You may have noticed in the previous example that BE ends a quote with " and then a full stop. AE places the quotation mark after the period.
• AE hates the passive voice; BE seems to love it.
• "Sneakers" (AE) are "trainers" (BE) and "lorries" (BE) are "trucks" (AE).
• AE's "crazy" is "mad" in BE, but "mad" in AE means "angry."
• Americans do things "on the weekend" and don't like going "to the hospital." Brits do things "at the weekend" and don't like going "to hospital."
• England uses an IPA phonology chart which includes vowel sounds that most Americans never use. This is why some people don't understand me when I talk about my job until I pronounce it like Job (the name of the guy in the Bible.)
• In standard British English, /r/ is only pronounced if it comes before a vowel. My theory is that the colonists stole all the r's and took them to America. Whatever the reason, it accounts for the different pronunciations of words like war and turn.
• Word stress varies between the two types of English. For example, CONtroversy (AE) is pronounced conTROversy in BE.

There are differences in other languages too, like Spanish Spanish and Puerto Rican Spanish, French French and Canadian French, and northern, central and southern Vietnamese. It's part of the challenge of learning and teaching language.

Got any examples that make you crazy/mad?

It Gets Clearer Bit By Bit

Look at the first picture below. Can you tell where it was taken? How many people are in the photo? Are they men, women or children? What are they doing? Are they happy or sad? Is it winter or summer?

Now look at the next photo and try to answer the same questions.(Don't skip down to the third photo yet!) Where was it taken? How many people? Men, women or children? What are they doing? Are they happy or sad? Is it winter or summer?

Look at the third one. Don't look at the last one yet! Where was it taken? How many people? Men, women or children? What are they doing? Are they happy or sad? Is it winter or summer?

And here's the last one. What can you tell from the picture now?

As each picture gets clearer, you can get a better understanding of what is happening. Reading is like that too. Each time you read a text, you understand a little more about it. And you don't have to understand every single word to understand what's being written - just like you don't have to see every part of the photo to know what the picture is about.

Don't worry if we finish a unit and you still don't know every word used in the article. If you concentrate on getting the big picture and learning 10-15 new words each week, your reading ability will improve.

Topic Sentences

Topic sentences can be difficult to create when you're writing in a foreign language. Fortunately, there's a simple way to tell if you've written a good one. A topic sentence should have only one topic and say only one thing about that topic. So, to check your topic sentence, ask yourself two questions: What is the topic of this sentence? What does the sentence say about the topic? If you can clearly say what the topic is and what the "one thing" it says about the topic, then you probably have a good topic sentence. That simple, two-step check can make writing good topic sentences easier.

Here's something that might help you remember that your topic sentence needs one topic and one idea about that topic. Just think, "ớt ơi."

One topic, one idea.

Blogs & Wikis for Class?

In December I will be teaching an intensive 3-week writing course and I've been searching for a way that students can post their homework to a blog or wiki, revise it as the course proceeds, and view and comment on their classmates' work.

wikispaces.com may be a solution but I'm a bit concerned that it involves too much tech and tech English. It won't be that helpful if we have to spend a week on  how to navigate a site just to be able to turn in  homework. Of course, emailing assignments is one solution and we've used it successfully in the past, but I like the idea of students being able to see their progress, work together with their classmates and show off their work to others by sending them a link.

DAV students -- Do you think online assignments would work or is it too complicated? Would you like to post your assignments online?

Want to study at MIT?

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is one of the most famous universities in America. It's known for its science and engineering programs but offers other majors too. Most of us will never have the opportunity to study at MIT. Fortunately, MIT makes about 2,000 of their courses available free online.

You won't get college credit for it, but you can view course materials, lecture notes, videos of lectures, and even take exams. They even have an ESL course for Listening, Speaking and Pronunciation. The full list of courses, undergraduate and graduate, is at http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm.

Reading Hint for K36

Here's a link to the post I mentioned in class. It Gets Clearer Bit by Bit. If you've not seen it before, I recommend reading it.

Learning New Vocabulary

This afternoon we had a great visit with friends in a village just north of Hanoi. On the way back into town, one of my friends asked me how I remember Vietnamese words that are new to me. That's a good question, since I hear so many new words and forget them so easily. Like the English idiom says, they "go in one ear and out the other."

But I have had some success. Usually it comes when I can use the word or phrase a lot for 2-3 days after I learn it. I try to do this when I learn a Vietnamese proverb. Repeating it often and asking if I used it correctly helps me understand and remember.

If you want to try this method, just think up ways to use your new English word whenever you can. For example, if the word is "compromise," make a sentence about two friends who had a small disagreement and had to compromise. If you read news about a policy dispute somewhere, you can say something as simple as, "They need to compromise." If your English-speaking friend wants to take the bus somewhere and you want to go by xe om, say, "Maybe we can compromise and take the bus there and xe om back." Even if there's no one around who can speak English, you can say it to yourself and it will help.

It's an added bonus if you have friends who are native speakers or experts because, after you use the word, you can ask, "Is that the right meaning?" They can help you fine-tune your understanding of the meaning and help you use the correct collocations.

Good luck! Remember, "có công mài sắt, có ngày nên kim." Did I use that correctly?