ETJ Blog

hey, what’s up , everybody !
what kind of technologies and tools are most affected and useful for learning languages ? Well, I think, the answer will vary based on your own situation. Me, all I need is my PC. I used to have a mp3 player when I lived far from my university. I used to listen to it a lot on my way to university ( well, just music but I think English songs also can help me learn the language too and back then I had no idea about what podcast was ) But two years ago I moved to another university’s hostel and it’s only 15 minutes away from the campus, so I didn’t use my mp3 player as much as before. Last year, I decided to sell it ( students are always in need of money , you know 😉 ) And now all I have is my computer, actually it’s the most “hi-tech” thing in my room now :). I find computer programs + the internet are the best resources to help me learn english, especially when I dont have to travel much. I use a lot of programs to help me study English. Among them the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English is the one I used the most. When I look up a word, it not only gives me the meaning , but also the pronunciation and a “word set” ( a set of words related to the word ). And it can find a word by its pronunciation too, i think the feature is great because, you know, the pronunciation of an English word sometimes doesn’t help us figure out how it’s spelled and this kind of characteristic of English make me difficult to learn it. In my native language ( Vietnamese ), it’s easy to write out a new word when you hear it and you can look it up in a dictionary right away to understand what the speaker wants to say.
Oh maybe i’ve gone too far from the topic and I want to talk about, but it’s really good program, you should buy it if you can. And for my reading, the internet is always there. I read Google News every day (its at news.google.com ). When I read something interesting like some historical facts I use Wikipedia to read more about them. Oh, I love wikipedia, and I’m so thankful to everybody who contributes to this encyclopedia. I wish I can contribute to it too when my English is good enough (and when I have something to share too ). As teacher John said ( in the podcast ) , I want to have a little fun with language learning too. So I read some sites like “boing boing ” ( it’s at www.boingboing.net ), and sometimes I try to write down songs’ lyrics while i’m listening to them. I love Jazz, by the way . Oh, I almost forgot, and now we have podcasts.I’ve just used it for about a month and I’m getting to like it . I listen to it every day now. There are a lot of people in “podosphere” talking about a lot of stuff ( i dont remember when and where I heard or read the word “PodoSphere”, but I hope I spell it correctly 🙂 ) The new technology is so great. Even though , as I said above, I dont live far from my university but i’m still considering to buy an iPod. I’m so into podcasts now. Anyway, it’s just some thoughts I have and I want to share with you guys.
Have a nice weekend to teacher John and everyone !

Posted by nat on Sunday, October 9th, 2005 at 3:57 am
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