ETJ Blog

Hi everyone,
I am enjoying this stuff of writing comments & reading articles. I regularly visit this page & read all new topics. I have joined this group recently but after creating my account in my English blog, I have read all the topics in a single day & wrote my comments on those topics.
I was not familiar with this kind of group. I was thinking of improving my English & I was so worried about it because English is international language & you can’t survive in market if you don’t know it well. I was searching on web with “learning English” & I got a link for this site.
For the first day I listened to podcasts by john & I loved them. Next day I clicked the link for my English blog & became member of this group. As I told you I wrote comments for all topics & started.
When I was not member of this group I never thought that I will be able to write anything in English but I was wrong. I am really happy now that I am member of this group for my English writing is improving day by day. I can express my thoughts in English! Isn’t it nice? Thank you john for such a nice site & all of you for writing so many articles so that I can comment on them.
I am writing a topic! Who knows after some days I will be able to write on some nice & good topics & you will comment on them! (What a big misunderstanding!)Anyway thank you a lot!

If I recall correctly ETJ asked such question on one of the last lessons. At that time I didn’t have my answer right away. Well I have to admit that I had very vague definitions of those words. When I hear someone is said to be an optimist I used to think that he or she is very happy person with a smiley face, in the opposite a pessimist is the one with a frowned eyebrows ? So, who are the optimist and the pessimist exactly anyway? I opened my favorite dictionary and looked up those words. Here they are, the definitions : an optimist is a person who believes that good things will happen and a pessimist in the opposite is a person who believes that bad things will happen . Now I have more accurate definitions of the words, I start wondering which category I fall into. Well, looking back the past I feel like sometimes I’m an optimist, sometimes a pessimist. The feeling is like when you are waiting for the test scores after exams, they maybe good or bad and they always get you worried. I don’t think I always believe that the scores will be good, espescially when my preparation is not enough. The only thing I’m sure of is that I always hope that it will be good. So, which category am I in ? I still have no answer, but some thing came up in my mind that you can only expect an answer for such a question if your question is related to a specified period of time or it’s related to a specified event , something like are you optimistic about the world we’re living in ? Such a question is easier to answer than the general one. My answer is yes, I’m optimistic about the world we’re living in . Why ? you may ask. Well, even though there are a lot of bad things happenning around the world like the war in Iraq, the abominable act of terrorists which you hear constantly about on the media everyday, but never forget that most of people in the world are against those kinds of things. Which is important is that against wars is the common sense to most of us who live in whatever place in the world. And people are trying in any way to stop the bad things and to help people in difficult situation.When a war happens we witness the increase of protests against it , when a disaster happens people are trying to help, if not directly, it will be through organizations like Red Cross and the help are not ony from local people but it’s also from all over the world. The fact that people are getting more intelligent helps the world we’re living in getting better. Some would think that language is a barrier for people to come together, but in my opinion it’s partly true nowaday. Of course it’s true in a way that it’s hard to communicate with people talking another language. But it’s not an impossible barrier to pass and when you pass it you find that you’ve gained a lot . The fact is when you study a language you find for yourself a lot of friends than you would expect. When I realize that I think languages are not barriers at all, it’s the things that make the world more interesting and make us come together. Could you imagine that you will meet a friend from Vietnam when you study English, probaly not when you started pronouncing your first English word. People in the world are getting better, we are making thing which seems to be a barrier to come together become a bridge to our friendships . By comming together, I think, we’ll do our world a much better place to live.
It’s just some thought of mine. What do you think ? Are you optimistic about the world we’re living in ?

Hello everybody! I suggest to oppen a secction where each listener could describe somethings about they. For example:

I am guy of twenty four years old from Canary islands. I am studying computer science at university. And I learning english because I would like living and working in another country

Hi John & everyone,

I think members of this site are very few or they are not active because I am unable to see any new messages and responses.I regularly visit this site but I think no one visits rugularly or a they are a bit lazy .There is no new thing to read.So please if anyone is there, be active & lets try to improve our english with each others help.(Read message & correct errors if any.)
priti

Link to NetPals English Page

I had an idea a few months ago and I’ve written to some of you about it. I think we’re living in an era with some great technology for education. Now, it’s very easy to connect to the internet and have a voice conversation with someone on the other side of the world. AND IT’S MOSTLY FREE!!! (with Skype, computer-to-computer calling is free; computer-to-phone calling is not free) (links: Skype download (free), more information)

Yes, I’m talking about SKYPE. I thought it would be a good idea to use Skype, and help form a kind of ‘voice chat English learning community.’ I could use the English Teacher John website as a central organizer of this new community. I was thinking about calling it ‘NetPals English Learning Community’ ‘NetPals ELC’ or how about just ‘NetPals.’ Hey, how about ‘NetPals English’ with the idea that we could grow it to include OTHER LANGUAGES in the future (‘NetPals Arabic,’ ‘NetPals Spanish,’ ‘NetPals Japanese’).

I’m proposing these things to start our ‘NetPals English’ community:

1. I’ll mention this on both MY ENGLISH BLOG and on the ENGLISH TEACHER JOHN SHOW PODCAST.

2. If you’re interested in participating, then go to our NetPals Page. Or, you can send me an email to skypepals @ englishteacherjohn.com. You should include: A. your name and country, B. email address, C. Skype ID, D. chat frequency (how many skype chats per week or month?), E. the days and times that you are available for a skype chat (it would be helpful if you could put the time in both local time, and GMT time. example: 22:00 Tokyo local time, 13:00 GMT), F. your English level (beginner, intermediate, advanced), and G. your gender, male or female, and your age. (I think these could be helpful when considering privacy, topics, conduct and cultural issues.)

3. I’ll maintain a database of interested people, with all of the above information.

4. We’ll have a ‘kick-off’ chat where I’ll be on Skype and I hope that some or many of you can join the FIRST SKYPE CHAT (can we do it sometime in November?) We’ll discuss the new ‘NetPals English’ community and collect everyone’s ideas.

5. Through email and/or ETJ website, NetPals English members will coordinate one-to-one chats or three person chats. In the beginning, perhaps each person could stay with the same SKype Pal for one or two months, then we’ll have a procedure for changing your NetPal.

6. We’ll have a new ‘Net Pals Blog’ where we can all discuss the new NetPals English community, share our experiences, comments, suggestions. ETJ will moderate the new blog. This blog probably should not be used for scheduling chats with your NetPal.

7. We’ll have periodic ‘NetPals English’ Feedback Chats.

8. I would suggest that we have a weekly or monthly ‘Suggested Topic’ so that NetPals can prepare some things to talk about. It gives some guidance and purpose to the chats.

9. We’ll need some ‘Rules of Conduct’ (ie. no profanity, respecting people’s privacy) and I think together we could develop these over time.

10. To participate, you’ll need a computer that has an internet connection, a microphone and speaker (a headset is highly recommended), and the SKYPE software. It’s free and can be downloaded here.

I’m sure there are many more things that I haven’t thought about. Please post a comment/reply to this message. Is it a good idea? Bad idea? Would you like to participate?

Hello,
In my profile there is one field named LEVEL:2
What does it mean?

Well, we don’t always have to talk about language learning here .. but today I WILL continue to talk about English language learning. WHY? Well, I’ve just come back from the annual JALT conference which was held this past weekend in Shizuoka, Japan. JALT stands for the Japan Association of Language Teachers and most of the teachers in the association are English teachers, and at all levels: elementary school and younger, junior high school, high school, and university level.

I feel like I gathered so much information this past Saturday and Sunday that my brain grew too quickly … and now I have a headache!! Actually, right now it’s only INFORMATION that I gained. When I actually put it into USE, then it will be something that I’ve LEARNED and incorporated into my set of teaching skill. Hopefully this new information will assist or benefit language students in the future. I hope so!

I went to a few workshops on MOODLE. Moodle is an online tool for creating educational courses. It’s called a CMS, or Course Management System. MOODLE is relatively ‘new’, probably useful in many learning environments and … it’s F-R-E-E, open-source software so it’s very appealing to many teachers and institutions. With Moodle students can access their course from any computer that is connected to the internet. You can read, answer questions, get scores and feedback from your teacher, chat with fellow classmates, post messages to discussion forums, and work collaboratively (with others) on a class ‘wiki.’ Does it sound exciting???

I’ve recently setup a Moodle installation on my web server and I’m just starting to do things with it. I want to use it with students soon, probably on a limited basis to start.

At the JALT conference I also attended workshops on kids activities (I also teach children), using movies and video journals in the classroom, wikis, and the use of podcasts and mp3 players for language learning. Wow, it was a lot of information!! There are so many language teachers out there who are doing new and exciting projects and activities!

I’m especially interested in using technology to help with language learning. In the JALT group and in other circles, they call this CALL or ‘computer-assisted language learning.’ I think I like the term TELL better: ‘technology enhanced language learning.’ As an example, student podcasts (audio recording files) could be created, exchanged and assessed in a class and this would not involve the use of computers.

I also like the word ‘enhanced’ more than ‘assisted.’ If computers and other technology are not actually enhancing language teaching and learning, then I’m not sure it’s really worth it.

Okay, I think I’ve rambled on enough here. I need to make a new audio lesson podcast as my last one (number 15) was pretty short! Let’s collectively think about technology and language learning and what’s helpful to students and what’s not. I think it’s helpful to know what students and teachers are doing right now, and also what is possible in the future. HOW CAN WE USE TECHNOLOGY TO ENHANCE LANGUAGE LEARNING?

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 !

I’ve just discovered this podcast for a few days. Yesterday, I decided to download all the lessons on to my computer after listening the first one. Today I don’t have classes, so I thought I should listen to thoses lessons as many as I could to catch up with you guys here. Guess what ? I’ve just finished the 14th, woohooo !!! Can you imagine that ? I listened to all 14 lessons NON-STOP. It sounds little bit crazy, but I think I could do that because all those lessons are so interesting. They really are. And they’re funny and not boring at all. I’ve learnt a lot of idioms, how to use the tenses .The American slangs sound really cool, I kept practicing to speak some expressions like ” How have you been ? ” at “natural speed” but it only makes me laugh a lot because it’s nowhere near as natural as what teacher John expects students to speak ,at least I think so 😉 But it’s fun practising. Thank Mr. John for your wonderful podcast. And hello to everyone , happy learning English with teacher John !!!!

In this short paragraph, I want to thank the english teacher john for all his effort to satisfy his students’ requests from all over the world and especially his tunisian students. In his last podcast (the podcast number 13), the english teacher john responded to my friend’s question about pronounciation. That was a great thing for me and for my friend. I really can’t express the feelings of respect that I carry to this person, he is a great teacher, he is a great man! that’s all what i can say, and i’m sure that there is more people that want to say the same thing as me and even more.