ESL Podcast355—Finding a Bargain

To go overboard –to do too much about something, to do something extremely
E.g. If you go to buffet, it’s important not to go overboard.
Outlet mall—it’s where companies sell clothing and other things at cheaper price than the regular store. It’s a place where the clothing wasn’t very popular or perhaps may have small problems.
Bargain—it’s something that cost less than it usually would.
To be discounted—means to be sold at the price lower than usual, or on sale.
Heaven—a place where everything is perfect where one is completely happy.
E.g. I was in spider man heaven meaning I was completely happy in this place.
Reduced prices—same as discounted price. Price lowers than normal.
Knock off the certain amount of the price—lower the price, make the price lower than it was before.
E.g. my mechanic knocked off twenty dollars on my bill to fix my car.
Half price—fifty percent off
Resist—be able to stop yourself from doing something that you want to do.
You went to a buffet and went overboard, now you at home and you have a piece of apple pie in your refrigerator, you have to resist the temptation of eating the apple pie.
Barging basement—the fact that some store used to sell things cheaply, put things on sale in the basement of the store. Means sells things cheaply.
Two for the price of one—there are two for one. You buy one thing and get another free.
Cheap— cost little money or less than usual.
Breather—a break, a pause of an activity.

ESL provides us various conversations taking in different places, and squeezes them into mp3 for learners who can utilize it portably. For the beginners who just started learning English, ESL podcast offers a very well-organized and friendly environment, because the track of speed and the vocabularies are just fit to them. However, for these advanced English learners, the speed would be a little way too slow and the contents are too easy as well. Admittedly, ESL podcast do give some apparent advantages, compared with some English learning magazines, such as cost free and quickly updated. Personally, I would think ESL podcast is a poor version of “Let’s talk in English”, so if you are the fan of Let’s talk in English, ESL podcast offer you another choice to save your pocket.

2009 International Conference on ALLT

It is the big task ever for English department to hold on an important and huge conference in such limited of time. And luckily, after 3 exhausted days, especially for the students who is one month shy from graduation, we finally get over with it successfully.
The preparation before the conference was heavy and bothersome; however, I got a special experience by playing my role---a caterer. As a caterer, we have to make sure the guests are fully satisfied with the foods and drinks served in these days. The timing is essential; we divided it into three parts, the breakfast, lunch, and afternoon tea time, to make everyone pleased and full, which provided me more time to sneak into the conference.
There are several different applied linguistics related topic conferences held in three days, but only few of them are related to computer learning. I sneaked into the one called Corpus and Linguistics and Its Application, presented by Jason S. Chang, Hao-Jan Chen and Zhao-Ming Gao. It focuses on the introduction of linguistic corpora and how to use them efficiently while doing research. However, due to the time limitation, I can only sneak in for 15 minutes and have to go out to serve people. It was really sad that I sign to cater crew, which made me unable to participate the conference.

WOW!! The smart English learning & searching engine--Corpus

Well, honestly, I am sort of mixing up while my first time using the corpus-based system, albeit it was really helpful for the English learner. However, after trying several times, I can finally realize the best way of using it, especially from the Concordancer and collocation retrieval systems (CCRS). Just like a searching engine, CCRS helps me know more about the sentences patterns and the grammar rules only within few clicks, and if I want to know more about the usage of word that can’t find from the dictionary, CCRS can solve my question by providing numerous example.

Nevertheless, to fully understand the word should make use of dictionary and corpus-based system both. The dictionary can offer the definition and the origin of the word, and Corpus-based system tool could let us dabble further in the art of English.

What’s the difference?

Synonyms are always the big obstacle for the non-native speakers, and therefore, concordancer can help us distinguish the way of synonyms' usage.
1. Large (adj)
Usually link with quantity
Ex: a large amount of output…
a large groups of students…
a large numbers of textbooks…
a large proportions of a group of teacher…
a large scale project…

2. Big (adj)
Often come with more concrete substance or numbers
Ex: The big three should…
Life in the big house…
The big man in his own town…

All the examples are From NTNU web Concordaners

工欲善其事 必先利其器

It was so fun I learned that much information about the diversity of language dictionary and some practical usage of online software. Dictionary has been my best company since I enjoy indulging myself with English reading materials or America soap episodes, and, therefore, Dr.Eye online and Besta, my portable electronic dictionary, reach out their kindly hands to me. However, throughout the course of CALL, I now understand there would be more aids I can rely on:

1. Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary—it has an easy, friendly surface and quick connection, and more important is this online software is completely FREE!

2. Tech Term Dictionary –in favor of 3C geek who can easily look up the words that only showed up in their field.

3. Yahoo! 奇摩迷你筆—this is an amazing tool! We can save our free hand to grab some food!

Apart from the dictionary tools above, we’ve also acquired some useful free gadgets called Footstone to help us download the pictures or record the image from screen. It was so tremendous because all things I’ve knew before was the Print Screen only, and that tiny button couldn’t do much help. With the magic Footstone software and variety of dictionary tools, I am sure learning English can be more fun!

Intro

Hey Everyone! This is Ivan speaking, everyone who knows me well realize I am a newly blogger (this is my first and only blog), yet due to the way of Keeping up w/ the Joneses, I have to work hard and generate my own one.

I’m from Yunlin and living in Taipei now. There were many anecdotes happened in my daily life. So, if u want to know more about my life or quirks, please do keep visiting my blog!!