Senin, 31 Oktober 2011

Hobbies for Kids

We all have some or the other hobbies. Some of our favorite hobbies are there since our childhood. It is always helpful to have good habits developed in the kids’ right from the very beginning. In fact, parents should strive to encourage kids to participate in great hobbies. Hobbies have multiple effects. It is not only necessary for development of social skills but also mental and intellectual stimulation. Modern age has been bombarded with latest technologies. Some of these like video games and PC have adverse effects on kids as well. The onslaught of video games has led to children developing laziness, obesity, mental stagnancy and what not! Such kids will have some real problem later in life.


A hobby can work wonders to the overall personality of the kid. Having a particular, consistent hobby can help in developing skills like patience, management, determination and accomplishment. The greatest hobbies always teach skills like knowledge that is crucial in every sphere of his life.


Hobbies can also help children in making new friends thus enhancing their social skills. Hobby is a great source of joy. Hobbies take a child beyond the mundane world of video games, TV and DVDs. A kid can practice hobby either in a group or alone. The prime purpose of having any hobby is personal fulfillment and self expression. It does not lead to any sort of financial gain. Children can afford to spend a lot of time on their hobbies and enhance their skill. For some of the kids, it could be a sport like cricket, tennis, football, badminton or any other sport.


Many kids love to indulge themselves in dancing, singing, playing musical instruments or play acting. One of the favorite hobbies of many kids is cooking. Not many know but cooking has highly therapeutic effects. Even net surfing or computer games can be hobbies.


It is up to the parents to discover what their children are interested in and subsequently encourage him/her. If a child is interested in craft work, motivate him to do better. A kid could be interested in activities like puppet making, stitching, finger painting, painting, vegetable painting, book craft, string painting, collecting stamps, origami, making paper and cloth dolls etc. Many children have also transformed their hobbies into their professions when they grow older

Learning English with Pleasure

What factors are responsible for success in language learning? If you learn English or any other language you can boost your progress by learning in specific way. According to the research most English students struggle and fail because of psychology, not because of methods, not because of teachers.

Those things are important, but Tony Robbins talks about the fact that psychology is 80% of success. Psychology is 80% of success, so 20% are the methods you use to study, the schools you go to, the teachers you have, the books you use. Those are important, but the other 80% is psychology, your motivation, your emotions, how you manage your time. All of these things are in fact much, much more important.

Enthusiastic, energetic and optimistic students always learn much faster and succeed. Students with the negative mentality have low motivation. They tend to be pessimistic and feel that they were not good at English. They think that English is very difficult. Therefore, they struggle, they quit, and finally they fail.

That’s why is so important to manage your emotions. In order to be successful you must develop a strong and enthusiastic attitude towards English. You must be strong and determined so you can reach your goals and succeed. This psychological side of learning process is called Non-Linguistic factors by English teachers and researchers.

According to Dr. Stephen Krashen one of the best language learning specialists, non-linguistic factors are equally or more important than linguistic factors. Things like your emotions, things like your peer group, the community that you belong to, your feelings about English determine how easily you can acquire English.

You need to create a ritual to manage your emotions and learn the language faster. This ritual will help you feel better, improve your motivation and accelerate your learning process. Every morning after waking up you must get into peak emotional state. In this state, you will get a boost of energy that makes you feel great.

How to get into peak emotional state? It’s quite simple. You can turn on your favorite music. Then move your body with the music, smile and shout. When you do this for about 5 minutes you will feel energized. Now is time to start learning English.

Another important point. You want to move your body while you’re listening to the lessons. This will keep your energy high. Hence most traditional schools are not successful in language teaching because you must learn there sitting still all the time.

When you follow my advice you boost your chances to become a successful English speaker. Try to use audio lessons as often as you can. You can go for a walk with your iPod and listen to your lessons. In this way, you learn English and exercise your body at the same time. Combination of movement and right learning method is the recipe for success in English learning.

Start your life into peak emotional state!

Senin, 24 Oktober 2011

THE TEACHING OF VOCABULARY

Traditionally, the teaching of vocabulary above elementary levels was mostly incidental, limited to presenting new items as they appeared in reading or sometimes listening texts. This indirect teaching of vocabulary assumes that vocabulary expansion will happen through the practice of other language skills, which has been proved not enough to ensure vocabulary expansion.

Nowadays it is widely accepted that vocabulary teaching should be part of the syllabus, and taught in a well-planned and regular basis. Some authors, led by Lewis (1993) argue that vocabulary should be at the centre of language teaching.

There are several aspects of lexis that need to be taken into account when teaching vocabulary. The list below is based on the work of Gairns and Redman (1986):
1. Boundaries between conceptual meaning: knowing not only what lexis refers to, but also where the boundaries are that separate it from words of related meaning (e.g. cup, mug, bowl; hand, leg, arm, neck; kitchen, garage. garden).
2. Polysemy: distinguishing between the various meaning of a single word form with several but closely related meanings (head: of a person, of a pin, of an organisation).
3. Homonymy: distinguishing between the various meaning of a single word form which has several meanings which are NOT closely related ( e.g. a file: used to put papers in or a tool).
4. Homophyny:understanding words that have the same pronunciation but different spellings and meanings (e.g. flour, flower ; see, sea).
5. Synonymy: distinguishing between the different shades of meaning that synonymous words have (e.g. extend, increase, expand ; accept, receive).
6. Affective meaning: distinguishing between the attitudinal and emotional factors (denotation and connotation), which depend on the speakers attitude or the situation. Socio-cultural associations of lexical items is another important factor. (e.g. He runs away, He is running on my eyes).
7. Style, register, dialect: Being able to distinguish between different levels of formality, the effect of different contexts and topics, as well as differences in geographical variation.
8. Translation: awareness of certain differences and similarities between the native and the foreign language (e.g. false cognates).
9. Chunks of language: multi-word verbs (e.g. blow up), idioms (e.g. Take it easy), strong and weak collocations (e.g. fast food, NOT quick food), lexical phrases(e.g. What you are saying to me is ...).
10. Grammar of vocabulary: learning the rules that enable students to build up different forms of the word or even different words from that word (e.g. sleep, slept, sleeping; able, unable; disability).
11. Pronunciation: ability to recognise and reproduce items in speech (consult it to your monnolingual dictionary).

The implication of the aspects just mentioned in teaching is that the goals of vocabulary teaching must be more than simply covering a certain number of words on a word list. We must use teaching techniques that can help realise this global concept of what it means to know a lexical item. And we must also go beyond that, giving learner opportunities to use the items learnt and also helping them to use effective written storage systems.

Revised from Solange Moras, Sao Carlos, Brazil, July 2001
Dedicated for English Teachers (candidate)

Jumat, 21 Oktober 2011

How Human Language Differs from Animal Communication System

The Example of Public Speaking

Title : How Human Language Deffers from Animal Communication System

Opening
Assalamualaikum wr.wb
In this lovely occasion, I would like to say thank you for giving me a chance to have a presentation to the honorable, Mr. Taufik, as our Academic Lecturer, and all of my nice classmates. My presentation today is about How does Human Language differ from Animal Communication System.


Body
In the classic movie Dr. Doolittle, the doctor is able to talk to animals because he has learned the many unique animal languages from his talking parrot. Scientists today, however, have encountered different results than the famed animal guru when they have tried to decipher animal communication. Animal communication is very different from human language; at one level it consists of simple gestures and body language, like a rabbit thumping his foot to warn of danger, and at the other, it is composed of complex styles of communicating that are beyond human perception, including long distance infrasonic communication among elephants and electrical courtship dances in eels

Although we may never know if some animals have languages comparable to that of humans, it is certain that animals communicate. Most scientists believe that all animals, with the exception of maybe gorillas and dolphins, lack the ability to express abstract thoughts and ideas, and to use grammar—hallmarks of human language. But this doesn’t mean that animal communication is limited. Often times, animals communicate in ways in which humans are incapable.

One way that both animals and people communicate is by smell. In humans, the signals we receive from our sense of smell are mostly unconscious, but in bee hives, smell is much more vital to their society. The queen bees release pheromones that regulate the activity in the hive. The most powerful of these is Queen Mandibular Pheromone (QMP). During the average 3-5 years of her life, she excretes QMP, essentially telling the hive that “we have a queen, all is well”. It is only when this pheromone disappears that worker bees feed larvae the royal jelly that transforms an ordinary larva into a new queen.

Like humans, most animals use body language to communicate. Horses show affection by rubbing noses; giraffes on the other hand, press their necks together to express the same idea. Because they are very social creatures, bees have a highly developed system of body language. For example, they perform a dance to tell others where to find food. In the dance a bee stands on a wall and turns from side to side. The length of the dance and the degree to which the bee turns indicate how far away the food source is and in what direction it is in relation to the sun.

Many animals use sound as a medium for communication as well. Some animals use sounds that are out of the range of human hearing (20-20,000 hertz). Elephants for example use low pitch sounds to communicate with other herds up to ten miles away. Dolphins and whales also use sound to communicate, singing elaborate songs that are an important part of their social networks. Dolphins, in general, have a higher pitch than humans and their average vocal range is about 18,000-23,000 hertz. One species of dolphins, the Bottlenose dolphin, can respond to tones within the frequency range of 1 to 150 khz with a peak sensitivity between 40 to 100 khz.

Although the methods of animal communication are often similar to that of humans, the form these communications take can exceed human limitations (for example, the elephant and dolphins whose voices can go below and above the human range of hearing, or the bees whose sense of smell is much more finely tuned). In some cases, however, animals boast a style of communication that humans completely lack. This is true of eels. Electric eels use pulsating electric fields to send information to other members of their species. Some species of eels divide their society into a hierarchy and communicate their position with their electrical frequencies. The most dominant eels have the most extreme frequencies so that they stand out (either high or low depending on the species). Eels use their fields in courtship rituals to attract their mates. Usually, dominant females mate only with dominant males.

On the other hand, some animals come close to mimicking human language. Parrots can mime the voice and speech of humans, while gorillas can learn many of the complexities of human sign language. One gorilla named Koko, combines signs to make new words and uses them routinely to ask for food and water or express her emotions. She is even able to understand human speech and to respond accordingly. Koko, it seems, is able to reach the level of speech a three or four-year-old might exhibit, with a limited sign-language vocabulary and some grammatical structure.

It seems that human language and grammar are unique to our species—something no other kind of animal has been able to completely understand or fully reproduce. Yet, animals have their own ways of communicating that we are often unable to even perceive. Each style is a wonder unto itself, full of sound, fury, and significance.


Closing
Ladies and gentlemen! Our presentation conclusion about How does Human Language differ from Animal Communication System is eventhough the system of communication that animals have and humans have are the same, but it’s still that animal doesn’t have any language. What they have just communication system throghu saound, voice, mimicry and body language.

Senin, 03 Oktober 2011

TUGAS GURU

Tugas Guru sebagai ..
1. Pendidik = mendidik tingkah laku mereka
2. Pengajar = menambah ilmu pengetahuan mereka
3. Mentor = pengawas mereka
4. Orang Tua = memberi nasihat dan dorongan kpd mereka
5. Kakak = tempat mereka mengadu
6. Teman = tempat mereka bercanda dan bersenda gurau
7. Designer = membuat kerangka mengajar yg baik
8. Dokter = penyembuh kealpaan mereka
9. MC = membawakan pengajaran dikelas dengan antusias
10. Supir = membawa mereka ke satu tujuan.