Olá pessoal!

Take a trip around the world as we hear the same short passage spoken first by a Brazilian, then by an Englishman, two Australians, and Irishman, and finally an American.

This video is thanks to Linny from the state of São Paulo and David Stephenson from Australia, both members of Inglês Verde e Amarelo, the community of Brazilians and native English speakers. I.V.A. is celebrating reaching the 1000-member mark last week with lots of new videos, groups and a full redesign. Check it out!

Continuando com a série dos vários significados de UP, há um pequeno texto de Thelma Wilson Cook, onde ela faz uma brincadeira com a palavra UP e seus vários usos com phrasal verbs em inglês. Foi publicado na edição de junho de 1986 da revista Reader´s Digest (Seleções).

Upon my word!

We all seem to be hung up on up. We put up with, use up, come up, butter up, line up, punch up and belly up.

Houses are opened up, lighted up, warmed up, cleaned up and closed up. Motors are fired up, gassed up and charged up. Boats are sped up, slowed up, tied up and laid up.

If we are mixed up, we must hurry up and shape up or we´ll be fouled up.

And, heaven help us, we drink up with 7-up.

If you think up other examples, don´t call me up. I´m up the wall with up. I give up!

Thelma Wilson Cook

Prof. Adir – www.adirferreira.com

Learning new vocabulary through context clues is a strategy that is often recommended. But this is difficult for English as a second language learners because they often do not know enough vocabulary in English, so they miss the clues. While fluent English speakers understand a written English vocabulary of 10,000–100,000 words, most foreign students know only 2,000–7,000 English words prior to beginning to study at a university. For a reader to guess the meaning of new words using the context, he must know more than 98% of the words in the selected passage.

There are two levels of knowing a word: word recognition from the context is first level. To really know a word means knowing its “pronunciation, spelling, morphological and syntactic properties, and multiple meanings; the contexts in which the word can be used; the frequency with which it is used; and its collocates, or how it combines with other words.” according to Miriam Burt, Joy Kreeft Peyton, and Carol Van Duzer, Center for Adult English Language Acquisition.

They have the following suggestions for teaching English language learners:

1. Read passages that are only slightly above what you can read independently.

2. Learn high-frequency words first.

3. Provide learners with multiple exposures to specific words in multiple contexts. [This is what Denilso does with presenting multiple meanings of words to our blog readers].

4. Study lists of words and flashcards frequently.

5. Avoid learning synonyms, antonyms, or words in the same semantic set together.

6. Use both monolingual and bilingual dictionaries.

7. Test yourself by matching words to definitions or multiplechoice exercises periodically to see your progress in receptive vocabulary [word recognition].

8. Write sentences with the specific words and grammatical forms you have learned.

Qual é a melhor escola de idiomas do Brasil? Essa foi a pergunta que pensei em incluir em nossa Enquete, logo depois desisti da idéia. É muito difícil eleger o melhor curso de idiomas sem conhecer a metodologia de cada um, o material didático, o nível dos professores e principalmente, o grau de fluência que cada aluno tem ao concluir o curso. Isso talvez fosse resolvido com um provão. Sem bem que não é uma má idéia. Imagine só, um provão só para escolas de idiomas?

Acabei reformulando a pergunta, confira abaixo:

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A enquete permite que você escolha mais de uma opção, já que muitas pessoas passaram ao longo de sua vida em diferentes instituições de ensino. Clique aqui para conferir o resultado parcial.

Caso eu tenha omitido alguma importante, envie a sugestão nos comentários.

See you!

Hi, there! Retomamos com a segunda parte dos significados de UP. O áudio foi gravado pelo nosso amigo americano Christopher, de Boston.

12. apertado, apertar: Can you do my shoelaces up for me? (Você pode amarrar meus sapatos para mim?)

13. funcionando: Andy, do you know when the network will be up again? (Andy, você sabe quando a rede estará funcionando de novo?)

14. em pequenos pedaços: He cut the letter up into a hundred pieces. (Ele picou a carta em cem pedaços.)

15. terminado (período): When the two hours were up nobody had answered all of the questions. (Quando as duas horas tinham acabado ninguém tinha respondido todas as questões.)

16. up for something – com a intenção de: That house at the end of our road is up for sale again. (Aquela casa no fim da nossa estrada está à venda de novo.)

17. numa melhor posição: Stein had a bad start to the race, but by the ninth lap she was up with the leaders. (Stein começou mal a corrida, mas na nona volta ela já estava perto dos líderes.)

18. em julgamento: Max is up for armed robbery. (Max vai ser julgado por roubo armado.)

19. fim, término: I’d like to close up the meeting by thanking all those who were able to attend at such short notice. (Gostaria de terminar a reunião agradecendo todos aqueles que puderam vir com tanta urgência.)

20. para o norte: On Tuesday she’ll be travelling up to Newcastle from Birmingham. (Terça-feira, ela vai viajar de Birmingham a Newcastle.)

21. em direção à origem de algo, principalmente um rio ou córrego: Rowing up the river against the current was very hard work. (Remar o rio contra a corrente foi trabalhoso.)

22. para ou em: Are you going up to the club tonight? (Você vai ao clube hoje à noite?)

Ouça os exemplos

Audio by: Christopher O’Donnell

Gostaram? Deixem seus comentários que em breve escreverei mais posts neste mesmo estilo! Um abraço a todos, take care!

Prof. Adir - www.adirferreira.com