“Less is more” is a saying that was first heard when talking about architecture and furniture design. It refers to simplicity of style.

“Less is more” sounds like an oxymoron.

But it is actually (na verdade) a popular way of thinking in education nowadays (atualmente).

When writing, it is tempting for students to be verbose and use a lot of fancy words to try to impress the teacher.

But actually (na verdade), it is better to write clearly and simply in order to communicate effectively.

Dúvida means doubt only sometimes.

We say, “without a doubt” for “sem dúvida.”

But we do not say “I have a doubt”, when we want to ask for information.

We say, “I have a question,” for “Tenho uma dúvida”.

People who are studying English like to say, “I have a doubt.” That is one of the most common mistakes that even advanced learners make.

It surprised me to hear that we should not teach vocabulary in semantic sets because it seems logical to class words according to groupings such as colors, fruits etc. But actually my own personal experience backs up the claim that the learner is likely to confuse the words. I still confuse ‘red’ and ‘yellow’ in Portuguese amarelo and vermelho, and maybe I wouldn’t if I had learned them separately, mastering ‘red’ first and then when it was concretized in my vocabulary, then I could have learned ‘yellow’.

Robb Scott, Editor, ESL MiniConference Online provided some information about this at www.eslminiconf.net.

Semantic sets according to his article are:

- membership in a natural class (e.g., fruit names; addressed in the two studies and found to be confusing);
- relationship of a class member with name of the class (e.g., apple & fruit);
- similarity in spelling/pronunciation (particularly in the first few letters);
- similarity in length;
- belonging to a given object (e.g., keyboard, monitor, mouse, etc. belong to a computer);
- having opposite meanings (e.g., long vs. short);
- having largely overlapping meanings (e.g., lend, loan, rent, borrow; often confused in my experience);
- belonging to the same category of words (e.g., nouns);

Instead of learning lists of semantic sets, it is recommended to learn by grouping new vocabulary around looser themes, such as going out to eat, planning a trip, or celebrating an anniversary.

What is the quickest way to improve your pronunciation?

Change how you pronounce the ‘u’ in the word study. Most people pronounce study like stoody, or “stew dee” with a long u (like in the vowel sound in ‘you’).

Try to pronounce ’study’ with the short u sound. It sounds like the vowel in cup, up, much, love, above.

Mary Ziller from USA

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.