LINGUISTICS 689E - STANFORD UNIVERSITY

Learning English on Your Own

Week 3

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EFS 689E

Week 3

I. Listening Review:

    A. What is listening from Week 2

    B. Homework: discuss your experience with the listening websites

• Was the level appropriate (not too easy or too hard)?

• Which site was most interesting/fun? Why?

• Which site was most useful? Why?

II. Reading basics (similar to listening)

            C. Importance of vocabulary - How many words do you know? How many words do native English speakers know? What do you know when you know a word? Activity: what idioms do you know--Cultural Literacy examples?

                        1. General service list; Academic word list: Activity: example psychology text; handout of AWL

                        2. www.er.uqam.ca/nobel/r21270/levels/: a set of tests at various levels: Activity: test at 5,000 word level

                        3. Babylon: www.babylon.com; Google definitions

                        5. Other techniques for learning: analysis of roots and affixes, context guessing practice, learner dictionaries (e.g., Longman's)

            D. Importance of speed (but beware of "speed reading"): Activity: timed reading exercise

            E. Developing skills and strategies: pre-reading, skimming, scanning, etc.

IV. Reading assistance on the web: 

            - http://www.readingmatrix.com/articles/bell/article.pdf article on the value of extensive over intensive reading           

            - http://www.muskingum.edu/~cal/database/general/reading.html:  reading comprehension strategies

            - www.edict.com.hk/vlc/comp/readcomp.htm: reading comprehension practice with vocabulary

            - http://college.cengage.com/collegesurvival/watkins/learning_companion/1e/students/timed_reading.html timed reading exercises

            - http://iep.uta.edu/Rochelle/TimedReadings/TimedReadingIndex.html timed reading exercises (start with #4--or fix the URLs on the first three)

V. Help with finding the right level of materials: Google News or many other sites for news material; http://textbookrevolution.org/ for academic material.

1. After identifying the material, copy it into a word document for a word count (<2000 words)

2. Then go to http://www.lextutor.ca/vp/ for a word frequency count. Try to find material that is not too far beyond your level (has too many unknown words). I recommend the BNC 20 or classic version first, but you could try the BNL list as well.

VI. An example procedure for working on reading speed

1. Collect several short news articles from Google News (you can use the procedure above to decide appropriateness). You can also use short academic papers for this.

2. Put them individually into word documents

3. Without reading them, use the word count feature and write the total # of words at the bottom

4. Later, pick one out and read it as quickly as you can while maintaining comprehension. Check the time and figure out your words per minute.

5. Check comprehension by writing a quick phrasal summary of the main ideas.

6. Reread the material more slowly, checking what's there against your summary to get a sense of how well you comprehended.

VII. Homework: for the individual meeting

    1) Test your reading rate at www.readingsoft.com/ and your vocabulary level at www.er.uqam.ca/nobel/r21270/levels/ (2,000, 3000 & 5,000 levels--Form A): be prepared to discuss needs and goals related to reading and vocabulary.

    2) Write a report on the individual assignment you began last week. Email it to me by 10:00 PM Sunday July 20. The report should state

• What you did; what material you used (if any)

• How you did it--the process

• How long you spent

• At least two important things that you learned about learning from the experience

Note that this means you must complete your individual assignment by Sunday this week!