More Vocabulary - Clothes

O.K. - students in my FFL class: here's some more of the vocabulary we have dealt with this semester:

CLOTHES:

Pyjamas... (p.j's) loose jacket and pants worn in bed or relaxing at home
Nightie... loose dress-type thing women wear to bed
Dressing-Gown... A kind of soft, loose coat we wear over p.j's or to relax
knickers ...women's underpants
Bra... women's underwear that supports the breasts
Stockings... worn on women's legs
Suspender belt... holds up stockings
Panty-hose...stockings that have built-in knickers
Tights... same thing but usually thicker
Boxers... loose men's underwear
Y-fronts... men's underpants "
Jocks " "

Blouse... women's shirt, with buttons
Top... t.shirt, blouse - anything a woman wear with skirt or jeans/pants
Dress ...one garment: top and skirt joined together
Skirt... needs to be worn with a separate top!
Pants... women's trousers
Boob Tube... short top for women with no straps; finished just underneath the boobs
Midriff top... Also finished just under the boobs but has straps

Waist-coat... sleeveless jacket worn over shirt/top/t'shirt
Hoodie... Loose jacket with a front zip and hood
Baggies... Loose shorts - knee-length or longer
tank-...Sleeveless t.shirt

Trainers/runners... sports shoes

America is NOT "The West".

Whenever I've made this statement in class there are a number of students who look either puzzled or simply seem not to understand the distinction. I don't say it because I want to separate America from the West and view it as a differently entity [living thing], but because I want you to realise that America is only ONE country of the West. There are many, many countries, kingdoms, dominions, protectorates, states etc. in the Western world. They have their own culture, traditions, history and social mores [pronounced more -Ays: acceptable behaviour and customs] which are as different from America's as are China's.

To put it another way: suppose you were to go overseas, and people kept telling you that they knew all about China: that the people there loved raw fish, that teenage fashion was crazy and over-the-top [ exaggeratedly bizarre], and that the national dress was called the kimona. After a while you would, I am sure, get heartily tired of telling people that they are talking about Japan. Especially if they shrugged their shoulders and said "Oh, well. China, Japan. Same thing: its Asia".

In Ningbo there are foreigners from all over the world: Sweden, The Netherlands, Britain, Australia, India, New Zealand, Mexico, Denmark...the list is enormous. NONE of us celebrate Thanksgiving or Hallowe'en or know anything about American Education. Here at the University there are, perhaps, more Americans than any other one country because they all come here together from the same place. However, there are also Canadians, English, Australian, French and German people living here in your world. America is as foreign to us as it is to you.

Lets go back a minute to the idea of you being in a foreign country yourself and everyone talking about the culture and history of Japan as if it was your own. I suspect that, being only human, after a while you would begin to think that the people around you were being very disrespectful to China by completely ignoring it and all its own complex history and culture in favour of Japan's.

Especially if they kept pointing to bits of Japanese history and culture, saying they were China's history and culture, and then showing you how inferior China was because of them! So, just for the record:

"The West" is not merely 400 years old
People throughout The West are not all Christians
Families in the West are not all independent
Tradition is as important to many Westerners as it is to China
Westerners can trace their ancestors back through hundreds of years
Westerners do not, in general, live on KFC or Macca's [Mackdonald's]
Many Western women are even more traditional than Chinese women
Most Western families are as close as Chinese families and put family first.
Westerners do not all live in big houses and drive big, gas-guzzling cars
Most Westerners call candy "sweets", University "University" and not "School", non-alcoholic drinks "soft drinks"...and in fact have to learn a whole new vocabulary of American-English words when they come to China!

I am proud of the fact that the ancestors on my English side built a giant stone space observatory over 5,000 years ago, called Stonehenge. I am both proud and relieved when I reflect that those same ancestors actually had running water inside their homes! Just as the Italians point to the fact that they had toilets that flushed and central heating three thousand years ago.

I am proud that the ancestors on my Romany side knew how to construct that most un-natural of shapes, the Pyramid, at around the same time: - 5,000 years ago. It was a period in history where, not only in China, but all over the world, civilizations arose. Civilizations that have endured, while advancing and changing in different ways, up to the present days. It was no longer the dawn (successful races had flourished and died and evolved since then) of Humankind, but the real Day of Humankind.

See the word Globalization actually means something pretty profound. It means that we see ourselves as all inter-connected. We do not view the progress of each country as belonging to that country - but of benefiting and advancing humankind. To a great extent, this is what many Westerners have been doing for centuries.

Yes, I made a difference between my mother's ancestors and my father's. But it was both those races which resulted in me. This is one of the main differences between China and The West: Chinese ancestors are, for the most part Chinese. But in the west the Europeans, English, Spanish, Australian, Greek, Italian (and more) races have been marrying each other, trading with, making war on and invading each other for thousands of years. Western bloodlines are often a big, global stew, with Welsh grandmothers and Latvian Grandfathers and Irish Great-Greats with Spanish Great-Greats.

Thus we are brought up knowing each other through shared histories and authors and artists. We are constantly aware of how far back our ancestors can be traced - laying claim to the age of any civilization from which even one of our ancestors came, we are all from ancient cultures. We pay due deference to China for gunpowder as we do to France for elevating food to an art form.

We count the Greeks as being the originators of our Theatre. We talk about the various French, Italian, Spanish, English etc. painters as being the Masters of our Art forms. We learn the theories of mathematicians from Greece, Italy, Germany as being those who developed our technology. The body of philosophers starting with the Greeks (as you can see, they are very important in our "Western" culture) and ranging over countries as widely separate as Germany, Italy and England are, nevertheless those who shaped our society.

Now in all this shaping of our culture America doesn't figure at all until very recently. Much more recently than most of you imagine. In fact, America did not actually start to contribute to Western culture in any measurable way until after the Second World War (1939-46). This was a time during which all the European and British countries were still suffering from the affects of war which had ravaged us all. There were food shortages and rationing right through the 1950's in England and Europe, our cities and towns were having to be rebuilt and our families had been torn apart.

Into this gloomy picture burst rock n'roll, Coca Cola, chewing gum, and the wonderful, glamorous world of Hollywood movies. America, which had had no war, (though it had lent soldiers on postings to Allied forces) was prosperous, modern, shiny bright and new. And, most of all, we knew this from movies which painted such rosy pictures of a world far removed from our own. Many women from Europe and England married American soldiers and escaped the hunger and lack of money and desperation to go and live in this strange country. Many of them found it TOO different and foreign and returned - but those who stayed wrote back glowing reports and were the envy of all their friends and relations.

The Hollywood Dream Machine [movie industry] continues to dominate the leisure hours of many Chinese, English, and Australian people. But now we are all better informed, more sophisticated and knowledgeable. We know that the Dream Machine sells us fantasy:clean suburbs, beautiful, thin women, handsome men, Happily Ever After. It still fascinates us and it still provides an hour and a half of rest from our own problems and lives.

But this depiction[way of showing something] is not even a true reflection of life for the average American, let alone all the millions of other Westerners from countries like Sardinia, Malta, Tahiti, France, England, Scotland, Brussels and all those widely different countries many Chinese students have never even heard the names of.

Ladies and gentleman. China opened up thirty years ago. We have just celebrated the anniversary of that time. The world is open to you. Out there are strange animals and fish that you wouldn't believe. There are marvels of nature like fiord's, glaciers, active volcano's. There are town and villages built underneath the ground, into the sides of mountains and underneath the sea that you can dive in and out of. There is music played on instruments you have never seen, food such as you couldn't imagine, clothes that would rock your world. There are castles and towers and tiny villages and flowers and rain-forests and multi-coloured birds that look as though they have been painted. The World, The West, has so much to amaze, to brighten, to enlarge your outlook.

When I ask in class for names of American cities that are NOT New York, every single class comes up with a few. When I ask for cities in England, New Zealand, France, Germany The Netherlands...I get blank faces. People the West comes to you in the form of teachers, visitors, the Internet, Books, Movies. It is now time for you to find the West in the same way. Yes, America is a big Western country. But it is only one among so very many. We are now a global society - some of us have always regarded ourselves as such. Get off your bums[informal phrase meaning Don't be lazy or indifferent] and find out more about that global society of which you are all a part.

Vocabulary - Animal/Weather/Shopping

The other day in class I asked everyone to write something down and there were many students who didn't have anything to write something down on. There was even one who didn't have a pen. Now me, I take a pen and a notebook even when I'm going shopping: how can any adult go into a class at University and NOT have pen or paper? Strange.

Anyway, because of that incident, I know there are many of you who are certainly not writing down vocab. words which is not going to help you much. I mean, I know I say that vocab. is not what I'm here for...but it does help if you remember at least a few new words, such as:

THE ANIMAL KINGDOM.
Mammals - animals who give birth to live young (not eggs) and suckle their young(give milk)
Marsupials - animals who have a pouch to carry their young
Nocturnal - animal who sleep in the day and are awake at night
Diurnal - animals (including humans) who sleep at night & are awake by day
Crocodiles - large reptiles that live both in water and on land: and EAT people
Platypus - strange Australian animal that is half-duck, half-animal. Lays eggs, suckles young
Wombat - Australian animal like a huge rat, makes its home underground
Kookaburra - Australian bird that laughs (also called Laughing Jackass)
Echidna - Australian ant-eater
Emu - the largest of Australian birds. Cannot fly. Runs very fast
Joey - a baby kangaroo
Kitten - a baby cat
puppy - a baby dog
calf - a baby cow
foal - a baby horse
Lamb - baby sheep
rodent - mice and rats
Reptiles - cold-blooded animals such as snakes, lizards, crocodiles etc.
Rooster: - male chicken. Do NOT use the word "Cock" with Westerners. It means "penis"

When animals are used as food we change the name a little:
Beef - meat of cows
Pork - meat of pigs
Veal - meat from a VERY young calf (originally an unborn calf!)
Mutton: meat from a rather old sheep
Lamb: meat from a young sheep
Chicken: - we never say we are eating "rooster" - always use the feminine




THE WEATHER
Muggy - very damp weather when it feels as though you can't breath properly
Drizzly - Rain so light you can barely see it but continuous
Scorching - So hot you feel you'll burst into flames!
Arrid - dry. No water
Close - Still and silent, like just before a huge thunderstorm
Misty - a kind of light fog
steaming - usually after a summer storm when wet earth etc. turns into steam
Icy - Very cold and slippery roads and footpaths
Balmy - warm and no wind: not hot, not cold. Perfect.
Murky:- foggy, cold, damp, dark.

Sayings: COLDER than a witches tit, HOT as hell/hades(hay-dees:another word for hell), When its cold: - Brass monkey weather.

SHOPPING:
Chemist/Pharmacy: - Where you buy medicines, cosmetics, and, in the West, where
you take a prescription
Prescription: The note a doctor gives you that says what medicine you need
Green-Grocer - Shop that sells only fruit and vegetable
Boutique - a rather expensive and very modern small shop to buy clothes in
Butcher - Sells only raw meat and chicken
Baker - Like BreadTalk. You buy bread, cakes, buns etc.
Hardware Shop - where you buy paint, tools, screws, nails etc.
Lingerie Shop: - where you buy underwear and pyjama's (p.j's),sleepwear, stockings
Newsagent: - sells newspapers, magazines, cigarettes, calenders, a few books
Stationery Shop: - sells paper, pens, etc. all things usefull in office or school
Bookshop: - only sells books
Hyper-market: - Really BIG supermarket, like Metro, where you can buy in bulk.
Salesperson: NB we do NOT say salesLADY or salesMAN any longer.

How to Write an Essay the Proffessional Way.

If you are a student of mine and have just read the Homework blog, this is the next blog I asked you to read. If you aren't a student of mine then be my guest: read it anyway. Apart from a few minor style elements which vary from institution to institution, these are the basics which apply to written assignments under the Tertiary Education systems outside of America. In fact, they might apply to America as well but, as I have no experience with the education system in the USA I'm not qualified to say.

First I'll provide a few general comments because experience shows that anything that comes AFTER the bullet-points is usually regarded as extra information and not really important.

In the first year of University many students think that markers are being unnecessarily picky [paying too much attention to unimportant things] when they subtract marks for punctuation. And, in first year, markers really blitz [pay incredibly close attention to] punctuation. One of the main reasons for this is that judging a person's literacy [ability to read and write English] depends a lot on punctuation which is an integral [something that can't be separated from something else] part of how well a person expresses themselves in English. By University level all students should know how to punctuate. Very few do. Very few even think it's important. Markers change this idea for them! The second reason for being such pains in the arses [annoying people] is to make sure that correct punctuation becomes second nature [automatic] to those who write English. A person who punctuates badly loses credibility [the ability to be believed]as a professional or knowledgeable person. If you don't know WHY your punctuation is being corrected consult a basic grammar book and learn the reason.

The thing Chinese students need to keep in mind if submitting work to a Western institution or teacher, is that we consider that people become adults at the age of 18. We really do. The laws of the land say so and so do we. So, by the age of 20 or 21 they certainly are not treated any differently from the way we treat all other adults. They are therefore expected to express themselves as adults and not like schoolchildren (we have already discussed the difference between school and university). The way a university student of 22 expresses themselves is not expected to differ from the way a lecturer of 55 expresses themselves: everyone follows the same guidelines.

Finally, Universities are institutions in which the mind is supposed to be free to travel, to invent, to wonder and to learn. The student who does not just echo everything they have read but uses this information to draw their own conclusions is the students who excels. The purpose of research and study - the main occupations of university students - is to develop individual ideas. The current idea that Globalisation is the best thing for the planet is spreading everywhere. If you think globalisation stinks [literally: to smell bad. Colloquially: something that is really, really bad] then go and get some FACTS to try to prove yous point and don't be afraid to express yourself. If people don't share your viewpoint it doesn't mean either you or they are wrong. It just means they don't share your viewpoint. That's all.

So, now to the absolute essentials in writing not just for University, but also for business purposes or politically as well.

• Read the Title. This may sound superfluous [unnecessary] but it can lose you marks. Sometimes all your marks. The current assignment "Can East ever Meet West. Discuss" First decide what the words "East" and "West" mean. The East is made up of more countries than just China. Anyone who talks about America as representing the West is going to lose marks. There are hundreds of Western countries. America is simply one of them. Are you going to talk about one aspect of Eastern and Western culture? Religion? Politics? Manners? Education? All of them combined? What about the word "meet"? Does that mean understand? Meet with? Integrate [combine]? Go to war with? You have to decide for yourself exactly HOW you interpret this title. And in your first paragraph you have to make completely clear how you interpret these words and what you are going to be arguing. The words "Discuss" means you have a choice: you can either decide the answer to this question is Yes or No and then provide FACTS to back up your choice. Or you can talk about different sides of the question. Alternatively you may decide you can discuss why this topic is important.




• This is the over-riding, all important and never-to-be-broken rule of all writing. NO PLAGIARISM. Even using someone else's idea of how to interpret the topic is plagiarism. Asking your friend or roommate or classmate how they are going to do it is fine. But using their idea yourself will lose both YOU and HIM/HER marks. Plagiarism is not just stealing someone's words but someone else's ideas. That is their "Intellectual Property". It is against not just the rules but the law itself.




• Academic and business writing should use the objective case. Not the subjective. What this means is that, although one may say "I am going to prove..." in the beginning, from then on say things like "One can see" instead of "We can see". Say "It is/becomes obvious that..." "It can be seen from the evidence", "this proves.." rather than "I think." There is no room in academic writing for adjectives like "horrible", "nice", "beautiful", etc. We talk about "A war", we don't describe it. We discuss a person's ideas, not whether we think they are nice or not, we introduce a person, we don't talk about what they look like.




• All writing, from a letter to an essay, has three parts: a Beginning (Introduction) a Middle (the body) and an End (the conclusion). First, introduce the topic and your interpretation of what it means. Next provide all the evidence or information which proves your point,or which caused you to think this. Finally, Share with us your conclusion which should be logically drawn from the body of your essay.




• Always cite your sources [say where information came from]. If you got the information from a book by for example, John Humphries called Beyond Words put the words of his you are using in inverted commas " follow this, in brackets, by the page you got it from and his last name only.


• e.g. "Language provides us with a revealing mirror..." (Humphries. 1)(We put three dots in if we are not quoting the rest of the sentence. We start off with them if we are not quoting the beginning of the sentence.) If you just got an idea from his book you would say Humphries suggests that changes in language reveals how much society has changed (pp.1, 4, 6) - "pp" means more than one page. If you got your information from the Internet you put the name of the site, for example (Oxford Online).




• At the end of your article you put a "Bibliography" on a separate page. You write the word Bibliography and underneath it, in alphabetical order, you list the books or sites you used. Books and Internet sites are grouped separately. In the case of books you put the full information: the Title of the book(in italics), The author(Family name first), the name of the publisher. The city it was published in and the date it was published:




• Humphries, Barry. Beyond Words.Hodder & Stoughton. London. 2007


• Give the name of the article you quoted from the Internet, then the URL and the date you accessed it.




• All assignments must be TYPED and double spaced. The Title goes first and is usually written slightly bigger, underlined and/or written in bold. Your name and student number go on the right hand side underneath it. Each page must be numbered on the bottom, right hand side. All pages(including the bibliography) must be stapled on the left top corner.




• Finally: punctuation etc. At the start of each paragraph you must indent [go in] as I've done here. You put a space after a comma e.g. bread, butter and cake.(No comma in front of the word "and") You put two spaces after a full stop. All proper nouns (the names of things) must have a capital letter e.g. China, Mary, Liverpool. Inverted commas are used when you quote someone's work or speech e.g. Those famous words "One small step for man, one giant step for Mankind".(The full stop goes AFTER the quote marks.)




• Never start a sentence with the word "and". Do not, EVER, say/write "As we all know". Don't use "What's more". Don't forget that we use an apostrophe (') when we have left a letter out: don't for do not. it's for it is. We also use an apostrophe when something belongs to something e.g. Mary's bag, China's production. And, most important. Use a programme with Spellcheck (the little a,b,c sign on your tool-bar which often has a tick next to it. There is NO EXCUSE for spelling a word incorrectly as all you need to do is get Spellcheck to correct your mistakes for you.




• FINALLY: use English Google not China Google. There is a translation enabler. And don't ever use a word you don't know the meaning of.

Homework, Educational Differences, Expectations.

(This is the doorway into one of the many colleges in Cambridge, U.K. "Cambridge" is the name of a city, not a University. In the city of Cambridge there are many different colleges, the first of which was built in the 13th Century - including this one. Through this doorway have passed, over the last 750 years, some of the most famous men in history. It is a doorway to higher education.)

A blog about homework? Yes, because it's also a blog about different educational systems, which is something we've discussed in most classes. And, because my classes are designed to give you an idea of what some of those differences are, this is also a blog about my expectations of how you guys should respond to these differences.

I told some of you this week that your homework would be posted on this site. And so it will be. But, in order to find out what it is, you are going to have to read this entire article. And people from other classes? You're going to have to read this too because this applies to everyone.

From time to time [occasionally] we have talked about how different the Chinese Educational System is to what most foreign teachers are used to. When I first came here so much was different that it took me quite a while before I realised that not only was the system different, but, somehow, the whole campus scene LOOKED different. I simply couldn't put my finger on it [couldn't work it out; couldn't understand why] until, one day, I happened to be struggling to class with an enormous [very big] and heavy Art book, a smaller book on Modern Art, my papers and notes, my class books and some English novels. That's when the penny dropped [to understand or realise ] - and I realised what the difference was: - No Books!!

From High School right through to Proffessorship, the thing which, in the West, defines a student is books. On buses, on ferries, walking down the street or in shops, students are easily spotted [identified or picked out] by the bulging back-packs, heavy satchels [ a rectangular bag, usually made of leather, for carrying books] or huge armfulls of books that they are always attached to. On campus piles of books are dumped next to people in cafeterias, or outside toilet stalls, and everyone that goes past is usually wrapped around textbooks, clipboards and folders.

Students sit under trees, together or alone, reading, slump [tired /exhausted posture] benches reading, walk up and down the corridors or cloisters [covered passages outside buildings with one open side]reading - and even walk to class catching up on their reading.

One of the reasons we don't call University "School" is because it's completely different in just about every way. And in University we don't have "homework". That's because students are expected to learn and find out for themselves.

Each week the lecturer (no "teachers" in University) introduces students to a certain part of their course in a 45 minute lecture. For the rest of the week students are expected to then go out and learn for themselves as much as they can. The good and the bad. The stuff that agrees and the stuff that doesn't.

Half way through the semester they have to write a paper of around 2,500 words about the subject they are studying. They can use some of the information the teacher gave them, but they are supposed to have found out much, much more by themselves. At the end of the semester they have to hand in a 5,000word paper discussing the subject as thoroughly as possible.

Some students don't even go to the lectures, or miss many of them because they are too busy!! But every week they gather in groups of between 8 or 10 with a tutor and discuss what they have been studying. In this way they learn from each other - and argue a lot! They can also make appointments with their lecturer to discuss problems they have come across, things they don't agree with, the direction they are going in their studies etc. Many Chinese students who go to study overseas find this system is very, very confusing.

At the beginning of every term students are handed a list with the title of every weekly lecture (one for each of the four subjects they study every semester). With this they get the names of the text books they must use as you do. They also get a list of the names of some books that have been written about this subject: the list is often two pages long. This list is just a guide but the lecturer will have marked which books they recommend. Each student is expected to read (or at least skim through)the books on the list that the lecturer has recommended (that can vary between 7 - 20 books) as well as as many books from the rest of the list and ones they find for themselves as possible.

Thats why they sometimes don't go to lectures. If their subject is, for example, "Renaissance Art" and they have decided that their Term Paper (the big, 5,000 word essay they will be graded on) is going to be "The Way Renaissance Art Influences Modern Art" they might prefer to skip a lecture on, perhaps, "Italian Politics in the Renaissance" and spend time in an Art Gallery or reading instead. They make notes on everything they have read. A student who loses their notes (it sometimes happens) is in BIG personal trouble!

Students spend a lot of time in the restaurants, in cafeterias, in the pubs, etc. discussing and arguing and debating with each other about their ideas and, once again, learning from each other. Often a passing lecturer or tutor is called into one of these discussions and they become very lively.

As a result The Libraries (There are specialised libraries for most subjects apart from the Main one) are the most important and busy buildings on campus. They open early in the morning and close around 11pm five days a week (and even later on a further two days of the week). They always have coffee shops in them! And even showers! All the librarians are highly trained in their fields and all hold Degrees so they are very important to students and offer incredible help as well as giving extra (free) courses on Research and Development, Study Methods, Computer Skills etc. themselves. They always read and are familiar with the latest books in their field that have just been published.

So, now that you have got almost to the end some of you are wondering where your homework is? O.k. Your homework does not have to be handed in next week. It has to be handed in in four weeks time. Your homework will carry 3o% of your marks for your final exam. During the next four weeks you will be expected to prepare an essay called "East and West. Will They Ever Meet? Discuss. ".

Ok, O.k, I know that, already, some of you are saying "Whattt?" So, in order to answer your questions and tell you how to do this, I am preparing another article called: How to Write an Essay the Proffessional Way. If anyone has questions that I have answered in that article I will know you haven't read it! In which case I will just tell you to go and read it. But, for any other questions, we will spend some time in class discussing it.

How The English Language Began

Athough more people speak Mandarin Chinese than English, our language is used in more countries than any other language in the world.. As an Indo-European language, it is related to most of the languages that are popular in Europe, India, and even Iceland.

The first people in Britain were the Picts – a small, dark people whose language, not having been written down, has largely disappeared, though some of it survives in the Gaelic languages spoken in Scotland, Wales and Ireland.

However, Gaelic is mainly a Celtic language – these were the first people to who were not native to Britain to come to live there. The Celts were spread over Germany, France and Spain as well as Britain. Some words which remain are comb (a type of valley) and brock (a black and white striped animal)and many of the names of English towns are still Celtic.

:Celtic Words: Whiskey, ass, bin, flannel, clan, slogan

After The Celts the Anglos Saxons arrived, but there are few obvious traces of their language in English today.

The most important influence on English was the arrival of the Norsemen from countries such as Sweden, Denmark etc. They were known as The Vikings. At first they would invade England in small parties and steal women and livestock, but over time they moved from their own homeland and settled down – in fact in the 11th century England even had a King who was a Norseman and came from Denmark: King Canute. Their speech was Northern Germanic (the Celt’s was Southern Germanic) so there were some similarities.

Viking Words: they, their, them, scatter, scare, scrape, skirt, skin, sky

The 14th of October 1066 is a date all English people know: it was the last time England was invaded. The invader was Duke William of Normandy (Today Normandy is part of France), and the language of England changed rapidly.

Because the Normans ruled the country words to do with Government and Law and good manners are mostly from this source. The French being regarded as the best cooks in the world, it is interesting that this is when we started giving a different name to the meat from an animal than to the animal itself. While the English if they killed a pig to eat would just call it all “pig meat” the Normans came up with words like Pork, ham, bacon - all of which would be prepared and cooked differently.

At this period (known as the Middle Ages), most educated people were trilingual in England and spoke Latin (the language of education), French – the language of law and Government, and English. The peasants spoke only the language spoken in their area which was mainly Anglo Saxon with a few other words mixed in.

. From French: government, nation, parliament, attorney, judge, jury, sue, crime, escape, curfew, saint, pray, mercy, religion
From Latin: convention, animal, bonus, maximum, , exit, scientific, orthography, advantage, debt, violent,

In the 15th and 17th centuries two periods called The Enlightenment and The Renaissance swept all over Europe and England. These two periods were the birth of the scientific age and also changed the philosophy, education, art, music, law and society forever. People began to become interested again in the great writers of the Roman and Greek civilizations and so many new words entered English not only from these sources but from all over Europe

From Italian: opera, sonata, piano, balcony, corridor, ballot
From Dutch: buoy, freight, leak, pump, yacht

During this period England began to expand her trade routes until she eventually became the greatest colonial power in the world. But along with goods from other countries, words were also imported and entered the English language from many different sources.

It was also during this time that The Great Vowel Change happened: - although linguists don’t know exactly why, pronunciation of all vowels changed. This is why today English has no pure vowel sounds: in fact all long vowels are actually dipthongs (that means they have two sounds: A Yee, E Yee, I yee, O wu, U woo).

It is because of The Great Vowel Change and because of the import of so many words that so much of English spelling and grammar is puzzling to-day. This is also the reason that, when we read the works of, for example, Shakespeare, we sometimes think that the poetry doesn't rhyme. It did when he wrote it, but after the way we started to pronounce words changed, sometimes it doesn't today.

From Arabic: alcohol, algebra, assassin, sugar, zero, magazine chess,check

From American Indian: pony, squash, chipmunk, moose, raccoon, skunk, hickory, moccasin, totem,

From Spanish: alligator, cigar, cockroach, guitar, mosquito, , canyon, , patio, ranch

PRONOUNCIATION - Contractions. 29/10/08

Although English is not a tonal language like Chinese it does make use of stress.

The easiest way to illustrate this is with the fact that for a question, in English, our voices go up at the end of the sentence, while for a statement our voices go down.

So, a sentence like:
“You’re not coming with us” could either be a statement of fact or a question, depending on how it is pronounced. Punctuation alerts us in part as to HOW to say this sentence:
“You’re not coming with us!” or
“You’re not coming with us?”

However, the circumstances in which we use this sentence will also have an effect on pronunciation

If we are, for example, punishing a child and not allowing them to accompany us we would stress: “You’re NOT coming with us”

If, however, we don’t wish someone in particular to accompany us we would say: “You’re not coming with US”

If we wish to point out that someone has joined the wrong group we would say: “YOU”RE not coming with US.”

Because oral English relies on these stressed words to make its meaning clear, our ear is trained from an early age to pay great attention to them: THEY are the important ones which carry our meaning

In general, the words in a sentence that are important, of course, are the verbs, nouns, and often the adjectives(e.g “She’s driving a NEW car!”).

Written English, in text books, novels and newspapers, however, makes use only of punctuation – we gain our understanding from the overall context.[Whatever is written before or after a particular sentence]. And of course, we can read something over and over a few times if we need to make the meaning clearer, as well as reading slowly to help us understand.

Oral language on the other hand, is always spoken much more quickly than the learner is prepared for if they are learning mostly from texts [written words]. It is often the case that a student may get top marks in class for their reading and writing of a particular language and yet be unable to understand a native speaker enough to be able to hold a conversation. English is no exception.

A common informal greeting in English is “Good day. It’s good to meet you.” - a sentence that few students have trouble understanding in its written form. However, if written as it is actually spoken, how many students understand “G’day – goottameecha”?

Rather than becoming upset and thinking that this information will make oral English even more difficult, students will be pleased to learn that they can learn both to speak and understand oral English much better and more quickly than those who might be top of the class when learning mainly from textbooks – if they learn a few basic rules of pronunciation .

Learning phonetically is a great help. As my computer does not enable phonetics however, here's a list here of some of the most common words or phrases spelled the way the words actually sound:

Would you? ........................................................wudja

Did you?................................................................didja?

Do you? .................................……………………….djew?

Does he? ..............................................................duzee

Don’t you?............................................................doncha?

Going to…………………………………………. ..........gunna?

Want to …………………………………………............wanna

See you……………………………………… …............seeya

Give me…………………………………………............gimme

Don’t know……………………………………......... dunno

What are you…..................................................wotcha

How are you…………………………………… ........ howya

What’s up? .........................................................wassup?

More Helpful Hints.
When “t” comes in the middle of a word it's pronounced “d” e.g:

letter = leda, better = better, a lot of = a loda.

The word “to” is usually pronounced just as “t” e.g:

Give it to him = give it t’him, nice t’seeya……

When one word ends in a vowel (a,e,i,o,u) and the next word begins with a vowel, a “y” or a “w” is usually pronounced e.g:

I am = I yam., go out = go wout

The “h” on the word “he” is often not pronounced e.g.:
Djew think ee makes a loda money?

Some Common Phrases:
Watcha do wen now?
Good t’meetcha
Goda go.
Seeya layda
Seeya roun

Wassup with you?
Gonna come?

Dunno.

Welcome

If you're reading this right now then you're probably one of my current students at Ningbo University in China. If you are an old student then "G'day", if you're a future students "Gootameetcha" if you just kinda stumbled on in here then "Howzit" anyway. To anyone at all Welcome to this, the very first blog on this site.

The reason I set this up was because MSN have notified all their clients that they are closing down their current spaces soon, so I figured it would be a good idea to start off a new space where students can contact me or review their English.

From now on I'll try to post the content of lessons on the day - or the day before - they happen, but I'll combine some of the previous content from my old space to make up the first couple of "lessons" on this site. Although I am using a Blogsite I hope that you all realise that the Comment button is not there just for show. USE IT. Well, that's not an order but an invitation. However, its a very strong invitation. I'd even add that students who use it would get better marks, but that would be bribery...and you KNOW I'd never expect any of my students to take bribes, yeah?

I only have photos of past students to post on here so if anyone wants photos posted just e.mail them to me (You all know my student email address, don't you?- ( cireena@hotmail.com).

While I will post lessons I'll also put in reference to articles or blogs you might be interested in, URLs of interesting sites or of those that might be helpful. Anyone who finds any themselves is welcome to share them as well. I'll even cut and paste any articles or poetry or stuff that you want to share too - so give it a go. I would like to make this site interactive: - you're always complaining about not being able to practise your English...so "put up or shut up" (an English expression similar to "Put your money where your mouth is" which means don't just talk about it, ...Do It.)

While I was kidding about giving extra credit to students who post on here, I will be able to see who the serious students are by the whether they ever pop up on here (hint, hint) so c'mon...don't be a stranger. And don't be shy. I set this up for you guys - so use it. And hey, if you're not a student of mine use it too. Like I said: - everyone's welcome.