It is about studying partially new and partially known words. And it is about memorizing up to the optimal level and no "better" than that. And it is about your memory after you have already learned and trained special techniques. It is mostly about gaining the passive vocabulary but it is also about activating the passive vocabulary.
1) To remember means to forget right
2) Relaxation and removing unnecessary movements
3) Consciousness or subconscious? Can we memorize voluntarily, intentionally? How can we motivate our memory?
4) Make your subconscious work and you will never get tired
5) We never forget things completely. How can we utilize that fact?
6) How well should you try to memorize words from the first time?
7) Using mnemonics; is it the right direction?
8) Flashcards
9) Double rotation
10) Rules of reading and very simple special signs instead of transcription
11) How to learn rules of reading? The same flashcards and double rotation.
12) Flashcards and our computer programs
13) Dictation mode and blind typing
14) Shamanic techniques
15) Multitasking, trance, strong and long drive (keif, high, thrill, rush ets…)
16) How much drive would you want?
17) What does the word consist of? What are our subtasks then?
18) Using 3 channels
19) Blind typing or handwriting?
20) Writing down the words from the context and how it should be done. Should we take words only from the context?
21) Memorizing at the moment of reading
22) Alternative techniques? With bare hands? How can we cope with words without computer programs?
23) Developing new native language in visual channel (and in the kinesthetic one)
24) Improving your sleeping
25) Forgetting about your conflicts and trouble
26) Not overeating and other health relating things
27) Brain massage
28) The power of young sportsmen
29) No illusions: knowing words is not enough to become a fluent speaker
30) How fast can foreign languages be learnt?
1) Are you a feminist?
2) Why is feminism for equality only for women? Why is it called feminism and not “equalism”? Can there be equality only for a part of the society?
3) Do you think that men and women don’t have equal rights now? Who is privileged?
4) Do you know laws favoring men? Can you name laws favoring women?
5) At what age should men and women get pension?
6) What about army and draft?
7) Do you agree that men are worse than women?
8) Why girls are more successful at school?
9) Should the behavior of men be controlled? Should men's sexuality be constantly restricted by women?
10) Were women oppressed by men throughout the history? Must men compensate to women their suffering throughout the history?
11) Should men run after women?
12) Should women be saved first? How do you like the Titanic story?
13) Should we protect only women from domestic violence or should men also be protected?
14) Who are better workers?
15) Who is paid better?
16) Is there any prejudice in our society against men or women?
17) Should paternity fraud be considered a crime? And how severe should be the punishment?
18) What about election rights? Suppose majority of women vote and send men to wars. Men die. Women have majority and again send only men to wars. Is it democracy? Why not?
19) Why do men drink vodka? Why do men smoke? Is it because of their defective nature? Can there be other explanations?
20) Is feminism for equal rights or does it have different aims?
21) Are you a feminist?
22) How does feminism affect women?
23) How does feminism affect men?
24) What do we have to do with it?
1. Do you prefer emotionally touching deep topics or do you prefer neutral and safe talks not really touching your soul and mind? Do we come here to study English or to share our ideas?
2. Is Internet a proper place to have debates? Do you try to prove your point of view or do you prefer political correctness?
3. Do you feel comfortable when people try to teach you how to live? Does advice mean assault for you?
4. Do you always try to follow given topic or is it sometimes better to talk about everything what comes into your mind?
5. What can be a reason for a ban? When is it appropriate to say "if you don’t obey my rules I will ban you"?
6. Is it appropriate to interrupt the speaker? And what if he talks about things that are already clear and returns to the same things over and over again? What if he misinterprets your words?
7. Should there be the rule of two (three, four, five) minutes for each interlocutor? Should people talk by turn?
8. Should everybody have the same time or should active fellows who have what to say talk more?
1) Is it OK to wish somebody defeat? Competitors always do it, don’t they?
2) Some people believe that only misery of being a loser can motivate people to become better. Do you agree with that? Can you name other possible motives?
3) Is it a good idea to discourage people? If you compete with people you will always do it, won't you?
4) Do you try to compete in our club and not to support somebody? Do you try to be supportive? Do people like those who are supportive?
5) Should ideologies compete?
6) Why do capitalists demand from governments of other countries to support competition in their countries?
7) Who are more competitive and who are more cooperative, men or women?
8) Does such a thing as a self-made man exist? Don't you think that men can make themselves only if they are supported?
9) Should we give understanding to everyone or should we exchange (“sell”) our understanding for something?
10) Do men support women? Do women support men?
11) Who are more cooperative and who are more competitive, Westerners or Russians?
12) Elites that compete with their own people lose their respect. Whole states and their citizens lose their respect because of that. So nobody is really respected nowadays. Do you respect Obama for instance? Do you respect Americans?
13) Do you like the situation when nobody is respected?
14) Is money respected?
To avoid some misunderstanding I have to explain some things
Your ability and your readiness to create real and interesting discussions is a part of being a good English teacher and a good English learner as well. I think it is obvious. That is why we discuss things in English here.
If you want to be a good teacher it is absolutely necessary to understand what is happening in the mind and soul of your students. Otherwise you will not be able to build a rapport between your student and yourself and as a result the lessons will not be effective.
You should understand what “affective filter” is and how it works preventing learners from learning foreign languages. Read Stephen Krashen if you haven’t heard about the affective filter. He wrote an interesting book about second language acquisition. And his book is free.......
2. Is studying the foreign language a question of discipline for you? Do you force yourself? Do you try to coax yourself? Do you moderate yourself when you can't stop? Is the foreign language for you a job or a hobby?
3. Language is knowledge. It is grammar and lexis. Is it also phonetics for you or do you ignore this aspect? Are there other aspects?
4. Do you associate language with sport? What skills do you train? Speaking, reading, writing, listening? All of them? What about thinking? What about additional skills like translating, teaching, communicating, passing exams? Is the language for you like sport games or bodybuilding?
5. Is the language kind of sex or has it nothing to do with it? Are there some similarities? Can sex be substituted by languages?
6. Do you agree that language can be spiritual practice? Can it be a way to highest levels of existence? Can it be Yoga?
7. Language is war. Do you learn to speak to fight for the place under the Sun?
Мы говорим и переписываемся на Английском, Французском и иногда на других языках (Иврит, Эсперанто, Русский). Иногда участвуют также носители языка. Иногда мы встречаемся в кафе у метро Новослободская (Москва).
Есть программные темы. К примеру, «Техники освоения иностранных языков», «Психология, Экономика, Политика». Есть просто встречи – тематические и свободные.
Цена 450 рублей за 45 минут.
We speak here English, French and sometimes other languages (Hebrew, Esperanto, Russian). Native speakers also participate sometimes. Sometimes some of us meet in real life in Moscow near Novoslobodskaya metro station.
We have programs like “Second language acquisition techniques” or “Psychology, Economics, Politics”. Sometimes we just talk about everything interesting for us.
The system is very democratic. If you wish you can become one of leaders and lead your own groups.
The rules
1. We usually fallow preliminary prepared questions, however those questions are just a start point for our conversation and there is no need to follow them strictly. If we have interesting ideas inspired by the conversation, we discuss them.
2. Try not to speak too long and not to repeat over and over what you have just said. Let others speak too.
3. Do not interrupt interlocutors unless they start to misinterpret you, or repeat things already said, or speak way too long.
4. There are no forbidden topics! It is forbidden to forbid topics!
5. You don't need to be politically correct but try to be polite, friendly and supportive towards people.
6. Do not demotivate.
7. Those who speak better usually speak a little more.
8. Rules are not laws and sometimes can be broken.
This site is about how to study foreign languages.
You can find here pay and free programs, topics for discussions for our Skype Communication Club, articles and videos about how to study foreign languages.
Want to join our communication club? My Skype is ilyashalnov. When you ask me to add you to my contact list, just let me know that you are interested in our club and you are not a bot.
A big number of computer programs and articles about methods of studying foreign languages you can find on our Russian site http://shalnov-school.ru
We use this free program when we explain and compare the systems of vowels. It is about American, British and Russian systems. In fact the program is a set of pictures. But every vowel has its own button; and thus every sound can be very easily recorded and played. Buttons allow you to compare different sounds. The program also has a convenient connection to Wikipedia. You can read there about every vowel. When the movies with examples of every vowel are ready, each button of a vowel will have a connection to its movie. That work has not been done yet.
Left button – listening to the sound
Middle button – rerecording the sound
Right button – movie with examples of the sound (movies are not ready yet)
This program is for improving pronunciation. It can also be used as a common video-player for watching movies and listening to music.
The main principle is that. You watch movie then with one click stop it and start to record yourself. Then with one click you listen to your recording of yourself. Then with one click you play new fragment of movie. Sometimes you only stop movie and repeat after the speaker without recording yourself. Sometimes you record yourself and listen to yourself from outside.
You don’t need to click many times and all the time to answer questions like “Do you want to save your recording?” Nothing distracts you from your work: only you and the language you are studying.
The program is portable. You can just put its exe-file into a folder with your media-files and it will add media-files to its list and will start to play them by turns. You can randomize or sort your media-files. Next time you run the program it will play the movie from the place where it was stopped before. And there are other useful options.
Working with subtitles
The program shows subtitles and parallel (additional) subtitles. Subtitles are played as a common text - it is one of available options. If it is shown as a common text, doubleclick on a word will send it to clipboard where it can be caught by any dictionary that works with clipboard. You can change transparency of the subtitles.
You can also:
1) To move directly from subtitle to subtitle
2) Play only parts of the movie where people speak and skip the parts of it where they are silent
3) Use additional delay after every subtitle
4) Edit subtitles
5) Go from sub to sub with corresponding picture without playing the movie
6) Fit subtitles to the video
Subtitles are connected to the movie if you place the file of subtitles (*.srt) with the same name as the movie but with different extension into the same folder. To connect the text-file "MyVideo.srt" to the video-file "MyVideo.mp4" just put the file "MyVideo.srt" into the same folder with "MyVideo.mp4".
Working with texts
The same way as with subtitles you can connect a txt-file. It is convenient when you work with a sound-file and the transcript to it. To connect the text-file "MyAudio.txt" to the audio-file "MyAudio.mp3" just put the file "MyAudio.txt" into the same folder.
If you check "Smart mouse" you will go from sentence to sentence (highlighting the sentence) by using the mouse wheel. If you press the mouse wheel and scroll it, it will scroll the movie, not the text.
Playing, Recording, Repeating, Rewinding
Everything is done with three buttons of the mouse:
1) Left button -- pause or play
2) Doubleclick -- rewinding back to some seconds (2 seconds by default)
3) Mouse wheel -- going forward or backward (2 seconds by default) (if the text is open then the wheel must be pressed)
4) Middle button -- the same as left button (pause or play)
5) Right button -- recording or playing our own voice
Slowing down the rate of the movie
If you play mp4 or mp3 files you can slow down video or audio. It is sometimes very convenient when you work on your pronunciation. You can also slow down wav-files if you have proper codecs installed in your system. When new codecs are developed, ListenRecordSay will be able to slow down other types of video. You won't even need to install a new version of ListenRecordSay for that.
On the other hand, speeding up is very convenient when you listen to people who speak very slowly. You spare much time and then it is not so boring to listen to slow speakers.
RecordSay is a very simple program. The main part of it is only two buttons - Record and Say. It will be enough just to press Enter and the program will work. Enter - and the program records your voice. Enter - and you listen to yourself from outside. You can use also the mouse. Mouse wheel in one direction - recording. Mouse wheel in opposite direction - listening the recording.
To improve your pronunciation you need to listen to yourself from outside. The Microsoft program "Sound Recorder" is not good for that purpose. With it you will have to do ten unnecessary clicks instead of only one click. Unnecessary movements will not let you to concentrate on language.
Saving your recording
You can save your file as wav-file. If you click on Button "S" your recording will be saved in the folder where you saved your last file without asking for the directory. The file will get name 001.wav or 002.wav etc... Right mouse button on button "S" will save your recording and play it with your default player for wav-files.
From any program!
You can use RecordSay without leaving the program you are working with. There are two checkboxes in RecordSay for that. If you check "Middle button in any program" the middle button of your mouse will start Recording or Playing of RecordSay. If this option is chosen the middle button will do only that and in your program will be disabled this moment.
The same way you can use your left button if the checkbox "Right Button in Any Program" is checked. This way you can work with practically any player. It can be PowerDVD, for example. PowerDVD allows you to work with movies in slow rate. It is very convenient when you work on your pronunciation.
How to work on pronunciation
You can just record yourself and listen to yourself from outside without necessity to look for buttons every time and to answer annoying questions like "Do you want to save your recording?"
You can also work with any movie files using any of your movie-players. Serials are good for working on the pronunciation. You listen to real actors who just speak the language you study. The movie can also be played in Internet even without downloading it. Everything is as usual.
You stop your movie. You press the middle button of the mouse and record yourself. Then you press the same button and listen to your recording. Then you click on movie and your player plays the next frame. Then you stop the player again and record yourself, and listen to yourself. That is how you work. Sometimes just stop and repeat after the actor without recording yourself. Sometimes do the same with recording and listening to yourself.
Keys and mouse
You can use either mouse or keyboard. Sometimes it is more convenient to use the right part of the keyboard (so called gray keys). The NumLock should not be pressed this moment.
Enter -- Recording, Playing
Wheel forward -- Recording
Wheel backward -- Playing
Minus -- Recording
Plus -- Playing
End -- Stop of recording or playing
Click on the program -- Stop
Button "S" (of the program) -- Save your recording in the folder you used the last time
Button "S" with right mouse button -- Saves the file and also makes your default player to play the saved file
If you drag multimedia file and drop it on the RecordSay it will make PowerDVD to play the file. It works if your PowerDVD is installed in its default folder in Program Files.
Makebilingua is a free program that will help you to create your own parallel texts or to read parallel texts created by others.
Making new parallel texts with Makebilingua is like comfortable reading. But it is much more comfortable to read already prepared parallel texts. So if you have compounded a parallel text, please, send it to us to share your work with other users.
...The parallel text is a text that consists of two texts in one table. The left column contains sentences written in language you are studying. The right column is for their translations. Sometimes it is better when the texts are divided into even smaller parts than sentences.
