Languages, reading, self-development, teachers
English teachers and tutors
1) Talking about studies, what can we do by ourselves and what cannot?
2) How can a teacher help us?
3) Do we need a teacher to correct our mistakes?
4) Can you improve your pronunciation without a teacher?
5) Can a coach train somebody who is better than he himself (she herself)?
6) What do we need exams for? Do we really need them?
7) Do we need somebody who will motivate us or we can motivate ourselves?
8) Do we need native speakers?
9) Can we study languages the way children do it?
10) Can we do well without communication groups?
Foreign Languages
1) How fast can we study new languages?
2) Do there exist any magic techniques; or should we work a lot?
3) Should we invent our own system of studying languages? Isn't it better to choose some system from those which already exist?
4) What are the best ways you could recommend?
5) How do you study new languages, with tutorials or with original books, movies, radio broadcasts, and real conversations?
6) Is it possible to buy a language? The more expensive tutorial the better it is, isn't it?
7) To motivate ourselves is it better to rely upon our positive emotions or upon the negative ones?
Reading
1) Do you read? If yes, what do you usually read and what are you reading now?
2) Tell us about books you reread.
3) Was it interesting for you to read school books?
4) What books have influenced your life most?
5) What is your favorite fairy tale? Which one comes to your mind first?
6) What is reading for you first of all?
~ Just a fun?
~ Escaping from the reality?
~ Getting new information?
~ Participation in a discourse?
~ Self-education?
~ Search for new ideas?
~ Communication with the author?
7) How do you look at the author, from beneath or from above, as a critic or as a pupil?
8) Reading and thinking, aren't they opposite things?
9) Do you write?
10) Have you ever tried to read like an actor, like an announcer? Have you ever recorded your readings?
11) Do you know secrets of speed reading? Do you want to know them?
12) Do you know secrets of speed thinking? Do you want to know them?
13) Can our memory be improved?
Speed Reading Principles
1) Back-skipping, regressions... Go only ahead. What are the minuses and the pluses of that principle? How can this principle be used not only in reading?
2) Can we use the mentioned principle for foreign languages acquisition?
3) Omit inessential. Do texts have excessive, unnecessary, needless information?
4) Anticipation. We don't read every letter - we usually guess. We can mix the letters in every word and yet we will be able to easily understand every word. We don’t need to read every letter in the word; we don’t need to read every word either.
5) Which facility should we develop first of all, anticipation (guessing) or reading letter by letter?
6) Do we need to articulate while reading? Do we need to suppress the articulation? How can we do it?
7) Multitasking. Can we do two things simultaneously? What facilities do we develop while doing two things simultaneously?
8) We can use peripheral vision. How can we develop it?
9) Do we need to practice special exercises or it is enough just to read?
10) Is it a good idea to use some drugs or stimulators to improve our ability to read fast?
11) What do we have to change in our lives if we want to improve our reading skills?
Speed Reading
1) Do we need to read a lot? Do we need a lot of information? Today it is more actual to protect ourselves from excessive information, isn’t it?
2) Can everybody develop the speed reading skills? If someone can do something then everyone can?
3) What principles of speed reading do you know?
4) Can speed reading be used for foreign languages acquisition?
5) Can opposite principles be used for that?
6) Texts are so different. Some of them are simple; some of them are very difficult. So, can the speed of reading be really measured some way?
7) There are three different skills: reading, understanding and remembering; should they be taught apart?
8) If after speed reading we need to spend our time for thinking about what we have just read; and also we need to rest. So, does speed reading give us any real advantage?
Foreign languages and educational books
(tutorials, manuals, textbooks and so on)
1) What do we need teaching books for?
2) Must a teaching book be a self-teacher?
3) Is boring work a necessity; or can we study absolutely without boring work?
4) If we don't have tutorials, what materials do we have to obtain?
5) Is it necessary to study grammar?
6) Is it necessary to learn words?
7) How many words an hour (a day) can we learn?
8) Do we need transcription?
9) Do we need translate anything; or can we do without translation at all?
10) Do you consider parallel texts to be helpful for learners?
Self-development
1) Should we care about our self-development?
2) What in the world is worth of care?
3) Is self-development about immortal soul or is it about adaptation to our terrestrial life?
4) What do you think of yoga?
5) What do you think of Christianity?
6) What about speed reading?
7) What about foreign languages acquisition?
8) Is business a way of self-development?
9) What about psychology?
10) What about NLP?
11) What about politics?
Mini-seminar Accelerated Reading
Here are some very wide known principles of speed reading. Let us look at them critically…
1) We can read faster and understand better. To some people it is given by nature, but everyone can develop one’s facilities. There is a lot of evidence that people who visit speed reading courses improve their skills. If you believe it, why don’t you practice it?
2) Speed of reading can be measured.
3) Texts contain unnecessary, excessive words and sentences, and those should be skipped.
4) Don’t skip back when you read. Skipping back (regressions) is a bad habit.
5) Do not articulate.
6) Develop and use wide vision.
7) Develop and use anticipation - guess words and sentences.
8) Use integral algorithm - proceed information you are getting by answering a little set of standard questions, like those: author, publisher, date, dominant (main thought), novelty, how the information can be used.
Now, tell us about your experience of speed reading.
Mini-seminar: NLP; Neuro-linguistic programming
(of Richard Bandler, John Grinder, Milton Erickson, Virginia Satir, Fritz Perls, Robert Dilts)
1) You can submerge everyone into trance without even asking for his (her) consent.
2) Recognize ineffective patterns of behavior and replace them with the effective ones.
3) What is trance? (catalepsy, dissociation, concentration, hallucinations, amnesia)
4) What is rapport? (connection, relation, especially harmonious or sympathetic one)
5) Tuning, pacing, leading…
6) Overloading consciousness…
7) Breaking patterns…
8) Pointing at the trance… If there is no trance yet, behave as if it exists already…
9) Anchors and anchoring techniques…
10) Audio, video, and kinesthetic systems (submodalities). Eyes’ movements.
11) Triple spiral, diffused suggestion, life line, metamodel, reframing and other tricks…
12) Working on consciousness, motivating to trance
13) Creating motivation and cooperation
14) Mystic language, Milton-model, meta-model.
15) Taking authoritative position
16) Two types of trance (positive and negative)
17) Tuning from below, tuning from above
18) Zero reaction
19) Eyes’ movements
20) Submodalities and distance
21) Authority
Who are masters?
1) People are either masters or slaves. How do you like this idea? How do you like it?
2) Do masters need slaves? Do slaves need masters?
3) What betrays slaves? They are right people, they hide their emotions, they speak quietly, they have closed gestures, and they have humble presence and their IMHO (not IMO)… What else?
4) What shows out that the man is a master?
5) Is it safe to be a master? Is it safe to be a slave?
6) Why do people like to obey? Do masters like to obey?
7) Are sexual liberty (being unrestraint, unconstraint) and sexual discontent (dissatisfaction, displeasure, discontentedness) easily visible?
8) What does it mean to be a master to oneself?
9) One used to be a slave and –imagine - he has suddenly got some power… Will he become a real master?
10) Is it possible that someone is a master in one company of people and a slave in another company?
11) How do masters react to other masters?
12) Do real masters serve to some idea or do they serve only to themselves?
13) Will the master willingly give up his position to someone who is better for it?
14) Is it natural for the master to be socially responsible?
15) How many masters does our society have?
16) Is it possible to become a master by one’s own will?
How to become a master?
1) Do you want to be a master? What for?
2) The master is the one who is afraid of nothing. Can we hide our fears?
3) Can we overcome our fears?
4) Is fake boldness (similar to that of tiger tamers) typical for real masters or should we choose other strategies?
5) Can someone who doesn’t feel like a real master look like a real one? Will anybody believe to such an imitation?
6) How can we improve our voice, statue, movement (plastic, gesture), mimic?
7) Will ever real master use somebody else’s authority (diploma, social position etc)?
8) Should we learn to be sexually unrestraint even if our demands are socially prohibited?
9) Professionalism or self-presentation, what is more important?
10) Is it a good idea to say all what we think, or should we control our speech? Why do people stammer (stutter)?
11) Can you be a master to others if you are not a master to yourself?
12) Will ever a master conform to slaves?
The realm of our thoughts
This topic is pretty important for those who study foreign languages. One day you will start to communicate with yourself in your second language. Where will you go in the world of your thoughts? How will you speak with yourself?
1) About what do you usually think when you have nothing to do?
2) Does your thinking sound like an interesting story? Are you a writer?
3) What do you recall when you go into your past? What does your recall consist of?
~ episodes, happenings?
~ people?
~ surrounding
~ feelings and emotions?
~ perception of your life of those days?
~ future in the past?
4) What is the present for you? Does your mind usually go from one that-moment-situation to another, or do you usually perceive your life in whole?
5) When you think about your work do you feel comfortable?
6) What does your future look like? Is it only planning or is it a set of pictures of your imaginary future?
7) Do you discuss something with somebody in your mind? Do you create your own concepts?
8) Do you have erotic fantasies? Do they make whole scenes? Do you put those images into words?
9) Do you recall your dreams? Do your dreams consist of detached episodes or are they parts of a consistent realm?
How to learn vocabulary
1) How many words a day can we learn?
2) Will the words be learnt by themselves? Is it possible to remember new words after the first time you see them?
3) What is the main problem of the second language acquisition, the lexis or the grammar?
4) To what degree can we learn words from the first time? Can they make our active vocabulary at once?
5) What are the ways to activate our vocabulary?
6) The word consist of (1) how to write, (2) how to pronounce, (3) what it means, (4) when and how it is used. So what are the ways of improving our memory? What about all NLP submodalities (visual, auditory, kinesthetic).
7) What are lexical units, words or their combinations?
8) Should the words we study be connected to some context?
9) Method of phonetic associations.
10) The Twenty Fifth Frame.
11) Paper flashcards and how to work with them. Rules of reading and special symbols instead of the phonetic transcription. The Double Rotation method.
12) Electronic flashcards, their advantages and disadvantages.
13) How to improve our memory. Basic movements. Vectors.
14) Relaxation.
15) Using psychedelics and other kinds of chemistry.
Accent
1) Is it really important to have a good accent?
2) What is accent? Intonation, liaisons, pronunciation? Music, word connections, phonetics? Something else?
3) Does the transcription present the real phonetics correctly?
4) Can we use Russian letters to describe English phonetics?
5) Can we become perfect? What should we do for that? How long will it take?
6) What help do you expect from teachers?
7) What are the best programs for approving pronunciation? What would you want from them?
7) American and British pronunciation... Let us compare them.
8) What can we say about the English speech? Let us compare it with those of other languages.
I really hope we shall not accuse all teachers? Or shall we?
1) It is said that those who can’t do anything real choose to teach. Is it so?
2) They don’t get good salary because they do not deserve it. Do they?
2) Those chose to become teachers who like to restrict freedom of people.
3) The school is a place where pupils suffer violence and abuse and nobody is going to protect them.
4) School tries to make people standard.
5) If all pupils by some miracle became successful teachers would immediately increase the level of their demands. So they will restore the equilibrium and turn fifty percent of pupils into losers.
6) For a pupil it is impossible to learn everything teachers demand and to stay a sane person. Teachers demand far too much.
7) Their tutorials and textbooks are extremely boring. Learning by them is unnatural.
8) The paid education is a crime against humanity.
9) The compulsory education is a violation of human rights.
Source: http://shalnov-school.ru/club-topics.html |
