Rethinking education and school

Presentation Zen has an interesting post with videos on this subject. If you're an educator or a parent, I recommend it!

What is studying?

What is studying?

Is it the same as doing homework?

Did you study when you were in school?

Are you studying now?

Is it the same as practicing something, like a musical instrument, a sport, or an art form?

What is it and why should I do it?

Whether or not to take an official English exam

There are many exams that you can take to measure your fluency in English. Some are from the University of Cambridge, and others, like the TOEFL and the TOEIC, are from an American organization called ETS.
Should you take one of these exams?
In my opinion, it's important to know why you want or need to take one.
If you want to go to an educational program that requires an exam, then it's necessary. Some jobs require you to demonstrate your level with an official certification. In these cases, it makes sense to take an exam because you need it to do something you want to do.
On the other hand, if you're learning English, you may start to feel that you want to take an exam to have a concrete measure of your progress. If this is your case, it's important to research the different exams and see which one is right for you.
Here are a few questions to consider:

• Do you prefer general English, or something focused on business?


• Do you feel more comfortable with British or American usage?


• How much time and money do you want to dedicate to preparing for and taking the exam?


• What will you do if you don't pass?

In my experience, these questions can be helpful in focusing your efforts and giving you the best chance to achieve your real goals If you're taking classes, your teacher can also help you to find a tests that's right for you. Also, you may discover that you don't need or want to take an exam, and that's great too, because it frees you to spend your time pursuing English fluency in your own way!

Mistakes in English: do you really need to apologize?

If you know me, you know that I'm taking a wonderful Spanish class. My teacher is fantastic in every way, and in the past few weeks, spending an hour and a half together on Wednesdays, she has taught me a lot, provided a supportive space to practice, and generally encouraged me to the extent that I'm already speaking a lot more whenever I have the chance! Thanks, María!

One reflection I've had during these classes is that maybe we don't need to apologize for our mistakes if they don't offend anyone. I mean that if we use the wrong verb tense, or pronounce something incorrectly, or don't understand something, maybe we don't need to apologize, because these are natural parts of the learning process. We're taking a class because we don't know something, so why should we apologize when we make mistakes?

Is there any time when we should apologize in class? Well, maybe if we weren't paying attention, or forgot to turn the cell phone off, or were late to class. Those would all be good reasons. But not when we make mistakes.

So what should we do? What about smiling and going on, correcting the mistake ourselves or asking for help? What do you think?

Lexis: active and passive

I'm reading a marvelous book called Learning Teaching, by Jim Scrivener. This book was recommended to me by one of the greatest people I know, and it's absolutely a must if you're interested in language teaching. Here are a few things I have found interesting from the learner perspective:

Lexis

One of the most useful observations in the book is about the concept of lexis. Lexis is all the words, collocations and phrases that compose a language. These parts of language fall into two big categories, active and passive. This means that we have some words we use all the time, and others that we don't use often (or ever) but know and can recognize.

Active vs. Passive Lexis

An example of this in my case would be a word like "microscope". I never use this word! but I know what a microscope is, so if I read or hear this word, I understand it. I think it's accurate to say that the majority of my lexis is passive. I know a huge number of words and expressions, but I only use a very small number of them on a daily basis. This is true in my native language, and it will also be true in any language I learn. What do you think? Is this true for you? What percentage of all your native words and expressions do you use on a daily basis?

Learning Strategies

The value of thinking about active and passive lexis when you're learning a language is that you can classify new vocabulary, and this will probably affect your strategy with learning. You need to have a good active vocabulary which allows you to communicate in everyday situations. This vocabulary should be accessible and increasingly automatic for you. So you may need to put in some extra effort here if you can't remember the words and expressions. But as you continue, you'll also be learning a lot of passive lexis. It makes sense to pay attention to this, and connect it to your active lexis when you can, but also not to worry too much if you have trouble remembering all the words. When you encounter new lexis, it may help to ask, active or passive? For a scientist, "microscope" is probably active!

Why Is Passive Lexis Important?

As you learn, you'll naturally increase both your active and passive lexis, and your passive lexis will be important, especially when you're reading or listening to other people speak. In fact, increasing your passive lexis may be one of the most important elements in understanding what you hear, so using resources like TED and the BBC can be very helpful. You may never have occasion to say "at sixes and sevens," but if you know what it means, you'll undertand it when someone says it!

Why synonyms are important

When you have a good level of English and are able to communicate in different situations, you start to face a new challenge: increasing your vocabulary. One of the best way to do this is to learn synonyms for words you already know. A synonym is a different word that means the same thing. For example, you probably know the adjective fast. Quick and rapid are synonyms for fast. If you already know fast, why do you need to know other words that mean the same thing? For three reasons: 1. to be able to understand what you hear and read, 2. so you don't have to use the same words all the time, and 3. because it's fun. Maybe the first reason is the most important for you, but I would recommend thinking about the second and third as well. Learning synonyms is a great way to rapidly increase your English fluency. A good way to learn synonyms is to use a thesaurus. Here's one online thesaurus for you to try. If you keep a vocabulary file or notebook, making groups of synonyms can be a good way to learn and remember them. In the image here, we have a word cloud of synonyms for nice, which was created with Wordle.

Set a task

Here's some good advice from Yearlyglot, about setting one task every day to help you learn a new language:

"...find something to do and determine that you’ll do it right away. In the beginning, your tasks might be simple: learn the numbers, learn the colors, etc. Later they might grow in complexity to things such as describe your home, or tell how your day went.
Set at least one task for yourself every day. Determine that you will do one new thing in your target language every single day. And as your language skill grows, so should the complexity of your tasks.
Eventually, you should be able complete tasks such as look up the weather, buy a train ticket, find an apartment, read a news article, follow a recipe, read a book, and you’ll be surprised at how quickly you get there when you’re not allowing yourself too much time."

I like this idea because it's daily, and because you can make the task fit your level and the amount of time you have. Keeping the time limited is probably also a good idea.
Today I will translate some emails from English to Spanish. A colleague will help me check them over, but my goal is to write them as well as possible. What about you? What task could you choose for today, to help yourself move forward with English?