BLA BLA BLA

ONCE UPON A TIME…

Most of the students feel safer writing than speaking. I admit it. We feel confident enough because of the more time to think and revise. Although writing has lot of prestige in academic life, the most used in ordinary life is speaking. That does not mean writing is not important. Writing is an important skill in a language and we should practice it in our English learning process. 

There are many types of writing which depend on the purpose and the person who are addressed to. For example, personal writings, like diaries and study notes will not follow the same patterns and structures as communication writings such as letters, instructions or reports.

Writing and speaking had always had strong differences between them. Nonetheless, technology has changed those tough dissimilarities. That’s why there are written texts with oral characteristics. Consequently, we find tolerated mistakes, unfinished sentences or missing subjects in chats. 

Writing strategies

Writing a text signifies time and effort. You cannot pretend to write perfectly from the beginning. There are four steps to follow in order to write a text:

Be careful with…

…the layout, because it is the design of writing, the way it looks like. Visual presentation is so important that we should be cautious with it. So, if we write a letter, we cannot forget the greeting or the closing; if you are writing an opinion essay, and introduction and a conclusion are necessary. 

…the register. Before starting you should know what kind of text you want to write and who is addressed to. For instance, a formal letter cannot be chatty and conversational or a short story should use descriptive language. Then choose the correct vocabulary and register and finally all you need is inspiration!

LISTENING SKILLS

Listening is an input and receptive skill, as reading is. That fact makes that both have similarities:

- To improve your listening, you should know that it is not essential to understand every word.  You are also a good listener if you achieve your objectives although you have not understood every single word.

- Predicting and anticipating are the basic strategies, which are very helpful to understand a listening exercise successfully.

- Strategies used in listening depend on the purpose, as well. It is not the same listening to general information, where more information can be over heard, as listening to specific information, as we do in the activities in class. 

Although reading and listening are quite similar, the main difference is that listening cannot be controlled because you cannot go back as in reading; so you only have an ephemera opportunity.

There are also some difficulties we should take into account, like puns, which are words that have more than one meaning. As a result, puns are difficult in a language. We find it in humour, for example. This is the reason why humour is so complicated in a foreign language because of our ignorance of the other meanings. 

 

Stress of words and accents is a point that also makes listening difficult because they are different from our language and we are not used to them. Furthermore, we have to be aware that there is not a perfect or a bad accent; every land has its own peculiarities. Differences do not make languages better or worse. I strongly believe that we have to be tolerant to other nationalities or speakers, considering that we want the others to be respectful with us.

 

ON READING

Some people haven’t got a good attitude when they read. Reading becomes an obligation and a boring task. Another case is people who look for all the words they do not understand when they are reading. That neither helps. Reading in a foreign language is a hard task at the beginning because learners haven’t got confidence. The best way to enjoy reading is choosing a topic we like and not looking for all unknown words. 

Before starting to read we should know our language level in order not to fail reading. How do we know our level? When you are at your appropriate level, you understand 80 per cent (or more) words in a page. 

Good or bad reader?

Good readers are the ones who do not stop and look up every single word. They read by series of quick short jumps and they read word chunks at a time. Good readers are more efficient in reading, they do less mental and physical work and they understand the text better. Being a slow reader is a problem and reducing the number of stops would be very helpful. Reading aloud or inner voice or with your finger are problems which slow the reading process. It is also important not to want to understand every word of the text. Do not be anxious and use your logical and common sense because they are usually better than dictionaries.

Reading strategies 
Think about that: you do not read equally a letter from the bank and a magazine or the shopping list and your notes.  Why is that? There are three reading strategies that a reader uses depending on the reading’s purpose.

-          Skimming consists in a quick reading just to focus on the main ideas.

-          We are scanning a text when we look for a specific point.

-          Reading for detail is the carefully reading of a whole text.

Imagine you are in a restaurant for the first time. You are completely sure that you want pasta to eat, but you do not know what type. So, the strategy you will use is scanning the menu until you get the pasta section. Then you will skim the pasta section to get the main ideas. Finally to make the final decision you should read the dishes in detail in case that you are allergic to an ingredient.

Predicting and guessing

On the one hand, predicting consists in seeing ahead of the words and it makes a text easier to understand. Actually, we know more than we think when we read. If we find a full stop we know that is the end of the sentence. If we find a connector like in addition, we know that some information will be added. Besides, if we are familiarized with a topic, it would be easier to make predictions and understand the text, as well.

On the other hand, guessing the meaning of words is important to be fluent in reading. There are words that are not important to understand a text; then just ignore them. But if a word looks important, it is useful to guess its meaning. To guess it, first we should realize what the word looks like. Prefixes, suffixes and its compounding will help our intuition. Nevertheless, it is not the same guessing in context that out of context because we do not have the help of the setting. Sometimes we do not understand the text, but we are able to answer the questions due to the knowledge of syntax and we know how English works.

To conclude, reading is an important input skill since we receive external information and it is a way to learn a lot. If you are a slow reader in English do not worry because all you need is practicing. So, choose your level and enjoy reading!