A Lecture on spoken English this Weekend

chinese

Background

Hello everyone, I am John Chever.

The GSoC application has came to an end. In the process of communicating with the selected GSoC candidates, I found that people are generally afraid of video conversations with foreign tutors, so I invited my speaking tutor to give you a speaking lecture.

Lecturer Introduction

Jingkang Zhang, with a perfect score in TOEFL reading and listening, graduated from UC Berkeley with a minor in English Literature. He has a 3.73/4 GPA in English Literature, two A's in writing, and a 20,000+ vocabulary. He is familiar with the English part of the IPA chart, English phnoetics, the accent characteristics of native Chinese speakers and its common differences with American English, and has experience helping many people correct their accents.

Lecture Infomation

Time: 8:00 p.m. EST this Friday, 11:00 a.m. BST this Saturday.

Course format: Zoom live online, the course link will be sent to the WeChat group before each lecture. The lecture will last 1 hour, and we will consider spending 1 hour after each lesson to answer questions and correct pronunciation, so that students who need it can stay after the lesson for 1-to-1 correction.

Course content: roughly 50% vocabulary and 50% pronunciation, adjusted according to the course progress. The main format is to read the dictionary with the group and explain some selected words. The content will include root words, synonyms, and common phrases. The dictionary reading will focus heavily on pronunciation, exploring the connection between pronunciation and spelling, and helping you to learn by example. We will learn the phonetic symbols of the American dictionary and the IPA phonetic symbols together, discuss the common language pronunciation problems and correct the wrong pronunciation.

Note ⚠️:

Please download Zoom and register your account in advance.
Please join the event temporary group chat(WeChat).

What book to use

Said by the presenter

The choice of dictionaries and word books varies from person to person, taking into account the learner's level and purpose. The lesson is about some general methods, and students should choose what dictionary or word book to memorize according to their own situation.

Recommendations Oxford American Large Print Dictionary, I use this one, about 40,000 words https://www.amazon.com/Oxford-American-Large-Print-Dictionary/dp/0195371259

Webster's New Explorer Large Print Dictionary, Third Edition about 40,000 words https://www.amazon.com/Websters-Explorer-Large-Print-Dictionary/dp/ 159695146X/

Chinese and English word book: New Oriental SAT Vocabulary Word Roots + Associative Memory: Disordered Edition 俞敏洪SAT 新东方英语新东方绿宝书新东方GRE词汇精选乱序版新东方绿宝书

English-English Word Book: Barron's Essential Words for the GRE

Learn the root words and affixes: Barron's Essential Words for the GRE

More dictionaries with more entries: Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 11th Edition 220,000 entries https://www.amazon.com/Merriam-Websters-Collegiate-Dictionary-Merriam- Webster/dp/ 0877798095/ The Oxford American Dictionary of Current English 170,000 words

About the number of words in the dictionary

For students with a small vocabulary (e.g., less than 8,000), it is recommended to memorize word books and not to read dictionaries, because you need to prioritize learning common words and should not be overwhelmed by out-of-the-way words. At the same time, it is difficult for students with a small vocabulary to distinguish which words are commonly used and which words are not, and it is difficult to get a complete dictionary to skip reading.

About Chinese-English / English-English dictionaries

For those who have enough time and wish to improve their English in all aspects (including speaking and writing), we recommend using a Chinese-English dictionary. Bump in the definition It's very helpful to look up words you don't know, so you can expand your vocabulary in a tree. The words used in the definitions are related, so they often It is also useful to accumulate synonyms and similar words.

If you have a vocabulary of more than 10,000 words, it is also recommended to use an English-English dictionary.

For students with a limited foundation and a small vocabulary, we recommend using a Chinese-English dictionary or word book to improve efficiency and prioritize the accumulation of basic vocabulary.

This course uses English-English dictionaries.

About the word book

For students who are short of time, you can also choose a word book to memorize

About British/American dictionaries For personal reasons and for the background of the people in the course, we mainly use American dictionaries. One of the advantages of the British dictionary is that the phonetic symbols are IPA, which I think is much better. But fortunately, the American dictionary is relatively easy to understand with its self-created phonetic symbols. It won't take long to learn it specifically, and we will take you through it in class.