Minjia
Meeting with Sarah on July 5 We talked about dinosaurs. The questions we used were from http://www.esldiscussions.com/d/dinosaurs.html. Here is a summary of what I learned: Corrections: 1.I feel inadequate/short when talking about topics I'm not familiar with. 2.young: hatch the young from eggs. Note that "young" is not a plural, so "youngs" is incorrect. 3.the whole spices: not "the whole spice". 4.morals and ethics: both seem to be countable. 5.prehistoric: not "prehistorical" (no such word). 6.die off: it is similar to "extinct". 7."the time comes to an end" vs. "our time is off": both can be used at the end of a conversation. 8.T-Rex: people usually just say T-Rex instead of Tyrannosaurus Rex. Pronunciation: 1.fossil: 'fo' as in "fault", ''ssil" as in "missile". 2.giraffe: The emphasis is on the second syllable. "gi" is close to "jer", not "gi" in "give". 3.genus: "ge" as in "genesis", not "gi". 4.meteorite: The emphasis is on the first syllable. 5.Herbivore: note the "bi" sound, not "ni". Sarah sometimes read books together with her students and they also play games (curious what kind of games).
Jul 6, 2015 1:04 AM
Corrections · 3
Hi David, Thank you for your suggestion. The first item I listed in the above entry is actually about a correction Sarah made to my sentence-- I was not quite sure about which word to use when saying "I feel *** when talking about...". I agree that it is not good to associate nervousness with language learning, but Sarah is pretty good and I did not feel nervous at all : )
July 6, 2015
I'm just going to say that everybody experiences your number one above. It is bad enough trying to discuss things you are not familiar with, but when you try to do it in a second language it is even more difficult. Honestly, I don't think that I would even try. Talk about things that you are familiar with and that interest you. You don't want to have too many negative emotions, such as nervousness associated with your English learning experience. Your focus on good pronunciation is impressive, btw.
July 6, 2015
You did great! Thanks for the nice feedback. :)
July 6, 2015
Want to progress faster?
Join this learning community and try out free exercises!