Using mnemonics to learn new foreign words Now I try to learn English words using mnemonics. I have a humble goal to learn next 1000 words with abstract meanings from this list: http://www.vocabulary.com/lists/52473#view=notes My scheme is: 1) Try to imagine an association of pronounce of English word using word (or words or parts of words) of your native language 2) Try to imagine an association of meaning of this word in your native language 3) Connect both of imaginations from step 1 and step 2 to one 4) Tie image from step 3 to location that you know well 5) Try to remember your sick image after some time has passed...Voila! Wonderfully, but it works! Learning words by this way is a more funny and efficient for me than "mechanical memorizing". And...in addition of my story, I'd like to ask some questions. Does anyone try this way of learning new words? How do you do that? What is your scheme? Also, I'd be interested if anyone tells me about negative experience of using mnemonics. It would be interesting. Thank you.

My toughest job in English I've had some hard and interesting job lately. It took almost all my free time for a week and a half. I'm telling about decoding of audio interview. When my friend offered this job, I thought "Well, sounds interesting. I have no problems with English listening of BBC podcasts so why not?". Then my friend said "It's about 60 minutes interview with a punk band from Portland, are you sure?".And I thought for a second time "Hmm, It sounds as challenge and I can learn something new. Of course I should take this job!". My friend gave me about a week - a week and a half, and I started to do this. Oh, God! I met really serious problems with pronouncing and understanding of words I've never heard. In addition the members of this band from Portland were telling about other cities and states of America, they were using some specific words and phrases and I didn't know neither US geography nor those words well. Thanks to Google and Vocabulary.com they were very helpful to me, and the speed of my decoding increased with them up to 1 minute of interview per half an hour of my time! I know, it is not very quick and some Italki users have their own tricks and know other web-resources and their speed can be more quick, but I did it! Of course, after all my friend did some corrections of my job, and I heard some jokes about ridicules moments in my text, but I gained some experience in English and it makes me feel happy now.

A question about using of articles

Hi everybody! I have a question about using of articles at this VOA text:

http://learningenglish.voanews.com/content/graphene-the-material-of-the-21st-century/2681970.html

 

There are 3 pieces of the text where using "a", "the" and nothing before profession:

"Dan Scheffer is vice-president of the manufacturing company, Vorbeck Materials."
(without any article before "vice-president")

 

"Louise Brooks is the manager of the product development team at Vorbeck Materials."
(with "the" article before "manager of..")

 

"Ray Sauro is a chemical engineer at Vorbeck Materials."
(with "a" article in this case, which I counted is right)

 

Why an author don't use only indefinite article in these 3 cases? Can someone explain the difference? Thanks.

March. It's snowy today Today is the 23rd of March. I woke up at 6.00 am and looked at a window. And what did I see? It's cloudy and snowy today. Every spring after the most part of snow is melted, I hope that I won't see these bunches of snow before next winter. But not. I'm so sad. By the way I heard a joke today "Hey people why are you surprised? It's snow in Russia. It's only 100 times in a year"

I need help with text corrections

Hi to all!
I want to write nice, big and interesting texts in English...and I have a problem with grammar. As I see now the good way to improve my grammar is to take corrections from the other Italki users. Good, Italki has a tool for these things named "notebook". I do it in my notebook, I write articles... but there are not too many users who come to my notebook and make any corrections.
So, I decide to write an offer here, in "discussions":
Dear Italki users, would you kindly to make some corrections in my notebook? Instead of it I can offer my corrections in Russian. Thank you for attention!

An interesting case in the Moscow metro (retelling) A Russian journalist in Moscow metro met an old lady which knows many songs of the French-language singers. The case was happened when the journalist Alexander Chernyh saw an old lady (lately named Lida) who stared to a newspaper with Charles Aznavour on the cover. The young man asked a woman "Can I buy the newspaper for you?" "No, thanks. I'm just watching at Charles Anzavoit. He is so lovely, I like his songs. But where will his concert be? I don't know this place" Alexander tried to find any information at his smartphone, but the woman interrupted him, took a hand of the journalist and started singing. Her singing was surprising for the journalist and he asked the woman "Do you know French?" Her reply to him was "Oh, no! There were cabins with vinyl records in Soviet libraries in 60es. We used to go and listen to the music there. I just listened to it and repeated the voice. That how I learned my favourite songs" After this dialogue and some songs in French performed by old woman Lida, the journalist said good bye to her, and asked "May I know your phone number?" But the old lady hasn't had the phone. They parted and each of them went to do their own bussiness. After that Alexander posted this story on Facebook social networking and bunch of people started seek the woman inspired of the story. I hope they will find her and present a ticket of Charles Anzavoit's concert which is helding soon in Moscow. I hope it will be story with a happy end.

The tea stereotypes I heard that the tea with milk is traditional drink in England, and this variant of the tea drink is called "the England tea", on the other hand I heard that the tea with lemon is called "the Russian tea". I live in Russia and it is very popular variant. Does the variant with lemon popular in other countries? What do you think, does this variant deserve to be called "Russian"? As for me, I prefer the green tea with milk. I heard that it was the most favourite tea drink of the last Russian czar Nicholas II.

The saturday morning Every saturday at 8 am I go to the swimming pool with my friend Ilya. We spend there about 45 minutes and do swimming strokes in two styles: breaststroke and front crawl. The front crawl style is my weak point, Ilya does it much better. For 45 minutes we pass over 1400 meters. After our swimming session we go to the cafe (especially McDonalds) and eat muffins with coffee and talk about things of last week. How do you usually spend your saturday morning?

The fixed-gear cycle There are so many types of bicycles we know: a child bicycle with 3 wheels, regular bicycles for adults with “woman” and “man” frames, sport bicycles of any type and so on. Now I want to describe another one type of a bicycle which I use for my out-door wheeling. It’s called a “fixed-gear bicycle”. At the first look the fixed-gear bicycle seems as a regular little bit old-fashioned bike with a thin frame and simple design. But it is only at the first look and I’ll try to explain main differences in few grammatically-incorrect English sentences. So, it needs to remember that the pedals, a chain and a rear wheel are the one system. It’s applied for all range of bicycles, and it’s applied for the fixed-gear bike. But in the case of the fixed-gear bike it has one significant difference: the sprocket of the rear wheel of the system has a lock. Consequently, the rear wheel has no free rotating relatively of the sprocket, that is to say it is “fixed”. In other words, when you rotate the pedals in one direction, the rear wheel start moving in this direction, if you start rotating in opposite direction, the rear wheel does the same and rotate in opposite direction. Of course braking on the bike with this type of gear is not much comfortable for novices. I guess it is not comfortable for the major part of all bicycle riders, so to do efficient braking many riders have additional brakes on the handlebars. The reader of this article should ask me for now: “So, what the point of using this incredible machine? Why do the people choose this type of bicycle with strange design?” Well, I don’t really know what to say, although “just try and you got it”. When I sat on the saddle and start pedaling of the cycle at the first time I started feeling a strange and unusual thing: the bicycle drives of you, not you drive of it. It’s like the bike has its own character and you have to hear this character and interact with it. And I liked this sense that is reason of my choice.