LISTENING
We think that listening is one of the most difficult skill to improve, but it isn't impossible to developing, so here you have some tips to improve it:
Paying attention: You should TRY to listen and understand. This seems like an obvious thing to do, but sometimes it is easy to forget because when you are listening it is easy to let your mind think only about strange words. People forget about continuing to listen to new things and they concentrate only on what they didn't understand. It is okay to stop listening to think about what something meant, but don't completely stop listening to the new things. Always remember to focus your attention again to what you are listening to.
when you pay attention to your listening you should try to catch:
• General idea (what is the information about?)
• Details (dates, telephone numbers, about the speaker etc)
• Predicting
• Drawing inferences
• Summarizing
Write things down:When you are listening to something try to do some dictation. This will help you to discover your accuracy in listening.
It will help you to think not only about the general meaning but also about exact words.
:)Hearing as much as possible English language is a good way to improve your listening. Why don't you try watching movies or listening to music? this could help you to keep in touch with English language.(:
READING
For reading you can consider the following tips, experiment with different methods and see what works for you:
Before beginning to read, think about the purpose for the reading. What are you supposed to get out of it? Jot down your thoughts.
Survey the reading. Look at the title of the piece, the subheadings. What is in dark print or stands out? Are there illustrations or graphs?
Read the introduction and conclusion, then go back and read the whole assignment. Or read the first line in every paragraph to get an idea of how the ideas progress, then go back and read from the beginning.
Scan the entire reading, then focus on the most interesting or relevant parts to read in detail.
If you get stuck in the reading: Read it again and try to infer what the sentence or the word means.
When the going gets difficult, and you don't understand the reading, slow down and reread sections.
Answer these question in your own words: What's the author talking about? What does the author want me to get out of this?
To understand what you are reading is important to know vocabulary, that's why you should read and read and find the meaning for new words.
WRITING
Writing can be difficult and time consuming for many of us, but if we take into account the following list we can find the happy side of writing:
Prewriting: It's the firs step in the writing process, its porpuse is to find a topic for writing, to collect ideas and information and to research if necessary. In prewriting you can use:
Questioning
Making a cluster diagram
Brainstorming
Writing a draft: Writing more than one draft allows you to develop your ideas and to find the best way to present them to your reader. You have to:
think about the topic sentence
think about your suportive ideas
think about a conclusion
Revising your writing: Finally you have to ask yourself the following questions:
* Are my ideas clear and easy to follow?
* Will my reader be able to find and understand my main idea?
* Did I provide enough details and examples?
* Did I take out all unnecesary information?
* Will the first part of my writing catch my reader's attention?
If your answers were 'yes', so you have a very good writing!!!!!!!!!! :>
SPEAKING
Sometimes it is difficult to practice or develop this skill in view of the fact that the students usually don't practice out of school. You should try to create oportunities to practice;
You can try to speak with native speaker or students of the language very often.
You should try to have advantage of the internet; that is, instead of writing with foreign people in the chat you should use the videoconference or the calling at the MSN.
It is important that you also try to improve your pronunciation. There are some softwares that allow you to check your pronunciation and to show what your grade is. Moreover, you can make tongue-twisters in Englsih in order to train your tongue.
We take some ideas from the following pages http://www.lang.nagoya-u.ac.jp/dep/eigog/listening/strategies.html
http://www.all4ed.org/files/WritingNext.pdf
