Improve your study skills

Developing speaking strategies

You probably want to be able to speak the foreign language you are learning. You want to communicate with others and be understood. Read and apply our tips below and enhance your speaking skills.

SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPROVING YOUR SPEAKING SKILLS

· Speak, speak, speak! Practice is essential. Get in touch with native speakers or other foreign language learners and use the language in communication. It's okay to make mistakes.

· In your every day life, make up a dialogue in your head for the situation you are in: think about how you could order something to eat in English when you are at a restaurant; how you could ask someone for help when you are lost; how you can buy a ticket for the train when you plan to go somewhere, …

· Buy a small dictionary and carry it around with you. When you make up dialogues, use it to look up unknown words.

· When you are alone somewhere, for example in your room or under the shower, come up with sentences in the foreign language and speak them out loud.

· Learn poems that you like and speak them out loud.

· Expose yourself to the foreign language: listen to audio books, read books, watch films and videos, …

· Look for a tandem partner, i.e. a person who speaks the foreign language and wants to learn your native language. Meet him or her regularly and speak the foreign language.

· Use the computer and the internet to improve your speaking skills. For example you can listen to public podcasts in the foreign language, watch videos or chat with native speakers.

· Work on your pronunciation.

(From http://www.learning-english-online.net/skills/speaking/speaking-strategies/)

Speaking

1. Split into groups. Study counter-arguments to the text you have read and discuss the problems using both the arguments of the text and the counter-arguments that follow. Group A supports youth. Group B supports older generation.

· The young do not seek responsibility: they evade it.

· They are not interested in important questions; avoid involvement: e.g. major political issues; they lack noble ideas.

· They want expensive clothes, cars, etc. without working for them.

· The young should be grateful to the older generation. The older generation provides the young with good education, money to spend.

· The older generation fought World War 2, faced difficult, sometimes tragic problems. The young have had everything easy.

· The young cling to passing fashions: clothes, pop music, and rock music. The modern phenomenon is mass hysteria.

· Appearance of many young people is unpleasant: too long unkempt hair, dirty clothes, and unwashed bodies.

Communicating

Giving advice refers to when we tell other people what we think could help them. The most common way to give advice is by using the modal verb 'should'. There are also other forms including, 'ought to' and 'had better' which are more formal. You can also use the second conditional to give advice.

There are a number of formulas used when giving advice in English. Here are some of the most common:

· You should … .

· I don't think you should … .

· You ought to work less.

· You ought not to … .

· If I were you, I'd … ..

· If I were in your position, I'd … .

· If I were in your shoes, I'd …. .

· You had better … .

· You shouldn't … .

· Whatever you do, don't … .

( From http://esl.about.com/od/grammarstructures/a/f_advice.htm)

Tell the class what you think about the parent-child relationship. What should it be like? What is the way to achieve a perfect mutual understanding?

Writing

Write a short email to your friend about your relations with parents.

About Teenagers

Lead in

Ø What is a teenager?

A teenager is....

· a person who can't remember to walk the dog but never forgets a phone number;

· someone who can hear his or her favorite singer 3 blocks away but not their mother calling from the next room;

· a whiz who can operate the latest computer without a lesson but can't make a bed;

· a connoisseur of 2 kinds of fine music -loud and very loud;

· an original thinker who is positive that his or her mother was never a teenager;

· a romantic who never falls in love more than once a week;

· a student who spends 12 minutes studying history and 12 hours studying for his or her driving license.

What definition do you like most? Which one describes you? Which suits to all teens best? How would you describe a teenager?

Reading and vocabulary