Cracking English

Teaching reading can be an arduous task as it is often difficult to know how to improve student skills. One of the most obvious, but I have found often unnoticed, points about reading is that there are different types of reading skills.

• Skimming - reading rapidly for the main points
• Scanning - reading rapidly to find a specific piece of information
• Extensive - reading a longer text, often for pleasure with emphasis on overall meaning
• Intensive reading - reading a short text for detailed information

These different types of skills are used quite naturally when reading in a mother tongue. Unfortunately, when learning a second or foreign language, people tend to employ only "intensive" style reading skills. I have often noticed that students insist on understanding every word and find it difficult to take my advice of reading for the general idea, or only looking for required information. Students studying a foreign language often feel that if they don't understand each and every word they are somehow not completing the exercise.

In order to make students aware of these different types of reading styles, I find it useful to provide an awareness raising lesson to help them identify reading skills they already apply when reading in their native tongues. Thus, when approaching an English text, students first identify what type of reading skill needs to be applied to the specific text at hand. In this way valuable skills, which students already possess, are easily transferred to their English reading.

Aim: Awareness raising about different reading styles

Activity: Discussion and identification of reading styles with follow-up identification activity

Level: Intermediate - upper intermediate

Outline:

• Ask students about what types of reading they do in their own mother tongue(s).
• Write different categories of written material on board. i.e. magazines, novels, train schedules, newspapers, advertising, etc.
• Have students describe how they go about reading each kind of material. You may want to prompt them by asking the following questions:
  • Do you read every word in the tv schedule?
  • Do you understand every word you read when reading a novel?
  • What kind of clues can the presentation of the material give?
  • How much time do you spend reading the newspaper? Do you read every single word?
  • What kind of assumptions do you make when you read the first few lines, or a headline? (i.e. Once upon a time....)
  • How much time do you spend reading the various types of materials?
• Based on students' answers to such questions, ask them to identify the type of skills they are using in the various reading situations.
• Divide students into small groups and give them the skills summary and short worksheet.
• Have students discuss their opinions about the various skills required for the listed materials.
• Present various "real world" materials (i.e. magazines, books, scientific materials, computer manuals etc.) and ask students to identify the necessary skills required.

Reading Styles

Skimming - Reading rapidly for the main points

Scanning - Reading rapidly through a text to find specific information required

Extensive - Reading longer texts, often for pleasure and for an overall understanding

Intensive - Reading shorter texts for detailed information with an emphasis on precise understanding

Identify the reading skills required in the following reading situations:

Note: There is often not a single correct answer, several choices may be possible according to your reading purpose. If you find that there are different possibilities, state the situation in which you would use the various skills.

• The TV guide for Friday evening
• An English grammar book
• An article in National Geographic magazine about the Roman Empire
• A good friend's homepage on the Internet
• The opinion page in your local newspaper
• The weather report in your local newspaper
• A novel
• A poem
• A bus timetable
• A fax at the office
• An advertising email - so called "spam"
• An email or letter from your best friend
• A recipe
• A short story by your favourite author

Source http://esl.about.com/library/lessons/blreadtypes.htm

The GMAT (Graduate Management Admission Test) stands for Graduate Management Admission Test. It is administered by Graduate Management Admission Council (or GMAC) and required for admission to most U.S., Canadian, and European business school MBA programs. Also, the GMAT test result can be used for admission to business PhD program, such as Harvard Business School DBA program.

Many test-takers have been working for several years and some are still in colleges. However, the GMAT exam does not test any specific knowledge in business or other subjects. Rather, it tests the "mental intelligence" and the ability to make decision under time pressure. The following table represents GMAT test format:

GMAT Score and MBA Admissions
The GMAT is an essential element in the evaluation of an applicant, and schools attach great importance to the test for two good reasons: it allows the school to compare applicants from different backgrounds according to the same numerical scale; moreover, the average GMAT score is taken into account in the various business school rankings.

At most schools, the GMAT is a deciding element in your application. Along with your undergraduate grades, your score on the GMAT determines your "academic ability". Although everyone refuses to compare it to an IQ test, the GMAT implicitly provides the school with an indication of your ability to follow the MBA courses.

Google AdSense is an advertising program that is run by Google. It is a great way to make money with your site, probably one of the best. Unlike affiliate programs, which require people to sign up and pay money to that site for you to get paid, Google AdSense only requires users to click the ads for you to get money. Plus, the ads are relevant to each unique page, so there is a higher chance of people clicking on the ads. The account you get after you sign up for AdSense gives you the AdSense HTML code, as well as detailed reports on your AdSense status. For any new webmaster, it is the premier ad service to put on the website.

Of course, if Google provides an ad service, there has to be someone giving money on the other end of the line. That's where Google AdWords comes in. With Google AdWords, you decide how much you want to pay for each click to your site, and you know each click is valuable because the ads are displayed on relevant pages. Not only do you get your ads displayed on websites, but also on the right hand side of searches through the Google search engine. Google AdWords is a great way to advertise your newborn or already existing site, in order to get some extra, quality traffic.

AdSense is not the only ad program out there. The runner up would probably be Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN), which supposedly pays as much as AdSense per click, and is more lenient with its Terms of Service. YPN is usually the ad network people turn to if they get their AdSense accounts canceled, but it is still best to start out with AdSense.

Other ad networks include BidVertiser, AdBrite, and Clicksor. Those are the second-rate ad services that pay little per click and don't have quality features like AdSense. The only reason someone would have to use those is if AdSense and YPN falls through. Don't trouble yourself with those, unless you want to combine your site with lots of different ad services, but it's best wise to use one, or at most two (unless your site is huge, then you should start using affiliate programs).
Refs http://www.w4t3r.com/AdSenseArticle.php

A painter hangs his or her finished pictures on a wall, and everyone can
see it. A composer writes a work, but no one can hear it until it is
perFORMed. Professional singers and players have great responsibilities,
for the composer is utterly dependent on them. A student of music needs
as long and as arduous a training to become a perFORMer as a medical
student needs to become a doctor. Most training is concerned with
technique, for musicians have to have the muscular proficiency of an
athlete or a ballet dancer. Singers practice breathing every day, as
their vocal chords would be inadequate without controlled muscular
support. String players practice moving the fingers of the left hand up
and down, while drawing the bow to and fro with the right arm-two
entirely different movements.
Singers and instruments have to be able to get every note perfectly in
tune. Pianists are spared this particular anxiety, for the notes are
already there, waiting for them, and it is the piano tuner’s
responsibility to tune the instrument for them. But they have their own
difficulties;the hammers that hit the string have to be coaxed not to
sound like percussion, and each overlapping tone has to sound clear.
This problem of getting clear texture is one that confronts student
conductors: they have to learn to know every note of the music and how
it should sound, and they have to aim at controlling these sound with
fanatical but selfless authority.
Technique is of no use unless it is combined with musical knowledge and
understanding. Great artists are those who are so thoroughly at home in
the language of music that they can enjoy perFORMing works written in
any century.