EileenSON.org » E-Learning http://eileenson.org Just another WordPress weblog Thu, 09 Sep 2010 13:22:33 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 The causes of common difficulties in English learning http://eileenson.org/2010/04/the-causes-of-common-difficulties-in-english-learning/ http://eileenson.org/2010/04/the-causes-of-common-difficulties-in-english-learning/#comments Mon, 12 Apr 2010 13:13:00 +0000 Megatron http://eileenson.org/?p=293 Just a quickie about English courses, with particular reference to online ones. To guide you all through the most common problems, which, in my experience, are:

- difficulty with pronunciation
- misunderstanding terms/false friends
- “mothertongue-tion” of English language

More in detail:

1. English pronunciation requires a more softer labial movement of the mouth, while in other languages, such like Italian, the pronunciation is done by applying more force to the muscles. This difference causes the student to have to “re-learn” how to articulate his/her mouth to speak, and it is not always easy. Pronunciation, being one of the hardest skills to acquire, should be guided step-by-step by a mothertongue English teacher, and never left to online course (unless a tutor is provided) or self-teaching. You can only learn to speak by interaction and trial-and-error method.

2. So called “false friends” can lead to misunderstanding of words meaning, and thus an erroneous learning of said terms. It’s important that the teacher finds out as soon as possible, and helps the student overcome the perception that similar words in two languages have similar meanings (that can happen, but it’s not a rule of thumb). Designers of online courses should take this in consideration, and provide a tutor.

3. This is the case of words and/or phrases not known by the student, but “invented” by the student on the right moment, based on his/her own mothertongue and than “Englishized”. That is what I mean by “mothertongue-tion” of English language: i.e. an Italian student may “Italianize” English words that he does not know, or say/write phrases and portions of speech the same way he would in Italian. This is a common mistake, normally part of the process of learning, but a teacher should be there to correct this behavious, which may harm the student’s career if not taken care of.

I’m getting interested in educational practices related to language teaching and training, thus I shall update about this subject very soon. :)

Thanks for reading, my dear friends.

]]> http://eileenson.org/2010/04/the-causes-of-common-difficulties-in-english-learning/feed/ 0 Happy Holidays! :D http://eileenson.org/2008/12/happy-holidays-d/ http://eileenson.org/2008/12/happy-holidays-d/#comments Sun, 28 Dec 2008 10:47:40 +0000 Megatron http://eileenson.org/?p=92 Hello kids! ^_^ How are your holidays going? Mine are doing pretty fine. I’ve got a lot to study for when school starts again on January, but I’m taking it slowly and everything’s doing good ^^ I aim at getting the highest grades possible by the end of this year, you know that? :P Yeah, I’m a little bit of a perfectionist, hehe.

Anyway, I know some of you guys has a true passion for studying like me, and so I suggest to take a look at this great resource:

Brightstorm

The site is for both teachers and students, it’s free to register and there are a lot of online video courses *_* Yay! I love video courses :P

]]> http://eileenson.org/2008/12/happy-holidays-d/feed/ 0 More students help :) http://eileenson.org/2008/12/more-students-help/ http://eileenson.org/2008/12/more-students-help/#comments Sun, 21 Dec 2008 17:21:40 +0000 Megatron http://eileenson.org/?p=88 Hello kids! :) Here I am to share some more help and tips, through another website I visit regularly every week. It’s online-mba-program-blog.com, and it lists plenty of online schools offering online online master of business administration degrees (Boston University and Northeastern University, for instance), and they give out financial aids for the ones who can’t afford the whole of the expense. To my friend Ratchet Allen, I’d suggest taking a look at the online Health Care MBA page, because I’m sure it has everything he needs to start making plans for his future studies ;) I’m glad that my friend Ratchy is supporting me with the whole online school thing, because my family is still as stubborn as a rock :( Anyway, now that school is over and Christmas break has started, I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a very felt good luck with your studies ^_^ I know how hard education can get, but remember! it’s for your future happiness ;) Mwah! *hugs tight*

]]> http://eileenson.org/2008/12/more-students-help/feed/ 0 Sharing help with other students ;) http://eileenson.org/2008/12/sharing-help-with-other-students/ http://eileenson.org/2008/12/sharing-help-with-other-students/#comments Fri, 19 Dec 2008 21:33:08 +0000 Megatron http://eileenson.org/?p=85 Hello guys. I’m sorry about not updating in some time, but I’ve been busy with the last tests and interrogations at school of the year ^^ I did pretty fine though, I have a media of grades of 8.7, which is cool! hehe ^^ Also, there’s a website that I use very often for my researches and to choose schools for my future, and I want to share it with you because I know the most of you are students too, and so this one can turn very useful to you: it’s an online college reviews blog. It has more than 2000 online school reviews and they are all written by students. There’s a big list of universities, too, like University of Maryland, or George Washington University. I’ll be glad someday if I can be one of their students. ^^ because it’s really helping me through some though decisions with my life (you could read about it in my previous entries too). I’m trying to help Selenia finding something she likes as well, but she’s lucky: her parents told her to do what she thinks it’s best for her, not like mine who are so bossy and disrespectful of my dreams and talents :( Anyway, I’m going on with my studies, and on Monday I’ll be spending the afternoon at the city library to do some research on my own. Nobody will stop me. Ahah! :P

]]> http://eileenson.org/2008/12/sharing-help-with-other-students/feed/ 0 And now about PhD (online, yes) http://eileenson.org/2008/12/and-now-about-phd-online-yes/ http://eileenson.org/2008/12/and-now-about-phd-online-yes/#comments Wed, 10 Dec 2008 19:05:18 +0000 Megatron http://eileenson.org/?p=83 On my other post I forgot to mention that, since someday I want to take a PhD too, I thought of a Online Doctor of Computer Science (DCS) at Colorado Tech’s Doctoral Program Online, one of the many on line PhD programs listed on online-phd-degree.net, a great resource site for PhD Universities online and other distance learning schools. The good thing is that there is financial aid for all people who can’t afford the full cost of the degree (and trust me, I’ll so be needing that!). As I said earlier, my parents are not happy with my choice of becoming an online student in the future; they wish I would attend courses here in Robocity or off-town at most, but not online, because they don’t trust it a lot. *sigh* I wish they weren’t so close minded… Gladly, I have Selenia at my side, and all of my friends, and the other Leaders too. I hope I can become a great scientist someday, and help this world become a better one :) I wish that with all my heart.

]]> http://eileenson.org/2008/12/and-now-about-phd-online-yes/feed/ 1 Just a quick post http://eileenson.org/2008/11/just-a-quick-post/ http://eileenson.org/2008/11/just-a-quick-post/#comments Fri, 21 Nov 2008 23:05:27 +0000 Megatron http://eileenson.org/?p=72 This will be just a quick post before bed time, so don’t espect anything long ;)

So… on November 13th I’ve been doing a game marathon with my girlfriend Selenia, and we had so much fun that we wanted to repeat the experience today! XD Sele is great gamer, trust me! Much better than a boy :P Hehe.

The situation with Martha and her family is better. Her parents are going for a payday loan (finally!) and Sele and I could let out a breathe of relief. Our efforts were not wasted! ;D And we are proud of ourselves, since we managed to help a person – and a friend.

Then, thanks to my friend Ratchet, I came to know about online lectures which are free to download and courses are free to follow. Finally something about free education!! :D YAY! My favourite OpenCourseWare is the one of MIT, at the address: http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/courses/courses/ Take a look if you can because it’s really worth of it :)

]]> http://eileenson.org/2008/11/just-a-quick-post/feed/ 0 My school life saver :D http://eileenson.org/2008/11/my-school-life-saver-d/ http://eileenson.org/2008/11/my-school-life-saver-d/#comments Mon, 03 Nov 2008 16:58:50 +0000 Megatron http://eileenson.org/?p=56 My Literature teacher gave me an excellent today. Yepee! I’ve been studying hard all day yesterday for this essay, and the high grade really paid me back for all the sacrifice :’) I’ve come home all happy about this, and after lunch I started researching online for e-learning websites that would help me improve my academic writing more and more with time and practice. You know? An excellent today, but I don’t know if I’ll do that good on next month’s essay. So, I found the perfect website for my self-teaching: dissertationblog.com. This wonderful site is all about Dissertation Writing and comes with a lot of Dissertation Example that can be downloaded as PDF documents. The first one I downloaded is the Dissertation Proposal Sample which I needed to plan my 1st semester dissertation in Maths (due on December 18th, that I shall have to report on January, soon as I’m back from Christmas break). Then I tried out the Literature Review Sample, which I need apply next week for my Literature test that will consist of a review. Usually the first obstacle I encounter when it comes to dissertations is finding the right title, though, and so far my teacher hasn’t been able to give me good advice on how to improve that :( So I looked on this site, and… cool! :D They have great tips pn how to find the right Dissertation Titles! For example, I didn’t know that a dissertation title had to contain the words “a study on..” or similar, and that they have to contain the main topic of the dissertation. You know, my parents always say I waste my time trying to improve my studies and writing skills with online tutorial, but trust me, it’s not true! Just look at this site, it just saved my school career ^_^ We students surely need more tutorials and blogs like this, not otherwise. For sure.

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