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Month 2 ~ Lesson 6

You will find our past lessons as follows:

Pronunciation:
1) The NAMES and SOUNDS of the Letters - Issue 016
2) Short/Long Vowel Sounds & CVCs - Issue 017
3) CCVCs and CVCCs - Issue 019
4) Digraphs and Silent Letters - Issue 020

Grammar:
1) CAUSE and EFFECT - Issue 016
2) Comparison of Adjectives - Issue 017
3) Comparison of Adverbs - Issue 019
4) Special Cases of Comparison - Issue 020

Website building:
1) The Basic Concepts - Issue 016
2) Content vs. Monetize - Issue 017
3) PREselling vs. Selling - Issue 019
4) Developing a Site Concept - Issue 020

Pronunciation ~ Sight Words (or Dolch Words)

However, although these are the majority of the words in English, the words we use most frequently are irregular, in the sense that we don’t spell them the way we pronounce them. Take for example the words “school”, “write” and “walk”.

These are called “sight words”, because you need to be able to recognize them immediately. You see them & you read them – no discussion. You need to learn these by heart and be able to pronounce them the same, no matter if you see them in a book, on T.V., on a moving van on the street or on the sign of a shop.

Students who struggle with reading, are most likely struggling with these words. Once you know how to pronounce these, your reading will improve dramatically. You do need a good pronouncing dictionary, or a teacher/friend who can correct you at the right time, before you commit these words to your memory with the wrong pronunciation.

You will find some good materials on the Internet, teaching these sight words. The most popular are the Fry High Frequency List, made up of 600 words, and the Dolch High Frequency Words, made up of 220 high frequency words and 95 nouns frequently found in children's books.

The Dolch list, although shorter that the former, represents about 75% of all the words we encounter in writing. The word lists for this are organised in five levels: pre-primer, primer, 1st grade, 2nd grade, 3rd grade and Nouns. Children are expected to master these words by the time they start their second grade.

The way you practice these is by reading them in order, as fast as you can and timing your reading with a chronometer. Each time you read a category/level, try to beat your own record and you’ll notice that your timing will reduce from one reading to another. Once you’re happy with the speed you’ve acquired, or you can’t beat your own record anymore, you’ll find that you don’t have any more problems reading text from books, magazines and other printed materials. By this time you’ll only struggle with new vocabulary, for which you’ll apply your own methods of learning, as and when required.

You can make your own flashcards, or you can find these online, print them and use them for your own learning, or to teach your children and check their progress by timing their reading, as I mentioned above.

Pre-primer: a, and, away, big, blue, can, come, down, find, for, funny, go, help, here, I, in, is, it, jump, little, look, make, me, my, not, one, play, red, run, said, see, the, three, to, two, up, we, where, yellow, you

Primer: all, am, are, at, ate, be, black, brown, but, came, did, do, eat, four, get, good, have, he, into, like, must, new, no, now, on, our, out, please, pretty, ran, ride, saw, say, she, so, soon, that, there, they, this, too, under, want, was, well, went, what, white, who, will, with, yes,

1st grade: after, again, an, any, as, ask, by, could, every, fly, from, give, going, had, has, her, him, his, how, just, know, let, live, may, of, old, once, open, over, put, round, some, stop, take, thank, them, then, think, walk, were, when,

2nd grade: always, around, because, been, before, best, both, buy, call, cold, does, don't, fast, first, five, found, gave, goes, green, its, made, many, off, or, pull, read, right, sing, sit, sleep, tell, their, these, those, upon, us, use, very, wash, which, why, wish, work, would, write, your,

3rd grade: about, better, bring, carry, clean, cut, done, draw, drink, eight, fall, far, full, got, grow, hold, hot, hurt, if, keep, kind, laugh, light, long, much, myself, never, only, own, pick, seven, shall, show, six, small, start, ten, today, together, try, warm,

Nouns: apple, baby, back, ball, bell, bear, bed, bird, birthday, boat, box, boy, bread, brother, cake, car, cat, chair, chicken, children, Christmas, coat, corn, cow, day, dog, doll, door, duck, egg, eye, farm, father, feet, fire, fish, floor, flower, game, garden, girl, good-bye, grass, ground, hand, head, hill, home, horse, house, kitty, leg, letter, man, men, milk, mother, name, nest, night, paper, party, picture, pig, rabbit, rain, ring, robin, Santa Claus, school, sheep, shoe, sister, snow, song, squirrel, stick, street, sun, table, thing, time, top, toy, tree, watch, water, way, wind, window, wood,

Now, this method may feel odd to you, if you're new to learning this way. If you're a teacher of English, you've probably come across this method and you will appreciate the comprehensive list here. Whichever way, try not to dismiss it before you give it a try and see its effectiveness for yourself.

If you do decide to apply this method, you will be(come) aware that this is only a passing phase, until you get fluent in reading and pronouncing. After that, you'll even forget that you went through this stage. A bit like thinking about changing gears, when you learn how to drive. This will also become automatic - trust me.

Grammar ~ Comparison Clauses vs. Comparison Phrases

[His latest film is more interesting] [than the ones he made previously.]

Here we have a comparison that stretches along two sentences – as you can see, each one has its own verb. The hinge element is the one containing the comparative word, in this case ‘more interesting’. This is called a ‘hinge’ because it belongs both to the first sentence and to the second one, the ‘than-clause’.

I could say:

‘His latest film is more interesting than the others.’

But then you wouldn’t understand or it wouldn’t be clear enough as to which others. One could also read it as:

- ‘the ones made by other directors’;
- ‘the ones that I’ve seen before’;
- ‘the other films they’ve shown at this cinema’, etc.

The moment you give it a verb, it becomes a clause and, in this case, because it doesn’t have a full meaning on its own, it is a sub-clause. We call this the comparative clause.

Other examples:

[You look much more beautiful] [than my sister does].
[Students read and write English much better] [than they speak it].
[He loved her more] [than she could reciprocate].

But, what about cases like this:

Instead of saying:

[My friend can speak Chinese better] [than I (he, they, we) can]. [… better than I (he, they, we) can (speak it).]

We could actually say:

My friend can speak Chinese better than I (he, they, we). (formal) OR
My friend can speak Chinese better than me (him, them, us). (informal)

* As you can see here, other elements in the sub-clause can be omitted if they repeat information in the main clause. If the verb is omitted, we don’t have a clause anymore – we have a phrase, which we call a ‘comparative phrase’ in this case.

With this simplification, there is a slight risk for misunderstanding:

He likes Anna more than Maria.

Could be interpreted:

He likes Anna more than he likes Maria.
He likes Anna more than Maria does.

* In comparative phrases, an adverbial or adjective can follow the ‘than’ linking word:

They thought the game was better than ever.
For his homework, he did no more than usual.
There is higher unemployment in the north than in the south.

* Sometimes, we cannot use some types of comparative phrases in relation with comparative clauses, for example in the comparison of degree or amount:

We had fewer than 10 students in the class.
You must find better things to do than playing computer games.

* Another little anomaly is the case where only comparison with ‘more’ or ‘less’ can be used:

Her performance was more good than bad. (it was good rather than bad)

* The above examples concern cases of ‘unequal’ comparisons. However, with ‘equal’ comparisons, we need to use the ‘as… as’ expression:

The children seem to like the one parent as much as the other.

Website Design with SBI! ~ Choosing Your Site Concept

SBI! Stands for “Site Build It! and it is the system I’m using for developing my own website. I am not a programmer – I have learned everything I’m doing from the course that comes with the SBI! System and I am now passing this information to those of you who find this appealing. Keep learning for now and take a decision later on, when you’re ready.

Now, we figured out last time how a website’s success and effectiveness is based on keywords we choose and use within the pages of that website. A keyword is the term a surfer enters into a search engine when searching for something, like information, a product or a service. It is also the topic for the content of a web page. This is what your future customer will find when doing a search for that keyword at a search engine.

There are two ways of looking at keywords, both of them correct:

i) the first is from the Internet marketer's (i.e., your) point of view and
ii) the second one is the surfer’s – your potential client.

In creating your website you will first decide:

- What’s your website about? For example “4x4 terrain cars”
- What’s this page about? – “brands of 4x4 cars”
- How about that page? – “4x4 dealers”

Now, “4x4 terrain cars”, “brands of 4x4 cars” and “4x4 dealers” are all keywords. The content you create about each page should focus on a keyword, called a "Specific Keyword", and we call the page a "Keyword-Focused Content Page" (KFCP). We call the site a "Theme-Based Content Site" or "Niche-Based Content Site."

Your website (or simply ‘site’) is about a specific niche or theme, and it is based on a collection of Keyword-Focused Content Pages, arranged into 3 tiers for easy navigation by human visitors and search engine "spiders."

We call your site's theme the "Site Concept" and we call the Specific Keyword of your home page, the "Site Concept Keyword".

So you can see how a keyword is merely the topic for the content of a web page. All the other words on that page are "content"... information about that Specific Keyword/topic.

In order for us to choose and use our words cleverly, we need to know which are the best keywords.

They need to:

- be specific to your theme;
- have a high Value Demand. The more surfers search for a keyword, and the greater its "monetizability" (i.e., the more commercial in nature), the better!
- have a low Real Supply. In other words, not too many other web pages are seriously about that keyword (the fewer, the better).

I shall explain today how the Site Build It! system helps you to narrow the selection, from a multitude to the best site concept thinkable in that context. Starting from three Site Concepts that you love and you think might appeal to others, we use Brainstorm It! to research and analyse these concepts.

Braintorm It! has two sides: the brainstormer (the right side of the brain) which gets the ideas and the Master Keyword List (the left side) which gives you the functions to analyse and manage those ideas. First you will choose Brainstorm and you’ll get a dialogue box with a choice of 3 possible searches.

You should start with the broad trim, unless you actually want a broad niche, but this implies that you’ll have to put in around 40 hours per week in working your website to a good competitive level – that is like working full-time on it… can you do that?

Once you’ve selected the trimming choice, Step 3 will appear, where you can enter the seed word you wish to research.

Let’s say we select the word “travel” for our search, once we give the Brainstorm the go-ahead, it will bring back a list of keywords, of which some may contain the word “travel” and others won’t, but they will be related, such as “air tickets” or “aarp”. This is where you’ll need to apply your own common sense and delete those words you think you won’t need, and only work with a selected list of keywords. To delete the unwanted ones, you’ll select them, check them and you’ll select the action of deleting from the ‘Select Action’ choice above the list.

Next, you’ll be focussing your attention to the lowest Value Demand. By clicking twice on the header, you’ll organise the list again, putting those words with very little demand at the top:

This Is It, Folks!

Please feel free to comment and suggest your ideas by replying to this email - I look forward to hearing from you.

OK, I wish you all a great week ahead and I do hope to slowly get back into our previous stable arrangement of sending this e-zine to you every Monday evening.

Have fun, as always!
My best wishes,

Lucia da Vinci

Founder of My English Club