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Issue #040 -- Week 08/02/15-14/02/15 February 17, 2015 |
Hello,Greetings and General InformationA warm welcome to our new subscribers! I wish you will find My English Club fun and instructive and I look forward to welcome you as a new valued member soon. Read, learn and communicate around the world! Please feel free to contribute to these pages when you have a minute. They are meant to be a platform for exchanging ideas, stories and opinions - an ideal medium for practicing your English, which should be used to the full. Together, let's bring it alive, let's make it the welcoming community you wished for, when you joined. Use the Comments facility at the end of every page and start making friends worldwide. You and your friends can always subscribe individually through the form on My English Club If anybody mentions to you that they are interested in receiving it, please tell them this - many thanks. Also, they can read the previous issues on Back Issues for English Corner E-zine. Month 6 ~ Lesson 24We started studying three subjects back in September 2014: pronunciation and grammar for improving your communication skills, as well as website design and development, for applying your English in practice once you get skilful in English and website building. Once we covered the basics of pronunciation, we started a new course in reading. In our reading course we started to work on some reading skills for the TOEFL exam, for those of you who are contemplating this in the future. This is particularly useful to my current students, who need to take this exam as part of their Level 5 course in Reading/Writing, this being the main reason for which I started this section. Until I shall have the time to create my planned e-books from these courses, you can find our past lessons for free, as follows: Pronunciation: Reading ~ Making Inferences from Stated FactsReading Skills for TOEFL [7] Some multiple choice questions in TOEFL will ask you to draw a conclusion from specific details in the reading passage. Questions of this type contain the words implied, inferred, likely, or probably, to let you know that the answer is not directly stated. Instead, some information will be given in the passage, and you will need to draw a conclusion from that information. Let’s consider an example: Ancient Coins ”Long before coins were invented, metals such as gold, silver, copper, and bronze were used as a medium of exchange for trade. However, each piece of metal had to be weighed each time it was used in trade to establish its value. The Lydians of western Anatolia were the first to begin producing metal coins in standard weights, in the seventh century B.C., impressing a seal into the coin to indicate its value. One such coin minted during the time of Lydian King Croesus, who ruled from 560 B.C. to 546 B.C., has been recovered by archaeologists; this coin is imprinted with the heads and forelegs of two animals, a bull and a lion, who are facing each other. It was not until 525 B.C. that coins with images on both sides came into being.” Question 1: It can be inferred from paragraph 1, that gold came into use as a medium of exchange In this example, you are asked to infer when gold came into use as a medium of exchange based upon stated information in the first paragraph. To answer this question, you should refer to the information about gold in the passage and draw a conclusion from that information. The passage states that long before coins were invented, metals such as gold… were used as a medium of exchange and that The Lydians … were the first to begin producing metal coins … in the seventh century B.C. From this context, it can be determined that gold came into use as a medium of exchange before 700 B.C. To answer this question, you should select the first answer: A). Question 2: It is implied in paragraph 2 that coins from the time of King Croesus were In this example, you are asked to determine what is implied about coins from the time of King Croesus, based upon stated information in the second paragraph. To answer this question, you should refer to the information about coins and King Croesus in the second paragraph. The passage mentions King Croesus, who ruled from 560 B.C. to 546 B.C. , and that it was not until 525 B.C. that coins with images on both sides came into being. From this context, it can be determined that coins from the time of King Croesus were all imprinted on one side only. To answer this question, you should select the first answer: A). How to succeed with questions about inferences from stated facts? 1) How to identify the question: Find the relevant phrases: 2) Where to find the answer: they are generally found in order in the passage. 3) How to answer: Grammar ~ Stress on Emotions in CommunicationWe learned about interjections in our last lesson. Today, we shall consider other ways of giving emotion emphasis. The simplest way to express emotions in your oral communication is by using exclamations. These are a type of sentences used to express the speaker’s feeling or attitude. They begin with what as a determiner in noun phrases (“what a great show”) or how as a degree word with adjectives or adverbs (“how clever”). “What an extraordinary cruise they’ve had!” Exclamations are formulated with these introductory words (‘what’ and ‘how’) at the front of the sentence, as if it would be a question, but then the subject and the verb in the sentence keep their position as in a normal affirmative sentence. We can shorten exclamations to a noun phrase or an adjectival phrase: “What a man!” (=> ‘What a man he is!’) What an easy lesson this was! … Would you not say that, my friends? Indeed it was, and this is due to the mid-term exams we're going through at the moment, hence I'm keeping this issue sweet and short... However, this doesn't mean it has less importance in your learning. You need to pay attention to the correct word order in this kind of sentences AND keep using them in your speech – don’t forget about them. Next time we shall learn about the emphatic ‘so’ and ‘such’. Website Design ~ Finalizing Your Monetization MixWe said we shall finalize our lesson on monetization round about now, and move on to our next lesson for the rest of the month. Here are some valid suggestions on how you can still improve on your strategy for making an income online. 1) For earning a good income online, the best advice is to diversify. Take your time as you review and think about the wide variety of possible monetization models. The possibilities are endless. By doing some "future" thinking now, you will know if your present choice of a Site Concept will allow for more than one profitable opportunity. And you'll get an idea of how profitable it can be. Don't box yourself into a corner before you even get started! Why is more than one income stream necessary? Realistically, not every visitor who lands on your site will be interested in your primary offering. They are at your site for different reasons. They are looking for different solutions. You've worked very hard to get them to your site in the first place, right? So be prepared with multiple ways to monetize your traffic. Every click on one of your monetization methods counts. Think "a little bit of profit more often" and your income becomes both larger and more stable! Never be dependent on any one income source. "All your eggs in one basket" is a high-risk strategy. By diversifying, your revenues increase, your business is more stable, and you are in charge of your business destiny. 2) Pace your monetization implementation. While you may be planning five different monetization models, add them one at a time, weeks or months apart and then assess each one. More importantly, after you introduce your first income-generator, during the early weeks, even months after that... Focus on building more targeted traffic for your primary monetizer. Then, when you are ready, plug your next monetization strategy into your site. Multiple income opportunities should never be introduced at the expense of your main business, or at the expense of building great content. You may be thinking... "Hey, I don't want to miss out on any potential income. I want to build a commercial site now!" Mistake. Big mistake! Do not be in a rush to monetize your site. Traffic-building (and lots of it) comes before monetization. Do not over-commercialize your site and do not commercialize it at the beginning. Keep this important point in mind... Quality benefit-focused content is what attracts more visitors and keeps traffic coming back again and again. Quality content is what creates warm, willing-to-buy/hire visitors who trust you and your business. If I had lots of links to a number of items for sale, like books, CDs and other worksheets material, would you buy from me right now? I think NOT… That is not going to happen if my site is just one big pile of links. Both the search engines and you, my surfers will ignore me. Think of PREselling as building your "Brand of One"... whether the "one" is you personally or your small business company name. So... You've done the necessary preparation for a new website. You're ready to build one by now, which takes us nicely onto the next step – applying for the domain name with SBI! and hosting a new website online. This Is It, Folks!I hope you find this information useful and not too confusing. Even though you're in the stage of building on it, have patience at this point in your learning and you'll be able to reap the fruit of your work later on, whichever aspect of our lessons you are concentrating on. A new and valuable addition to the website is the comments feature that can facilitate your communication 24/7 from now on. Your messages will be monitored and accepted or denied, depending on the content and the attitude, but NOT on the grammar, spelling and overall correctness of your input. I have offered the service of correcting messages retrospectively, as a constructive contribution to your continuous improvement. Do participate and make this place feel like a community. Please feel free to comment and suggest your ideas by replying to this email - I look forward to hearing from you. If you wish to chat either with me or with other members worldwide, go to My English Club ! OK, I wish you all a great week ahead. Have fun, as always! My best wishes, Lucia da Vinci Founder of My English Club |
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