Jill: Hello Steve.
Steve: Hi Jill.
Jill: How are you?
Steve: I am just fine, thank you.
Jill: Good. I know we were just talking about Sumiko's list and now we're going to talk about some other words but before that, you had a busy week last week and so, how was your weekend? More relaxing?
Steve: Right.
Well I was trying to recover from having participated in an old timer's hockey tournament so I came back from that and played some golf and I played a bit of golf over the weekend. I took it easy because we had a nice, warm, sunny weekend and so I came back to the office fully recharged. But, you know this discussion today will be more of an intermediate level discussion and one of our learners, Juliana from Italy, she said that she has trouble with words that have o u g h in them like thought, though, tough, through and so forth. And, perhaps if we talk about these words that could help her, so, because there is no connection between these words but we could put two of them in one sentence and that might help her. What could you think of?
Jill: Well I thought it through.
Steve: I thought it through. Ok, there's a good, in fact a very good phrase and maybe Juliana could go around saying I thought it through. There's an expression think things through before you, you know, start. So I thought it through. That's a good one. Tough, we could say for example although, although he was a very tough guy he cried when he saw the movie. So although he was tough, although he was tough he cried. So, although and tough. So again, we're seeing this o u g h, Jill: But they mean then noa€¦ Steve: no connection. So perhaps if Juliana thinks of these two sentences, I thought it through, although he was tough and we again, always recommend that they save these words and see what sorts of sentences show up. Ok, now let's move on to another problem that Tony, one of our learners in Taiwan had with the word seems and he was, he said it seems like that I have to study harder or something like that. What would you recommend there? How can we deal with this tricky little word seems?
Jill: I think that you always have to have something after seems but you can use, there's many different things you can have that all mean the same thing. So, it seems like, it seems that, it seems as though, it seems as if and you can use them interchangeably.
Steve: And it might be worthwhile for Tony to practice saying to himself it seems as though, it seems as if, it seems like, it seems that, but not it seems like that.
Jill: No.
Steve: Unless it means it seems like that.
Jill: It seems like that was the cause of the problem. That's a different that. Steve: Right.
So seems is a tricky one. I often hear people say for example I wonder you are happy or not when of course, it's I wonder if you are happy or not. And, so these words, seems, wonder and so forth, in order to really see how they work we recommend they save them when they come across them. That will create examples for them in the review section and they can then go and review. And it might be worthwhile pointing out again that the review section is an important part of our Linguist program. People like to listen, they like to read, that's fine, but and they save words and phrases but they have to review them. The problems sometimes is that they accumulate thousands of words and you can't review thousands of words so you have to select, and what are some of the ways that you recommend to people that they reduce the number of words they are looking at? Jill: So, in the review section, in the words I am learning area, phrases I am learning there are filters so you can set, you can review words that you saved in a particular content item so you can filter by content item or by last, I think, one day, two days, seven days; I'm not sure how far it goes. So, if you just want to review what you've saved, what you've saved in the last five days you can do that so you won't get words thrown into your test that maybe you've saved three months ago if you don't want that. Steve: I don't think the test is tied to the selection, unfortunately. It will be in the new system.
Jill: Oh, you're right. Yeah, you're right. Steve: The test is driven by an algorithm which is again, one of the things that we will be addressing in the new system. The testing part of it you have little choice over what you're going to test. We have an algorithm that drives that and it may or may not be the best thing.
Jill: That's right. Steve: In the new system we will have a more sophisticated algorithm but the learner will be able to select in and select out and also to decide on the importance of different words. It will be better.
Jill: So, the filters are basically just, if you want to maybe print out lists Steve: Exactly. Jill: of the, and review the example sentences and just look at the certain words or phrases that you've saved in the past few days or from a certain, from a particular content item Steve: Right. Jill: or I think there's a few other filters. Steve: There are filters by prefix and suffix or the last 20 and so there are different things you can do and we recommend that our learners experiment. They can also select individual words and create a list but unfortunately in our present system they can't save that list, but they can print the list. So, if you selected 20 items, take them, create a list, you can then print it and you can work on those. And if you want us to comment on these lists you can do so. You just send us a list of words that you have trouble remembering and we will talk about them and hopefully that will help you to remember.
And I think that that probably deals with those kinds of problems and we will be doing this again and we hope that the learners tell us what words they have problems with.
Jill: Yeah.
Steve: Anything else Jill you want to add?
Jill: No, I think just, just to mention that the review section is important and I think a lot of people spend very little time in it and I think you know people get overwhelmed like you said and they think that there's just no point. They've got too many words but you know, just spending some time on 20 words you know for 20 same words for a week or whatever, you're still, you may still be left with a list of 1,000 words but at least now you have learned 20 more so you know, it's not hopeless and people just need to keep spending the time. Steve: Right.
And, of course the other thing we stress too is that it's all part of a total integrated process so by reading and listening and reviewing words slowly these words start to stick and you never know when all of a sudden these words are going to start to stick but words you have trouble recognizing, all of a sudden you'll see them in a certain context and bingo you know that word. Or, you'll find as our learners tell us, that all of a sudden they are reading the newspaper and they understand it and they don't have to look up every fifth word. Jill: That's right. Or, use some of those words in that list in a writing submission and if you use it correctly you know you'll see that it wasn't corrected if you don't quite get it. Then it will be corrected and hopefully that will help you to learn it.
Steve: And, if fact, using it incorrectly in our writing section is a good thing because you'll probably, people don't like to be corrected, so it might jog your memory. Jill: That's right. Steve: Ok, well. Bye Jill and we'll be doing this again. Jill: All right. See you next time.
Steve: Ok, bye.
Jill: Bye.
End.
