The Maple Leaf Rag

Greetings everyone! I made a new video today and put it up on youtube. After I write this, I'm going to try to put it up on youku but, since I can't read Chinese, I'll have to remember or guess how to do it. 

Spring is here in Ontario. It's not really warm yet, it's about 0 or just above, but the snow is melting and the sun is shining so it's almost like spring.  

I hope all of my friends in China and the other countries around it had a good time during the Spring Festival and the Lunar New Year. It's a big deal, I know. Everyone is sad now to be back at work or back to school but that's like, isn't it?

As always, let me know if you have questions about English or if you need some information about Canada. I know that a lot of students want to come to Canada to study and if I can be of any help with that, let me know. I don't mean the actual details, only facts or information about Canada. I'm not an expert but I can find things out very quickly.

Thanks for reading my blog and feel free to comment on it or send me a message if you have questions or want to make a point.  

Many of my friends here say that  they have a problem learning English. Since they live in non-English countries, they don't have access to native English speakers. What can they do about this? Well, the answer is as close as your computer or DVD player. 

For beginners, I would suggest choosing an animated movie on DVD, a cartoon if you will. There are two reasons for this. First, the words are probably very simple English words. Second, because the spoken English is recorded in a studio, it will be much easier to hear what is being said. It should be almost perfect, instead of what you might hear in a live action film where noise and the weather interfere with the sounds.

Once you have the DVD, play the first scene WITHOUT the subtitles. Remember, you aren't watching the DVD to know the story, you are watching it to learn English. Turn the sub-titles off and listen to ONLY the English. If you don't get much of the dialog, listen again. Play it over and over until you know exactly what the characters are saying. Then move on to the next chapter and do the same thing.

Try speaking the words yourself. Play the DVD and speak along with the characters. It may be boring, but if you live in an area with no native English speakers, this is the best alternative.

Another way to do this is to get a DVD movie of a play, or of something where you have the English script. The script is the words to the movie in book form. Look for the scripts online or in your library. Find script first, then look for the movie. This way, you can read along with the movie as it plays. You will be reading the words in English and hearing the words in English. It's a total English experience. 

Whatever you do, don't use the sub-titles when you watch a DVD. First, the translation may be completely wrong. The translator may be no better in English than you are and the words and grammar they use may be incorrect. I know this because I watch Chinese movies with sub-titles and very often the English is terrible. I would assume the same would go for English movies translated into other languages.

This is an easy and cheap way to learn to listen to English, to actually hear and understand it as it is spoken. Sure, you can spend big money on a language 'course' but that isn't the way you will hear the language on the street or when you meet someone who is a native speaker. What you hear on a language DVD isn't what you hear in movies or in normal conversation. You're better off listening to an animated movie first and then a regular movie or TV show.

Good luck and thanks for reading. 

 P.S. If you have made a comment on my blog and I haven't answered you, I'm sorry. I don't get notifications of your comments. I'll go back through and answer some of them but if it's important, send me a message. That way I'm sure to get it.  

A friend sent me a power point presentation about a '700 years old village' in Iran. I looked at the description and tried to figure out why it sounded wrong. It should have read: a 700 year old village (year not years). Why?

Well the why is hard to figure out so I don't know how to explain it but I'll give you some examples so you can learn how to use 'year' or 'years'.

She is a ten year old girl. She has been with us for ten years. When she is twenty years old we will send her to a three hundred year old university in England.

It seems that when you are describing something, using the age as an adjective, it's singular. I'll do some investigating on this but I wanted to make you aware of this odd situation regarding 'year' and 'years'.

This is an odd blog entry but thanks for reading it!