Acting, Acting : My Nightmare !

Again it falls down on my head ! I wonder how can I avoid it that I have troubles in making up and acting in a situation ?
First, I cannot make up a situation indeed. With a monotonous, boring situation, surely I can't get the same grade as the others whose situations are more funny and creative. What will happen if all the members in my group don't have the ability to do that ? And the biggest problem is, more than half of our class don't have a good sense of humour. Maybe they could get over this rather smoothly in the first term, but I'm afraid nothing can assure that they can do it again in the second term.
Second, I don't think acting, especially acting in funny situations, is a very popular ability. That some members in our class have that ability doesn't mean the whole class do. Well, individually I think I can never become a good actress in my life. So it means I can never get a good grade for my speaking mid-term test ?
It is said that the grade depends on good pronunciation, good use of functions and so on... But how can we show our good speaking skill in a boring situation and a poor acting ?
And how can we get over this duty, which is to hard for those who don't have an ability of acting and making up situations ?
If only...

Việt_Nam_không_nhỏ

Searching for Information with Google ...

Well, another week has come (of course with new challenges), so I would like to begin my entry with a wish luck for all my classmates in 1C. Today mr Vũ, our grammar lecturer, gave us some interesting tips for searching information in Internet. Have you ever been overwhelmed by hundred thousands of webpages when using Google ? Mr Vũ showed us some tips to make the work more simple. Following are the tips:

- When searching, to make sure Google give you the most relevant webpages, you should put the keywords in " ". And if you just want to look up for a specific part of the whole topic, just add a plus (+) and another keyword. For example: If you want to search for the usages of Present Simple Tense, you should type : "Present Simple Tense"+usages.

- If you ope a link to a webpage and see a message saying that the page is not available, you should return to the result page of Google where you will see a line "Đã lưu trong bộ nhớ cache" [Saved in cache memory] below the big Title of the Webpage Link. That is the link to a copy of that page saved by Google. There you may find the information you need, but beware for the information may not be updated. After all, it's just a copy of that page in a specific day, the information may have been changed.

- If you want to look for "professional" materials which are usually books or report (not webpage), you should add the keywords with "filetype". Usually, materials are often saved in PDF or DOC format. For example: If you want to find materials in Relative Clauses, you should type: Relative Clauses filetype:pdf . This tip can also be used if you want to search for materials in PPT format (Power Point format).

- When reading a book or a webpage, you may find some reference resources containing links to webpages. Often, the link addresses are too long and too complicated. Here is a tip to find the exact information contained in the link. Following is a link the a page containing information about the game "Dynasty Warriors 5":

http://books.google.com/books?id=zMrwAAAACAAJ&dq=dynasty+warriors+5&hl=es.

If you see this kind of link in a book, what will you do ? Type all the letters of it? It'll be easier when you just type the keywords: Dynasty warriors 5 inurl:books.google.com . This method helps you get directly to where the information is stored in the webpage without typing the whole complex address.

Above are just a few small tips. I will add some next time. Hope you'll find them useful.

[Như Anh]

ENGLISH QUIZzzzzzzzzzzzz!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

RIGHT OR WRONG???????????
There is only one piece of wrong information in the list below. Which one? Enjoy this quiz and you’ll get very interesting information!!!!!!!!!! Have fun!!!!!!!!

1. Chocolate can kill dogs. Chocolate affects a dog’s heart and nervous system; a few ounces are enough to kill a small dog.

2.Someone paid $ 14, 000 for the bra worn by Marilyn Monroe in the film “Some Like It Hot”( really ????)

3.Your tongue is the only muscle in your body that is attached at one end.

4. A kiss lasting one minute can burn more than 100 calories (wow!!!!!!!!!!!)

5. Buckingham Palace in England has over six hundred rooms.

6.There was once an undersea post office in the Bahamas.

7.Abraham Lincoln’s mother died when she drank the milk of a cow that grazed on poisonous snaskeroot.

8. After the death of Albert Einstein, his brain was removed by a pathologist and put in a jar for future study.

HOT!HOT!HOT

WHAT DO YOU THINK?
It’s undeniable that English is the key to success in this modern society. Learning English has become a fashionable trend marked by thousands of English-teaching centers growing in leaps and bounds. However, have we learned English in the right way? I have some interesting stories to share with you…
1. The first story begins with a very well-known place in Viet Nam, Hai Van Mountain Pass. Everyone knows that this place is really famous for its tunnel built about some years ago. Regrettably, a few days ago, I saw that name in a panel in one of the main streets in HCM City. But it was printed “HAI VAN TUNEL”. Remarkably, this panel has been there for years. A little bit annoyed…
=> Imagine one day you travel to a foreign country and you see a Vietnamese word misspelled. What do you feel? Maybe that’s just a small mistake but is that negligible?
2. The second story takes place in a bookstore. I was looking for a book when I suddenly realized that everyone around me mysteriously got so engrossed in their books. I heard some noise and then two foreign women appeared. They seemed to get lost and try to look for help. Then when they were talking to the shop assistant, everyone tried to keep away from them though someone still stole a glance at them.
=> I’m sure that some of, or maybe all of everyone present there that day, could speak English but … what happened?
3. I have been working as a tutor for about three months. One day, my student gave me a piece of paper and asked me why his teacher gave it to him. I quickly realized that that was the tape script for the listening practice. I asked whether his teacher had given him any instruction and I was really taken aback when I heard the answer:
“My teacher told me to learn it by heart in preparation for the forthcoming test.” I told him exactly what it was. He kept silent and then murmured: “It is unfair. Why doesn’t he let us listen ourselves?”. When home, I told my younger sister about that. You know what she said? “It is normal. I also used to receive tape scripts when I was at secondary school.” At a loss for words …
=> I remembered our 1st -term listening test and then … (crying)

Marsupilami

Second Semester ...

Well, although yesterday was not the first day of the second semester, it was the first day everyone came to class together after the Tet holiday. We spent the first 3 periods studying with Ms Vân Anh, lecturer in charge of Reading class. Perhaps everyone agreed with me that she had an excellent speaking skill as well as lecturing skill. She gave us interesting experience about different kinds of reading skills and after that, we did a one-hour exercise consisting of 1 article and 1 passage (of course they are not easy). Ms Vân Anh spent a lot of time helping us correct the answer and to tell the truth, she may be quite demanding . She needed not only a correct answer but also a full explanation for your choice. That is to say, when you are going to hand out an answer, you should also prepare the explanation for that answer. We really worked a lot in Ms Vân Anh's class and I think that's great.

After the Reading class came the Speaking class, and we started it by welcoming our lecturer in charge, Mr "Handsome Bình" (just joking). At first, we talked a lot about last semester and we also did an evaluation on it. Then, we did a small exercise just to review what we had learnt in the First Semester. This kind of exercise was really interesting : the lecturer give you the situations and you will have to write what you should say in each situation. Of course, in order to do well in this kind of test, you will need to have a wide knowledge of English functions. Finally, Mr Bình told us something about this Semester and explained things we should do. It seems that we're going to have a very busy semester: the mid-term test will be devided into 3 parts: role-play, presentaton and relective journal. In the Presentation, we will have to summarize all the things we have learnt from the beginning of the first semester into a 5-minute presentation in Power Point Slideshow. This will surely take us a lot of time and efforts to accomplish it. Another task that is also challenging is Reflective Journal, which requires each group to create a blog and to write about their study. Only entry with more than 8 comments from other groups will be read by Mr Bình. It's a long process, I think.

To sum up, in this semester, the amount of work is a world away from that of the first Semester and the only way to complete it is working harder and harder... Goodluck 1C members !

[this entry was written by Như Anh 12:40 AM Thursay, February 21st 2008]