Bite Sized English

This entry is part of a series about connotations. This entry is available as a Adobe Acrobat file for printing or use in a class.

Most teachers—and students—know that taking a few minutes ‘off’ to play a game, or just chat, can help you re-stock your energy before getting back into the ‘work’ of learning English. But, is it okay to take a few minutes off at work? Is working without stopping always the best thing to do?

In today’s installment of the connotation dictionary, Î want to talk about how you can describe working—or not working—with different connotations. After all, what’s the difference between:

• An industrious worker,
• A conscientious worker
• Screwing around, and
• Blowing off steam?

I know that you want to know all about these things, so feel free to download (as a PDF) and use the second part of the connotation dictionary: ‘people at work.’

February 2nd, 2010 | Tags: connotation, lazy, work | Category: English Three, Vocabulary | Leave a comment

This entry is part of a series about connotations. This entry is available as a Adobe Acrobat file for printing or use in a class.

After talking about what a connotation is, it’s hard to learn to use a connotation. After all, speaking English masterfully means using the language not just to convey meanings, but to convey feelings.

How can you learn these feelings?

I’ll get into general answers in a bit (that’s a code for: I have some ideas, but none of them are really good), but there’s something I’ve started doing for my students and that I want to share here: my connotation dictionary.  (Downloadable as a PDF)

Today, we’re going to discuss problems.

We all have problems at work, but what are the other words you can use? What feelings do they convey? Is there a difference if you say that. . .

• I have a problem at work.
• The situation at work is difficult now.
• We face a few challenges at work.

These are all things you can read and learn about in the first installment of the connotation dictionary: ‘work problems.’

Note: I know that there are a few English teachers who read my blog. I’d be thrilled if you gave me some feedback on this. How do you convey connotations? Is a resource like this useful? What do you think of the ’story format?’

February 1st, 2010 | Tags: connotation, problems, work | Category: English Three, Vocabulary | Leave a comment

This entry is a part of the series about hidden meanings. I’ll be adding more as time allows. This entry is available as a Adobe Acrobat file for printing or use in a class. This entry includes a listening exercise. You can dowload the MP3 or play it using the button below. (MP3)

I said in the last post that the connotation of the word is the ’second meaning’ of a word. A connotation will say if a word is positive, or negative. It will include the feelings of approval—meaning you think something is good—and disapproval. (That means the opposite, of course.)

Let me try it with a more poetic example: if you think of a conversation as paper, and think of the words meaning as what you write on the paper. . . the connotation will be the color you write the word in, and if you write it in bold, italics, or UPPERCASE. And these things, we know, can change the meaning of the word.

In the recording today, I’ll talk about connotations more exactly, and I’ll use a few examples. And, in the coming posts, I’ll try to include a few more concrete examples.
More »

January 25th, 2010 | Tags: connotation | Category: English Three, Vocabulary | Leave a comment

There are a lot of words in English. A lot of them have almost the same meaning, or meanings that are related. But, often, picking one word over the other can weaken the meaning of your sentence and—in the worst case—even hurt feelings.

Consider a few questions:

• Would you rather be faced with a challenge or a problem?
• Would you rather that someone called you a ‘natural leader’ or a ’skilled leader?’
• If someone takes five minutes to make a decision, would you call them ‘deliberate’ or ‘indecisive?’

Our problem—I’m sorry, I mean our challenge—is that these word pairs have very similar meanings, but can result in misunderstanding if you don’t choose the right one.

What’s the difference? The difference is the connotation of the words. We’ll talk more, soon, about the meaning of connotation, but for now it helps to say this: the connotation of a word is its ’second meaning.’ Often, we use the words ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ to describe this: a challenge is a positive thing, a problem is a negative thing. But it can be more than that.

Why does it matter? If you’re speaking to a native—or fluent—speaker who is aware of the connotation of the words you use, it’s very possible that misunderstandings can happen when you say in English what you’d normally say in your native language.

In the next days and weeks (I don’t know how fast I can prepare stuff) I want to talk about this idea. We’re going to start with some vocabulary to describe this, we’re going to cover specific examples, and we’re going to talk about how you can find out connotations on your own. (After all, every word has some kind of connotation.)

Normally, I’ve organized my lessons at Bite Sized English into different levels: from pretty simple to native level. The lessons we work on for this topic will be all ‘native level.’ You’ll need pretty good English to really make use of them. (Though, it never hurts to learn the extra vocabulary.)

January 24th, 2010 | Tags: connotation, implication, insinuation | Category: English Three, Vocabulary | Leave a comment

Really, it was a great year for me. I had my son (really, my wife had him.  I just got him.) and 2009 was the year I started Bite Sized English.  For me, it was a good year.

Bite Sized English, I think, had a good year, too.  I’ve started a handful of websites over the years, and none have met with as enthusiastic a response as this one.  It went from the first post (about New Year’s resolutions, does anyone but me remember that?) up through bank fraud.  I’m proud of that.

I think that, through 2009, the quality of the job I did here really improved.  And, even more, I think that I started learning to do the right job here.

Given unlimited time and resources (you know where this is going, right?), I would continue to do more of the same here.  But, well, my time and resources aren’t unlimited.

I’ve always promised myself that I’d be a person who worked to live, not a person who lived to work (I could do a whole lesson on those two phrases, you know?).  Now, with a wife and child, offline hobbies, and a full-time job, I really can’t keep this up.

You know that, you’ve noticed how long it took me to get around to just saying this.  Christmas, vacation and family just left no time for blog posting.

That doesn’t mean that 2010 will be a year without Bite Sized English. If for no other reason than that I’ve paid for the hosting here through the year, you can expect to see the blog stay.

But, again. . . the format of the blog will change.

How will it change?  Well, it was hard for me to make the decisions to ’stop’ blogging here, so I haven’t been able to really make myself think about what’s possible with the time and energy I’m willing to spend.  Hopefully, you’ll hear more about it this year, yet.

For the meantime, here’s what I’m thinking:

• I can’t blog every week.
• I can’t try to make every lesson a week long.
• I like the idea of a lesson being spread out over several days.
• I want to continue hunting for good native-English recordings.
• I loved using Bite Sized English as a bit of a ‘laboratory’ for ideas I hadn’t introduced in my classroom.
• You might not know this, but a lot of what I created for Bite Sized English was, in the end, meant for specific students I had in the classroom.  The blog was a great platform to refine things.
• I sincerely hope I’ll be able to continue having a dialogue with different English-learners through or because of the blog.  After all, you guys have given me great insights that I would have needed years to find myself.
• There really are things I want to experiment with in an online format.

The long and the short of it?  Well, the blog is changing, slowing down. . . but not dead.  Not yet, anyway.

December 22nd, 2009 | Category: Bite Sized English | Comments (4)

This entry is part of a series about fraud. This entry is available as a Adobe Acrobat file for printing or use in a class. This entry includes a listening exercises. You can dowload the MP3 or play it using the button below. (MP3)

We’ve been talking about fraud and identity theft all week, so you can probably guess what I’m talking about today. But, here’s how the story starts: I get a surprising email from my bank, and pick up the phone to make a phone call. . .

After You’ve Heard the Recording
Okay, I had what might be considered an ‘innocent’ run-in with identity theft—or maybe it was ‘only’ credit card fraud—but it was enough to make me paranoid. Where do you think that the theif could have gotten my credit card information? What do you think I should do to make sure it never happens again?

December 4th, 2009 | Tags: credit card fraud, fraud, identity theft | Category: English Three, listening | Comments (1)