2008/08/19

Improving your reading and writing skills

There is a good way to improve your reading skills: read a lot. Your vocabulary will become richer besides that you will learn more about English grammar.

First of all: Buy a magazine with different types of subjects. I suggest you buying Newsweek or Time.

Getting vocabulary: Mark every word you don’t know and look for them on your dictionary. Try to understand all the text if possible and translate it if you want (but it’s not necessary).

Your target is understand all the meaning of the text”

Learning grammar: Mark some words or grammar structures and look for their grammar rules. You can do the opposite as well (studying a grammar rule before and search for it on the text). Try to answer some questions (What was used? / What’s its grammar rule? / Why it was used?).

Your target is understand the use of grammar on the text”

Writing Skills: All these things below you can do by yourself but writing is a little different. You can write whatever you want to but you cannot know if it’s right. Try to write some lines about the text’s theme. It can be a good start.

When you think you are writing well or if you aren’t shy you can look for people to write to. There are some sites for this and it’s called “penpalling”. Get a penpal and enjoy. You will find people from almost all places of the world and maybe make new friends. Take a look at “www.penpalsnow.com” and check it out.

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Newsweek April 14, 2008

Page 9

“Your cover story on Italy’s Mess” showed me that every has its troubles, and my country’s problems are certainly nor the worst. Family life is great here and most people are satisfied with their lot. Thanks for the article.

Ilana Drori

Rehovot, Israel


Análise gramatical

Me / its / my / their: Pronomes


Pronomes Subjetivos: I / You / He / She / It / We / You / They

Função: Sujeito da oração

Ex: I have to study


Pronomes Objetivos: Me / You / Him / Her / It / Us / You / Them

Função: Objeto direto ou indireto (usado após verbo ou preposição)

Ex: She loves me / We talked to him


Pronomes Possessivos: My / Your / His / Her / Its / Our / Your / Their

Posição: Antes do substantivo referido

Pronomes Possessivos: Mine / Yours / His / Hers / Its / Ours / Yours / Theirs

Posição: Depois do substantivo referido

Ex: This is my house and that is yours (substantivo referido = house)


*Faltam os pronome reflexivos, mas vão ficar pra depois. Isso tudo foi só um exemplo de como se pode estudar gramática através da leitura. Dá trabalho (e muito) mas é recompensador.


I hope I could help

Best Wishes

Valmon

P.S.: If I wrote something wrong please tell me

1 comment:

Dani said...

Valmon,
your contribution is really useful. We can study the language and its skills in many different ways, and using the text as basis has proved to be worth it. Just something interesting: when we want to say that we should use the dictionary, we say that we should LOOK UP words and not look for. Meaning is the same but we use a different phrasal verb. Ok? Thank you very much!
Dani