A word is enough to the wise: 2014

четверг, 27 ноября 2014 г.

Final post

Hello to everyone!

To begin with, the motto of the students of the Department of Romanic and Germanic languages is: “Study while others are sleeping. Work while others are loafing. Prepare while others are playing.” As a matter of fact, this trimester is about to end that’s why our lifestyle is becoming more and more hectic. To be honest, we are inundated with interminable stacks of different tasks now. In such period of time it’s impossible to wind down a little bit because we should not to neglect, but stick to accomplish all of them in order to achieve the main goals. Mind you, we had a lot of valuable subjects which helped us to develop our skills and improve knowledge.

I would like to make generalization and write a brief summary about the benefits we got from the classes of English Vocabulary. Actually, it is not going to be a considerable difficulty because I was fond of attending all the classes and learning tons of new useful phrases and collocations. In fact, it is a high priority for the students who study foreign languages to know as many words as possible. They say, the more the merrier, that’s why I put a real effort into memorizing them.

Frankly speaking, I had a train of thought about this course and anticipated that it would be just a swot of new words and never-ending tests, but at the first class our instructor made it clear that it’s possible to combine studying with entertainment playing different games, making small talks and dialogues in order to use the active vocabulary and remember the words in context. It is also important to mention that the idea with leading a blog captivated me a lot. When I heard about this requirement for the first time, I was a little bit uneasy because of not having any insight into how to achieve this task but as it turned out I only blew it up out of all proportion because it wasn’t difficult. To be honest, sometimes I procrastinated to write blogposts to the deadline and failed to do it a few times but it just because of shortage of time. On the whole, it was quite interesting to write different stories or share my innermost thoughts on some topic. It is also important to point out that our teacher is definitely an expert in her profession as she is inclined to use different up to date programs and cutting-edge technologies during the teaching process. For example, we had an opportunity to feel like a journalist of one of the world's leading newspapers or create speaking avatar, but most of all I liked the task to write a story based on pictures from the site Flikr. These additional tasks to create content with on-line tools helped us to keep track of the modern methods of learning English.

Our classes of English Vocabulary were really interesting and productive. Moreover, we were able to take the initiative during the classes and our instructor always tried to foster our creativity. I’m over the moon realizing that loads of new words and phrases accumulated in my notebook as well as in my memory. When I read some paragraphs or articles and bumped into familiar words which I’ve recently learned it really drives me mad J

As for suggestion, I wish we had more opportunities to use new words and expressions in different exercises.

By and large, it is said that practice makes perfect, so we should continue to work as hard as possible. The course of English Vocabulary made a great impact on my languages skills. In any case, I feel elated to realize this.

воскресенье, 23 ноября 2014 г.

Houses and Buildings

Hi, guys!
Can you imagine where I am now? It seems to me that this is Earth…During my last trip something inexplicable have happened to me, the situation got out of hand and my UFO has crashed. I don’t know how to tackle this problem and back to our native planet. Actually, I have an insight into being solely responsible for my life but I’m too scared to stay among people. They live in indescribable brand new buildings where everything is so weird and ultra-modern. To be honest, I like it a lot! I made a short video in order to give you a chance to see it also.

When I was a little boy, it was probably two thousand years ago, my mother always told me a lot of stories about life on the Earth and houses people live in. She said that there are a great amount of medieval castles which formerly have been used by famous Dukes and Kings. When I realized that I am on the Earth I was expected to see the whole area in ruins with countless dilapidated and ramshackle buildings which have fallen into decay and definitely abandoned by the owners.

Everything turned out completely different. Their houses are in mint condition, up to date and there are a lot of cutting-edge technologies. Now I am in a two-storied mansion which is quite airy, spacious and luxuries. Today I saw a swimming pool for the first time in my life. It’s amazing! As for the interior, the house has a modern decor. When you enter the building, you push a glass front door and find yourself in the hall. What is more, the French windows definitely make the house more lighted. On the second floor of the mansion there’s a sitting room with the open fire. It’s wonderful to sit in front of fireplace as it is associated with warmth and positive feelings.

Next to the lounge is the open-plan kitchen. It is fully equipped and has all the conveniences and a lot of devices, for instance fitted fridge, cooker, microwaves. The last room which I would like to describe is bathroom. To tell the truth, I’ve never saw such a magnificent en-suite bathroom before.

Guys, having observed this house I understood that people are so happy here that now I don’t want to abandon this place and make it my home. What should I do?
All the best,
Maronix

суббота, 15 ноября 2014 г.

Building Cleaning Service

Sphere of activity, aims and rules: It’s true that cleanliness is one of the most significant things in our life. Our company gives people a nice opportunity to keep their houses as well as surroundings in which they stay clean. A lot of our customers have a hectic lifestyle and mostly they are inundated with a never-ending stream of tasks. That’s why they delegate cleaning of their dwellings to us. Additional, we specialize in cleaning Fitness Centers and Gyms, Daycares and Schools, Restaurants and Cafes, Offices and Hospitals. A lot of businesses want their facility cleaned well on a regular basis. Our company guarantees the highest qualities of service. We value our customers and try to accomplish our work promptly. It is rule for us never neglect their requests.

Our mottos: “One, who maintains cleanliness, keeps away diseases”

“A Better Clean at a Better Price”

Working conditions: I agree that such a work has a lot of pros and cons, because you won’t be hard-hit by boss but at the same time you should be accountable to the customer. Don’t be afraid that this job is not lucrative and fulfilling enough, you can never tell. Everything depends on you. If you are really productive, proactive and can juggle different activities you will be able to earn a pretty penny. This job doesn’t require a degree of skills and you won’t have any pet hates. We promise you that nothing will encroach upon your rights and personal life. Moreover, you will be never stressed out. It is necessary to be persistent, stick to work no matter what happens and set yourself rigorous time limits for tasks. Our agency provides maternity and paternity leave, performance-related bonus scheme and holiday entitlement. We also offer a great variety of perks and benefits for the best employees.

Available positions: We are in need of full-time two cleaners. By and large, our company looks for people who are interested in such a work. We have a common goal and collaboration is the main principal of our company.

We are waiting for you!

понедельник, 27 октября 2014 г.

http://bit.ly/1zdY0Hs

вторник, 14 октября 2014 г.

“There are poisons that blind you, and poisons that open your eyes.”

(Незрячі очі, проте всевидяче серце)

It was Friday just the next uninteresting and boring day of their life. They had been staying in that cramped ward with white walls for fifty days. Two old men who had a lot of problems with their health seemed desperately unhappy. Their beds were in different corners of the room. One of them had an impact on his neighbor because of lying close to window and having the opportunity to observe the quick life of the bustling city. The old man always bottled up his emotions and suppresses his feelings. Despite the fact of being as sick as dog he tried to look at the bright side of life. At no time he disclose something about himself but always tried to reduce stress and cheer up his friend telling different stories and describing the life of the people he saw out of the window. That day the old man related stories about two jubilant boys, who observe seagulls up in the air and just were winding down after a tiring day, about hysterical woman, who had won the lottery, about a child who was in tears just because not receiving a toy she wanted. The old man took an interest in everything describing the weather, crowded streets, devastated and stunned people.

The other man was really jealous of his friend’s life and was angry with him. He wore his heart on his sleeve and always poured out his innermost thoughts. It was not his instinct to be guarded and he always complained about his place in opposite corner.

The man dreamed to lie near the window where his friend did and observe ecstatic and frustrated people.

That day he received a wounderful chance to change his bed. Early in the morning he heard groan of his friend who felt a terrible pain in his heart. He begged for help but as cunning as a fox man decided let down his neighbor and didn’t call the nurse because in such a way he could receive a great place near the window and live his life to the fullest. His dream came true. The poor man died. Later, in the evening delighted with his decision man asked to move him to the window. His heart pounding because in few seconds he had to saw incredible views his friend told about. He was gutted when saw a brick wall and a tree in front of the wall. When he asked the nurse about fascinating city his friend always was describing him she explained that it was impossible because man who had passed away was blind. It was quiet a shocking fact. The mischievous man was crying. His friend was just as wise as an owl inventing all that stories in order to support him.

вторник, 7 октября 2014 г.

Body Language

Body language is an important part of communication. It is a special signs which people send out to each other with the help of different gestures or their combination. Some of us who are observant can read it naturally but other should put a lot of efforts into understanding of magical signals. At any rate, it is essential to pay enough attention to the behavior that a person displays as it can give us more information about feelings and intensions of our interlocutor. Although, we can never tell and bear in mind the danger of making generalization about body language because it is so easy to misinterpret what some gestures mean.

Anyway, having made an observation on my group mates and other students I noticed some common gestures. For instance, they often lean towards each other during the conversation when they are interested in the topic of discussion. As the matter of fact, most of them look into eyes one another. However, sometimes person can look away from speaker to show uncertainty about the information, but not necessarily. It’s true that some of my group mates who are too shy and timid try to avoid eye contact. Incidentally, some of them think that looking in someone’s eyes is a sign of disrespect.

As for the folded arms, this gesture implies stubbornness, or alternatively, person uses it when disagree with the heard information. In any case, this gesture is also used to show self-confidence or just as a position in which someone stands or seats in a photo.

Such gesture as shaking hands with somebody is popular between boys, especially when they greet each other, but not necessarily. A lot of people also use this gesture after doing a deal.

When boys are annoyed they clenched their fists to show anger and in such a way try to solve some conflicts. They go red and began shout of the top of their voice.

Talking about relationships, boys who fancy someone often smile at girl, wink at her, tell different jokes and try to be funny and careful. As for girls, they often fiddle with their hair or when they are flirting they lift their heads to show more of their neck. They are also fall about laughing and try to be defenceless and cute.

As I was saying, to be able to read body language is very important and useful because you can get a lot of extra information without saying a word. But mind you, excessive gestures are annoying, so be careful using them.

четверг, 2 октября 2014 г.

"Life doesn’t have to be perfect to be wounderful." Annette Funicello

Life is the only thing we have. It is so unbelievable and indescribable that it is considerably difficult to give a clear explanation what it means. We can say without any doubt that our life is the best gift we have ever received but a lot of people misunderstand it. Fortunately or unfortunately life consists from happiness and sadness and every day we try to create own mosaic from our thoughts, intentions and actions. Our life is like a game and rules we make ourselves. We have an opportunity to choose which clothes are convenient or inconvenient for us, which food is edible or inedible, which things are irreplaceable and who are loyal or disloyal to us. We can do whatever we want to do and be absolutely satisfied or discontent with one’s life. Actually everything depends on our attitude to the world we live in.

Childhood is an unforgettable period of our life when everything seems incredible to us. We come into contact with unknown people, use unusual things for the first time and find out what is harmful and what is harmless. We are naturally curious to know what happened, what is happening and what will happen. We feel cheerfulness when we are children but what is the reason for loosing this pleasure in the future. Maybe just because we discover that life is not perfect and the longer we live, the more we see it to be true and try to find perfection?

In fact, our life is not perfect. It has never been and it never will be. But this can be good news. It means that we can stop pursuing the mystical, perfect life, stop chasing perfect house, perfect job, perfect friends and perfect spouse. We can find freedom to live without illusions just to be satisfied with what we have.

A lot of people misunderstand that having two hands, two legs, ability to hear, see, speak it is already a reason to be happy. There are a huge amount of disabled people in the world who have serious problems with their health but they don’t stop looking at the bright sight of life. They always give something new a try and learn how to cope with difficulties that happen.

You also should be contented that you have lovely and supporting parents who always take care of you. They are the people who help you to make a right decision and stay with you in any hard situation. We should respect our parents and be grateful for all they gave us. Friendship is also an important and inalienable part of our life. True friends know everything about us and we know everything about them. Such close relationships should be appreciated because it is too difficult to find such a person you can tell your secrets to. All these people make our life wonderful.

All in all, to reach to perfection is really hard because there are a lot of things we have yet to learn. So, life does not have to be perfect to be wonderful, because small things and lovely people who surround us are able to make it colourful.

понедельник, 22 сентября 2014 г.

Vocabulary Sci-Fi

English has been one of the most popular languages for many years. Today it is the most widely spoken language in the world. Knowledge of English can bring you enormous benefits as you can stay into contact with foreigners, for instance chatting with your pen friends whose mother tongue is English, talk business with your partners or just have small talks with someone in a friendly way. It is also a well-known fact that knowledge of foreign languages can give you an opportunity to have a well-paid job being interpreter or translator. That’s why a great amount of people try not to be out of touch with current trend in learning English. It is very easy to tell the difference between educational process today and 20 years ago. If I had an opportunity to write a letter to my peers from the past and tell briefly about modern technologies it would be like this:
Hello pals,
I’m a teenager from your future. I live in 2014 where nobody has considerable difficulties with studying English because we have a lot of different ways to improve our knowledge and develop skills.

To start with, we have an opportunity to communicate with native speakers not only visiting different countries where English is official language but also to get hold of pan-friends all over the world throughout the Internet. It is a World Wide Web which helps us not to lose touch with each other. Using a programme “Skype” we can talk to foreigners non-stop as well as see them and smile at them and not afraid to be suddenly cut off or run out of money because it’s absolutely freely.Furthermore, there are plenty of different online dictionaries which can help us to learn new words, expressions, phrasal verbs and their definitions. A perfect example is English thesaurus which provides users with complete information on the meaning of a given word. Speaking my mind, it is one of the most interesting ways of learning new words.

You can see it in the picture.

There are some other websites you can bump into searching in the Internet. ‘’Just the word’ is one of them. This visual dictionary can help you memorize new collocation faster as you can see them typed in different colours. It is also possible to create word clouds.

The next way of enhancing your level of English is using such site as “fraze. it”. You can just type a word or a phrase, for example “official language” and see the list of sentences where it is used. It is also possible to find out an appropriate article choosing different topics. Moreover, you can also learn some other useful collocations and words. Just look at this picture!
“Quizlet” is my favourite website. There you can create your own flashcard sets or use already made ones. Memorize the new vocabulary making different tests is funnier and more interesting. I am pasting the link of this site to my letter in order to you can give it a try: http://quizlet.com/49786481/theatre-for-the-deaf-flash-cards/
I hope it was very interesting and educational for you to get to know about the studying process in 2014. Actually, all these opportunities simplify studying a lot. Thanks to the new technologies it is now possible to learn English perfectly and be able to speak as a native speaker. Just do it!

Best wishes,Your friend from the future.

воскресенье, 14 сентября 2014 г.

New life is about to happen

It was an uneventful day, to be honest like many others ones in his worthless life. His face was devoid of any smile or humour. As usual he heard a lot of indescribable sounds and interesting conversations, but everything was inexplicable for him as he had been lying on the top shelf in a dark bookcase for many years and couldn’t observe the life of the people as earlier.

His name was English dictionary. It is said that things with such names are very important in the world and have a large following but his life seemed to be completely pointless. So, under the circumstances he kept himself occupied with different thoughts all the time but couldn’t find out any explanation. Dictionary always has a wonderful relationship with his owner. He was excelled in his job and he was quietly confident about it. He was a reputable book. But what was the origin of their divorce? Maybe it was his too old red cover or torn pages were very noticeable. He didn’t know but he still reflected on that problem all the time.

Dictionary and his owner had had a lot of extremely interesting and eventful trips to many wonderful countries, not counting that in some of them they were more than one times. His owner had an inquiring mind and always asked the dictionary a favour and the latter always tried to simplify the languages of foreigners.

One day when his owner left to New Zealand he had forgotten his small pocket dictionary at home. The owner had been so confused and defenceless during that trip that behavior of the small dictionary seemed to be unforgivable. How he could stay at home? The whole incident reflected badly on everyone involved.

It also was another funny story when his owner mistook English dictionary to his friend-novel “Three comrades”. That strange situation needed careful handling.

The red dictionary remembered a lot of other interesting stories and could talk about their earlier fascinating life non-stop but his thoughts were suddenly interrupted. A little girl had brought comparable Book to English dictionary. Her green cover was so pretty and pages so white that red-covered Book was miserable in comparison. Both of them had been trying to make a conversation and soon were succeed in it. German dictionary was quite interesting book and had told a lot of unforgettable stories about his life. He hadn’t visited many incredible countries, hadn’t seen many strange foreigners, hadn’t had the only owner but without it his life was quite amazing. German dictionary had been living in the bookshop and anticipating some changes all the time. He had seen hundreds of new faces and heard thousands of different stories from many customers but it wasn’t considerable difficulty for him to absorb all the information as he always was curious about the world outside. Early in the morning a young pretty woman bought him and brought to this bookcase.

Green-covered book didn’t know what would happen to them but assured English dictionary that their life fraught with difficulties soon change. Today on the way home he heard that the daughter of the pretty woman eight-year-old girl is going to study foreign languages. English dictionary counted himself lucky. He knew that adventures life was about to happen.

четверг, 27 ноября 2014 г.

воскресенье, 23 ноября 2014 г.

суббота, 15 ноября 2014 г.

понедельник, 27 октября 2014 г.

вторник, 14 октября 2014 г.