ENGLISH QUOTES TO RE-MOTIVATE YOUR STUDENTS

Do you always find your students lack of motivation in improving their English? If you do, then you might want to stop giving them harder homework. Or stop teaching them using vocabulary cards. Or stop asking them to memorize 5 new words every day. Or stop forcing them to take a remedial test every time they failed in the previous test. Or stop all of your conventional teaching methods. You want to give them a space to relax and start to talk to them heart-to-heart.

Maybe, you also need to re-motivate your students and remind them about the importance of English. Do not only say that English is an important international language, because some language experts say that English is not the #1 anymore, but there are Chinese, French, Germany, or even Russians!

If you have a plan to re-motivate your students, you can use the following popular quotes about learning languages that I took randomly from many websites. Of course, they are adjustable to be delivered in your English class. They might be a short quote. But they have very deep meaning. Enjoy!

WE ARE STILL HAVING FUN WITH FABLES

And the audio-podcast project goes on….

Not so long after I posted some audio podcasts for listening exercise made by me and some friends, I got a lot of appreciations and supports from people around me. That was great, and personally, it was so “touching”. Moreover, Mr. Dewantoro Ratri, the author of “Menerjemahkan Dunia” decided to involve in my podcast-making project. He contributed his voice in the following mousedeer story. Thank you very much, Mr. Dewantoro 😀

Besides Mr. Dewantoro, I also got help from Mr. Khristianto from UMP (Universitas Muhammadiyah Purwokerto). He asked his students to involve in my project and some of his students’ “selected” voice can be enjoyed both in my previous and today’s post. Thank you very much Mr. Kris. I am waiting your own voice too 😀

I had asked some friends to join in this project too. And some of them promised to send the podcasts soon. I do hope that they will send me the podcasts so I can post and present them to you, my beloved readers 😀

Hall of Fame

There is no exact word to describe my gratitude to the following people. I just want to say thank you very very very much 😀

1.	Mr. Dewantoro Ratri, the author of “Menerjemahkan Dunia”	http://menerjemahkandunia.blogspot.com/
2.	Saidah, Sandra Wibowo, Risma Rahmatika, Novetia Kristin, Dika Muniatami, Eko Pamuji, Mutiara Kusuma Dewi, and Agustina Tri W. The students of Universitas Muhammadiyah Purwokerto (UMP), under the supervision of my lecturer Mr. Khristianto	http://ump.ac.id/ https://plus.google.com/+KhristiantoHakeem/posts
3.	Friends who had promised to send their recorded voice in the near future

Again, without you all, this small project would never run at all.

Disclaimer

1. The copyrighted image (cover) of “The Mousedeer, The Snake, and The Tiger” story was taken (digitally scanned) from the book authored by Mr. Dewantoro Ratri entitled “Menerjemahkan Dunia”.
2. The copyrighted image (cover) of “The Vain Little Mouse” story was taken from here.
3. The copyrighted image (cover) of “A boy and bear” story was taken from here and here.
4. The copyrighted image (cover) of “The Fox and The Monkey” story was taken from here.
5. The copyrighted image (cover) of “King of The Jungle and Little Mouse” story was taken from here and here.
6. The copyrighted image (cover) of “The Greedy Dog” story was taken from here.

WE ARE HAVING FUN WITH FABLES. WHAT ABOUT YOU?

Listening Materials Projects

Long time before I post about storynory I had a simple plan to create audio materials to help English learners around me to enhance their listening capability by recording common stories and then upload them here. So, they can listen (or download) the materials for practice and more people can also get the same benefits.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a good voice and good pronunciation to be recorded. So I asked for a help from some friends who concerned about English. Some of them were teachers, English enthusiasts, students, neighbor, friends from different towns, and ex-classmate. I sent a file contained some famous fables by Aesop and other writers. I asked all of my colleagues to record one or two stories while reading the story(ies). After that, they should send the recorded stories to me through e-mail. I said that I would accept any audio file formats (mp3, wav, ogg, etc.).

But I wasn’t luck. Only 3 people sent the recorded stories and the audio quality might not very good since they were recorded using different devices. But, it’s still OK for the beginning. Here are a few of our works:

The Goal of The Project

This “project” was intended to create positive content—a simple listening material—that will support English teaching-learning process, especially listening activities. But not only that, the recording process was also intended to improve our speaking capability. I do hope that by creating this simple audio podcasts, we will improve our pronunciation, reading skill, voice management skill, the skill on using technology to create learning medium, and finally can help listeners (learners) with their listening.

Hall of Fame

I address a big, big, big, and very big thank you to the following people for helping me on this project:

1.	My pretty and cute sister, Puput Tri Widiastuti	http://puputtriwidiastuti.blogspot.com/
2.	Akbar and Wahyu Adi, the students of UMP (Universitas Muhammadiyah Purwokerto), under supervision of my lecturer, Mr. Khristianto
3.	Friends who had promised to send their recorded voice in the near future

Without you all, this small project would never run at all. Let’s keep making a crowd!

Disclaimer

1. The copyrighted image (cover) of “Babu and The Lion” story was taken from here
2. The copyrighted image (cover) of “Goose That Laids Golden Egg” story was taken from here
3. The copyrighted images (covers) of “King of The Jungle and A Little Mouse” story were taken from here and here
4. The copyrighted image (cover) of “The Dog and The Wolf” story was taken from here

The copyright of the images belongs to their respective owner / creator / publisher.

WANNA DOWNLOAD STORIES IN AUDIO FORMAT FOR LISTENING PRACTICE?

It’s getting harder for me to steal a few hours in the middle of my recent activities, even only to write a short post for this blog. But I had promised myself that posting an article here is as important as my endless daily routines.

In this occasion, I just want to share you about a very nice site where you can take some benefits from.

Do you often need narrative texts to help you teach your students or just as an exercise for yourselves?

Do you often need an audio podcast to train your students or even just to train your listening capability?

If the answers are “YES”, then maybe you want to visit http://www.storynory.com/. There, you are not only able to read various English short stories, fables, and fairy tales by famous writers, but you can also listen to the audio format of the stories and download the audio for later use—free of charge!

Are you interested? Go to http://www.storynory.com/ now and have a nice day!

HOW TO USE “I.E.” AND “E.G.” CORRECTLY

It sometimes hard (and also confusing) to decide whether to use i.e. or e.g. in writing, because they seems to be the same. But, through this article, I will reveal the “secret” about how to use i.e. and e.g. correctly and effectively. Most of the “original” sentences/theories can be found here: here and here.

What to know about i.e. and e.g.

• e.is the abbreviation of the Latin phrase “id est” meaning “that is” while  e.g. is the abbreviation of the Latin phrase “exempli gratia” meaning “for example”.
• Use e. when you want to give further explanation for something.
  Example: After work I’ll walk over to the Thunderdome, i.e., the new sports arena a few blocks away.
• Use g. when you want to give a few examples but not a complete list.
  Example: I love drinking holiday-related beverages, e.g., hot chocolate, apple cider, pumpkin spice lattes.

How to Remember the Difference Between I.e. and E.g.

But by now, I’m sure you know that I’m not going to ask you to remember Latin. I’m going to give you a memory trick. So here’s how I remember the difference. Forget about i.e. standing for “that is” or whatever it really means in Latin. From now on, i.e., which starts with i, means “in other words,” and e.g., which starts with e, means “for example.” I = in other words. E= example.

A few listeners have also written in to say that they remember the difference between i.e. and e.g. by imagining that i.e. means “in essence,” and e.g. sounds like “egg sample,” and those are good memory tricks too.

So now that you have a few tricks for remembering what the abbreviations mean, let’s think about how to use them in a sentence.

E.g. means “for example,” so you use it to introduce an example: I like card games, e.g., bridge and crazy eights. Because I used e.g., you know that I have provided a list of examples of card games that I like. It’s not a finite list of all card games I like; it’s just a few examples.

On the other hand, i.e. means “in other words,” so you use it to introduce a further clarification: I like to play cards, i.e., bridge and crazy eights. Because I used i.e., which introduces a clarification, you know that these are the only card games that I enjoy.

Here are two more examples:

Squiggly loves watching old cartoons (e.g., DuckTales and Tugboat Mickey). The words following e.g. are examples, so you know that these are just some of the old cartoons that Squiggly enjoys.

Squiggly loves watching Donald Duck’s nephews (i.e., Huey, Dewey, and Louie). The words following i.e. provide clarification: they tell you the names of Donald Duck’s three nephews.

An important point is that if I’ve failed, and you’re still confused about when to use each abbreviation, you can always just write out the words “for example” or “in other words.” There’s no rule that says you have to use the abbreviations.

Dos and Don’ts

Don’t italicize i.e. and e.g.; even though they are abbreviations for Latin words, they’ve been used for so long that they’re considered a standard part of the English language. Also, remember that they are abbreviations, so there is always a period after each letter.

Also, I always put a comma after i.e. and e.g. I’ve noticed that my spell checker always freaks out and wants me to remove the comma, but five out of six style guides recommend the comma. Seriously. I got so engrossed in the question of whether a comma is required after i.e. and e.g. that I made a  table for the website summarizing the opinions of six different style guides.