Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Improve your English through Online Reading

My dear pupils,
I bet some of you are getting more and more anxious about the upcoming 'N' level English exam, right? Fret not. Besides practising papers after papers, here's the fun way to improve your English expression, enrich your vocabulary and as well as gain more knowledge about current trends and affairs.

Here's introducing you TWO valuable websites.
1) STOMP- http://www.stomp.com.sg/stink/ (with a highly interactive and vibrant interface)
The sections that I like best are:
a) Talkback- a forum with a myriad of topics and perspectives.
b) Star Blog- Seven star bloggers penning their thoughts on controversial and sometimes personal topics. (a very good source of Standard English as compared to students' blogs)
c) Media Club- Access to a variety of less serious newspaper articles as opposed to those in Straits Times.

2) Channelnewsasia Blogs- http://www.channelnewsasia.com/blogs/
The only difference between Channelnewsasia Blogs and Star Blog on STOMP is that the latter contains entries on a designated topic every week whereas the other one contain more personal entries.

Don't just read blindly and quickly if you want to improve your language expression. Take down any useful words or phrases and copy the entire sentence accompanying it. Collect these useful vocabulary expressions and try to remember them.

Copy the entire text onto a blank Word document. Hide certain words and then test yourself to see whether you know the answers to the blanks. In other words, test yourself cloze passage.

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