"Seven Secrets to Learn English" by Elena Varzari

I was searching google for articles on English education and came across this Powerpoint presentation

CLICK HERE - www.balti.iatp.md/new-trends/evarzari.ppt

It is titled: "Seven Secrets to Learn English" written by Elena Varzari

It focuses on the importance of stress in speaking and listening English.

The secrets, as she states are

• Secret # 1: Learn about Word Stress
  
  
• Secret # 2: Sentence Stress
  
  
• Secret # 3: Listen! Listen! Listen!
  
  
• Secret # 4: Don’t Listen!
  
  
• Secret # 5: Improve Your Vocabulary with 5 words a Day
  
  
• Secret # 6: 30 Minutes a Day Better than 3.5 Hours a Week
  
  
• Secret # 7: Revise! Revise! Revise!

Secret # 1: Learn about Word Stress

Word Stress is:

• golden key number one for speaking and understanding English
  
• very important
  
• one of the best ways for you to understand spoken English - especially English spoken fast.

Native speakers of English use word stress naturally. Word stress is so natural for them that they don't even know they use it.

Non-native speakers who speak English to native speakers without using word stress, encounter two problems:

Problems for Non-native Speakers:
1. They find it difficult to understand native speakers, especially those speaking fast.
2. The native speakers may find it difficult to understand them.

Speaking:
In English, we do not say each syllable with the same force or strength.
In one word, we accentuate ONE syllable.
We say one syllable very loudly (big, strong, important) and all the other syllables very quietly.

Examples:
Let's take 3 words: photograph, photographer and photographic.
Do they sound the same when spoken? No. Because we accentuate (stress) ONE syllable in each word. And it is not always the same syllable. So the shape of each word is different.

PHOTOGRAPH – 3 syllables-1st stressed

PHOTOGRAPHER – 4 syllables- 2nd stressed

PHOTOGRAPHIC – 4 syllables- 3rd stressed

This happens in ALL words with 2 or more syllables TEACHer, JaPAN, CHINa, aBOVE, converSAtion, INteresting, imPORtant, deMAND, etCETera

How Native speakers listen in English:
Native speakers of English listen for the STRESSED syllables, not the weak syllables.
If you use word stress in your speech, you will instantly and automatically improve your pronunciation and your comprehension.

How to do it:
Try to hear the stress in individual words each time you listen to English - on the radio, or in films ,etc.
Your first step is to HEAR and recognize it.
After that, you can USE it!

Rules
There are two very important rules about word stress:
1. One word, one stress. (One word cannot have two stresses. So if you hear two stresses, you have heard two words, not one word.)
2. The stress is always on a vowel.

Secret # 2: Sentence Stress
Sentence Stress is golden key number two for speaking and understanding English.
With Sentence Stress, some *words* in a sentence are "stressed" (loud) and other words are weak (quiet).

Look at the following sentence: We want to go.
Do we say every word with the same stress or force? No! We make the important words *big* and the unimportant words small.
What are the important words in this sentence?

WANT and GO.

We WANT to GO.
 
We WANT to GO to WORK.
 
We DON'T WANT to GO to WORK.
 
We DON'T WANT to GO to WORK at NIGHT.

Secret # 3: Listen! Listen! Listen!

When the speech is too fast for you, when you can't understand it, that is exactly when you NEED to listen to it!!!

How can you improve if you don't listen and you don’t practice?

When you were a baby, did you understand your own language?

You *learned* to understand by *listening* 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. After that, you learned to speak. Then you learned to read. And then you learned to write. *But listening came first!*

Secret # 4: Don't Listen!

Sometimes you can LISTEN too hard.
Sometimes you can TRY too.

Which is the difference between the verbs TO LISTEN and TO HEAR?
DON'T LISTEN!
TO LISTEN is active.
TO HEAR is passive.
Sometimes it is better only to HEAR. Let the radio and the cassette play. But DON'T listen. Just HEAR.

Your subconscious will listen for you, and you will still learn. If you listen and try to understand, you may block on one word and get frustrated. Don't worry! Just HEAR! You will still be learning. The important thing is to let the radio or cassette or television or record PLAY. In time, your brain will HEAR, your subconscious will LISTEN and you will LEARN!

Secret # 5: Improve Your Vocabulary with 5 Words a Day

Vocabulary is easy!

How many days in a year are there?

If you learn only 5 new words a day, you will learn 5 x 365 = 1,825 new words in a year.

Buy a notebook and write in 5 new words EACH day, EVERY day.
Learn them! You will soon have an excellent vocabulary. (Not just memorise them, actually use them, manipulate the word into it's various forms! Really learn them!)

Secret # 6: 30 Minutes a day better than 3.5 hours a week

Study regularly.

Study often.

LITTLE + OFTEN is better than a LOT + SOMETIMES

30 MINUTES A DAY BETTER THAN 3.5 HOURS A WEEK
How can you easily find 30 minutes each day?
You can get up 30 minutes earlier
Or have a shorter lunch break.
Fix a particular time every day - and keep it!

Secret # 7: Revise! Revise! Revise!

If you revise, you'll improve your learning by 100%.
You should be systematic about this. When you learn something, you should note it.
Then you should *look at it again*, 3 times:
- after 1 day
- after 1 week
- after 1 month

Each time you revise, test yourself.
 
Learn, revise, test.
Revise, test.
Revise, test, etc.


Simple and realistic, but also effective!

The motivation and method of learning is crucial to learning, and learning well!