I'm Virginie and this is my English 's workblog. I'm a student of the engineer's school IMAC.
Selft presentation
Posted on October 12, 2008
Here you can hear my presentation.
Transcription
Posted on October 26, 2008
Hello, this is Steve Kauffman here.
Talk about something a little different today, always related to language.
We are here at the linguist.blog.com.
Today I went for a haircut. My barber talks a lot. Sometimes he even stops cutting just to talk, which I find mildly annoying. On the other hand I am always entertained for 30 minutes while he cuts my hair. He does a good job and charges me 18 dollars, which is not the cheapest, but not the most expensive, haircut in Vancouver.
He told me that he came to Canada as a 16 year old, 20 years ago. He went to hair dressing school and then worked for a chain of hair salons for 5 years, in different locations in the city. He got to know the personalities of different kinds of clients. He did not like working in the heavily Chinese district of Richmond because, in his words, the customers would arrive late and expect to be served right away. If they were not served immediately, they assumed that the customer who was being served in their place had paid extra. He did not like the pressure of that situation.
He eventually opened his own shop in North Vancouver. He said that he made sure to learn about all the subjects that his clients were interested in, from fly fishing to the stock market. He knew that if customers liked him, they would come back.
After 20 years in Canada, dealing with English speaking Canadian clients, his English is just terrible. His pronunciation, and use of words, structure, you name it, are all quite poor. When he talked about a leading politician and his wife, "he" and "she" were regularly used wrong. I had trouble understanding whom he was talking about. People who are not used to Chinese accents must have trouble understanding him. His English is poor even by the standards of his native Hong Kong.
So what is the conclusion ?
He doesn’t represent everyone but just being immersed in the language and talking the language will not necessarily improve your language skills. You need to want to improve. You need to have a deliberate program of improvement. And you need to listen.
On the other hand, my barber has been successful at building up a customer base, and did not seem to feel inhibited in any way by his poor English. He was a communicator, although a better talker than a listener. I have not suggested to him that he join The Linguist.
Videos about "Project management"
Posted on October 26, 2008
This is a video about the importance of educating yourself with technology professional management.
Yann's blog
- "My email adress is ..." : there is two "d" in address , "My email address is ...".
- "the twenty eigth" : "the twenty eight".
- "It was really interesting for discover cinema, audiovisual..." : I think it's not "interesting for" but "interesting to".
- "I enjoy outdoor to" : it's "too", the "o" is missing. But I think it's better like this : "I also like outdoor".
- "isn'nt" : "isn't".
Alexi's blog
- "I’ve discover ..." : it's "I’ve discovered ...".
- "I think that is the better" : "I think that is the best".
- "... who explain how he makes movies" : "who >explains how he makes movies"
- "I didn’t found many videos" : "I didn’t find> many videos"
The big transcription
Posted on January 11, 2009
For the big transcription, I choose two videos about the web 2.0.
Fisrt video : Using MySpace for Web 2.0 Marketing
Hi, this is David C Skul of Relativity. Thanks for starting by the watch of this video.
I wanted to talk to you about using MySpace in your web 2.0 marketing-mix. Now using MySpace is a good idea for people when they are looking for that younger demographic mostly teenagers up to the age of 24. There are some older members in MySpace but not dense enough membership in the order at demographic to weren’t marketing to that demographic on the large skill.
So we that be in said there is a couple of different ways to use MySpace to market to this teenage to, you know you talking, 13 through 24 maybe at the most and that’s a good entering […] so keep that in mind.
A good way of dealing at them, first of all is to develop a really attractive MySpace page or MySpace profile page, have a look, you can do that by adding music, you can do that by […] to look very fancy and very hip in order to appeal to this market place. And there is a couple of different things that you can do, you can also take time to visit other MySpace pages, take time ago check a mail and lead comments that lead them back to a MySpace pages and let them know that you’re there. And you can do some pretty interesting searches using MySpace search based on interest, based on keywords, based on age range, those kind of things, others types of social demographics as well.
Now there not half percent available so, because some people don’t honestly file out their profile which is not fine but you need understand that you have some marge in […]. And an other way using MySpace in your web 2.0 marketing-mix is when you get all this things acomplished go out and actually ask people to be your friend, send friend invitations. But do this cautiously and do this with some ethical direction. Most people use MySpace to spam and they use MySpace to spam friend requests and it’s really irritating to the people who actually use MySpace correctly when they gulling this kind of messages on a daily, weekly, monthly, bases it’s all the time. So you need to make sure that you are doing some demographic research before you ask people be a friends. Now everybody wants to be a friend of your marketing technic on MySpace, I guaranty it. So take time to research tools, research that medium and look for the exact demographic before you target people for making friends.
This is been David C Skul of Relativity. If you have any other questions or comments, please leave them on our blog or you can go out to our website contact form or you can even call us by the phone.
Thanks again for starting by the watch of this video.
Have a great day.
Second video : Using FaceBook to Promote Your Business
Hi, this is David C Skul of Relativity.
I would like to take time to watch this video today because I’m talking a little bit about how using FaceBook to promote your business.
Now FaceBook is an application, it’s a web 2.0 application and where is online, facebook.com. It’s a social […] working site and really how FaceBook started. It was a pretty simple story, the guy who invented it, decided that he needed to have a way for college students especially his friends to get in touch with one another, send each other invitations to parties and to net work basically on line. They were outside MySpace environment.
Well, along the way something happened to FaceBook that wasn’t generally the same thing that happened in MySpace. More professional people because of the college group that had started it, started […] FaceBook a little bit and different kind of community and it’s a community comprised of, you know, not only college students, but professional people, and a lot of very experienced people as well.
So if that demographic fit’s you, would you like to definitely go over it and use FaceBook to promote your business and to get your business messages going.
And it’s really easy to do. Getting into FaceBook and getting started is so simple and rather funny. Facebook.com, go over, and the first thing that you have to do is, you have to sign in or sign up, and if you have never signed up before, then you have to sign up because if you don’t you can’t have the sign in if you haven’t signed up. So sign up and they’ll go and ask you some personal information and from there, what’s happening is they will create a profile, a profile page for you. And then you get the ability to file in yourself. So that profile is really working, and share with all the other users of FaceBook.
And you know, It’s really a little bit different then a lot of others, where they let you share just your blog or just snippets from what you do on certain sites like […]. This one actually lets you share a profile about yourself. Similar I would say probably to […] linked in. It’s very similar something like that.
And what you can also do with your profile witch is very very cool is once you get signed up and you do your confirmation […] email, make sure you’re not spamming. You do your confirmation and then you get started. And you need to really flash that profile out.
It needs to be good and concise and you need to put a lot of good resources and information about yourself. Post a photograph of yourself. That’s important enough, because lot’s of people need to see you and to know you.
And then there is a couple of ways that you can get your message well. First of all, you can add friends, and you should, you know FaceBook has a search field, so you should look for friends who have a similar job as you or industries as you. Don’t pick up just anyone and say “Can I be your friend?”. That’s pretty much French dispamming and that’s not cool. You should however add your old friends. You never know who is on FaceBook. So if you have a list of people that you usually work with in town or have a lot’s of email friends, relatives, add them to your FaceBook profile and see or search for them, and see if they are available to ask you as a friend and add them to FaceBook profile.
You can also search for groups. You can join in or create groups. Joining groups is the best way because usually it’s nothing new what you’re going to come about or talking about. So it’s good and better to look for groups that already exist. And you can do that with the search fields as well.
You can join those groups and get involved with all those people in there too. You can also go ahead and create a group but you need to be careful when you do this. And the reason I say you need to be careful when you create a group is because the group needs to be open to anyone and it needs to be easily dissimilated, amongst friends so that they can invite friends to coming as well. And just make it just really easy to get into. If it is a private kind of thing it’s going to be more difficult to get the contacts that you’re looking for into your group, or your little community amongst the community.
So take time and think about that. Think about joining in first, and especially if you’re a new user Facebook.
I’ll always recommend joining a community first, to kind of see how they run. You know those groups are really well thought out and if you take some time and some […] you can figure it out yourself. […] the one just like you want and attract people over to […].
Promote your avents, it’s really easy to do. You know, you are talking about something was created by college kids and wanting to share, you know, invites to parties and it’s very very simple. You just create an announcement about your event and you share it with all your friends. And you can even go one step further by posting more information about your event and asking for RSVP, you can invite people from all over the world, this way. And I think that it would be probably a very interesting result that you would have, by inviting people in cities around you, you just might get surprised and they might come, and they might RSVP.
It’s another good way of letting people know through your profile what you’re up to and especially with your business. It’s always important to let people know the news of what you’re doing.
So keep those open and public as well. That way they can be shared and passed around amongst friends and amongst their friends, just let that be as […] as possible. Ok.
You can also share your blog inside your profile as well. You can do this a couple of different ways. You can just make small posts and add links to your profile or you can actually import your blog or you can use your RSS feed-inside your profile as well. So that it automatically updates.
And if you’re get yourself into the habit of using your FaceBook account a lot and looking and being diligent about adding things to your profile and making it just really nice profile because that’s what you are sharing in the end. It’s your profile. You’ll find that people start to ask you to friend them, and that’s when you know that you are doing something write and it won’t be long until your FaceBook profile grows and that you make lots and lots of contacts.
So if you have any questions or comments come on over our blog or go on the website and get us to the contact form there. You can also call us if you’d like as well. Either way we will be happy to hear from you.
I hope you enjoy using FaceBook. It’s a really great interface and a very good tool to promote your business.
This is David C Skul of Relativity. Have a great day. Bye Bye.
Phrases
Posted on May 18, 2009
Prepositions / Adverbial particules
For, to, forward
1. We’re soon leaving for Italy.
2. My children are looking forward to that.
3. I hear you’re going to Britain.
4. I’ve been waiting to go there for a long time.
5. You’re the very person I was looking for.
6. Who do you think you’re talking to?
Adverbiale particule and preposition
7. to deal with
Can you deal with it?
8. to succeed in
Will you succeed in solving it?
9. to put up with
She can’t put up with him any longer.
10. to get on
They don’t get on very well.
11. to pull up
He pulled me up because I had got my facts wrong.
12. be fed up
I’m fed up with it.
13. to blame sb for sth
Blame for the airplane accident was placed on the pilot.
14. to blame sth on sb
Blame it on the rain.
15. to be to blame for sth
It’s not my fault! I can’t be blamed for what happened.
16. to disapprove of
Do you disapprove of what I did?
17. to laugh at sb/sth
She was so ridiculus that they all laughed at her.
18. to pick up
The hitch-hikers were getting soaked so we decided to pick them up.
19. to be responsible for
Are you responsible for it?
20. to get around
She doesn't have a car, she gets around by bus or taxi.
Presentations
Introducing the topic
21. Let me start by…
22. First of all, I’ll…
23. Starting with…
24. I’d like to begin by…
Finish a topic
25. Right, I’ve told you about…
26. We’ve looked at…
27. That’s all I have to say about…
28. So much for…
Changing the subject
29. Let me turn now to…
30. Let’s move on to…
31. Turning to…
32. I’d like now to…
Developing a point
33. Where does that take us?
34. Let’s look at this in more detail.
35. Translated into real terms, …
Summarising
36. I’d like to sum up now …
37. Let me summarise briefly what I’ve said.
38. If I can just sup up the main points…
The different uses of for, since and ago
For
We use for + a period of time (three days / two years, etc.). It could be used with preterit, present perfect or with the present perfect progressive.
39. He lived here for two weeks last year.
40. I’ve lived in Paris for 10 years.
41. We’ve been waiting for one hour.
Since
We use since + the start of the period (Monday / 9 o’clock, etc.). The main verb of the phrase is conjugated in the present perfect or in the present perfect progressive.
42. I’ve lived in Paris since 1990.
43. We’ve been waiting since 9 o’clock.
Ago
Ago= before now
Ago is placed after the adverbial phrase of time and only used with preterit.
44. I went to see this film two years ago.
45. She arrived in Brazil three days ago.
Linkwords
46. As much as any country, however, Egypt illustrates the push-me-pull-you nature of technology. (article : life, liberty and GPS : advances have limits)
47. He as to work at night to pay for his studies, all the same, he is one of our best students.
48. Although he was an adopt child, he looked very much like his mother.
49. I don’t object to your music as long as you don’t play it too loud.
50. As soon as he appeared on the stage, the kids started screaming.
51. It’s too late; besides I’m tired.
52. I have bought a map of the town in case we should need one.
53. Even if I had time, I wouldn't do it.
54. He has been on the dole for months; nevertheless, he lives very comfortably.
55. We will go away for the week-end, provided (that) we can rent a car.
56. Still, that was the condition put on the introduction of iPhone 3G in Egypt. (article : life, liberty and GPS : advances have limits)
57. That we will be more politically engaged because of the organizing and fund-raising tools of social networking. (article : life, liberty and GPS : advances have limits)
Millions or million? Hundreds or hundred? Dozens or dozen? …
58. More than 1,400 bands have applied; only a few dozen will be chosen. (Obama’s article)
59. Several million American citizens speak Spanish better than English.
60. Dozens of unofficial balls and parties are being planned all over town. (Obama’s article)
61. millions of houses
Phrases from articles : vocabulary, tenses, structure…
62. I’m sorry to have kept you waiting so long.
63. Thesbald Edwards, aged 62, has published several articles.
64. When the transaction fell through, the seller was astonished since he had felt that the buyer was satisfied.
65. Please tell your colleagues not to smoke in the “No Smoking” area.
66. The president is delighted with applicant’s enthusiasm.
67. You can use clear, straightforward language or arcane vocabulary words. (article : A recipe for motivation)
68. If unchecked, our tendency to confuse thoughts and actions can make dubious choices seem desirable. (article : A recipe for motivation)
69. Obama impresses me as a very intelligent politician. (Obama’s article)
70. Plans for Obama’s inauguration Jan. 20 are slowly taking shape. (Obama’s article)
Text
Posted on May 18, 2009
Andrew Blake, aged 24, has a project. Since he was 16, he wanted to realize this project.
8 years ago, he went to the cinema and he saw an adventure film.
After this film, the idea slowly began to take shape. He began to think about it, to speak about it around him. Some found his project so unreal and unfeasible that they laughed at him. But generally, this project impressed them as being, a very ambitious and intelligent project.
Andrew travelled a lot; he went to China, Australia… He visited dozens of countries.
During these travels, he tried to see how he could make it. He did a lot of research, he spoke to numerous persons, and saw full of new things. Although these travels were very interesting, what he really looked for, it was a person. Somebody who had had the same idea as him. This person, Henry Staverton, had already begun to make this project, but for a strange reason he had suddenly stopped.
It is in India where Andrew found Henry Staverton's track. Henry agreed to meet Andrew provided that they don’t speak too much about the project. Even if Henry did not want to speak about the project, he hoped that this man could give him a hand in the realization of his project. Andrew was looking very forward to meeting him.
The next day, he met Henry. At the beginning they spoke about everything and nothing, to avoid the subject of the project. Then as soon as Andrew found an opportunity, he began to speak about it. At once, Henry became withdrawn, but he knew that he could not escape. He thus told him his story and his project.
"First of all, I would like to tell you that this project, the "time machine", isn’t a good thing. To be straightforward, I think that it can only bring misfortune."
It is because of his machine that he lost his wife.
She had decided to use the machine to get around in the time and to change her past, but she wasn't able to come back. His “time machine” didn’t work correctly.
She fell through.
After this accident he decided to stop his project.
"I am responsible for her death. I will blame myself all my life. Since her death, I have to put up with the weight of her death. Now I do not work any more, I am on the dole, and it is very well like that. "
Suddenly, he cut short with conversation. "That’s all I have to say about it all."
Andrew understood that he wouldn’t know anything more about the project.
"Thank you to have granted me a little of your time. I’m sorry to have kept you waiting so long."
Andrew left Henry Staverton a little disappointed. Nevertheless, he decided not to renounce. This project was very important to him.
Several years after, the time machine of Andrew Blake was born.
He succeeded in life. And today several million people use his machine.
You always dream about it.
When you're late for school and you didn't do your homework or when you're late for a appointment, or when you just want to sleep more, you need it.
We have the only one solution for all your problems : the TRC, the time remote control.
It's a little machine with a big power.
And you know it's not the size of the machine which is important but how you use it.
First step :
if you want to go back in your past, you have to move the TRC backward. The move last 15 min.
Second step :
if you want to go in your future, you have to move the TRC forward. The move last 15 min too.
Third step :
if you want to slow down the time, you have to describe slowly a circle with th TRC.
Fourth step :
if you want to speed up the time you have to describe quickly a circle with the TRC.
Fifth step :
You can also stop the time. You have to push the button on the TRC.
For example, it's useful to check the answers of your neighbor during the mathematic exam.
So it's an amazing technology, we presented you. We hope that this product will interest you.
Process
Posted on May 23, 2009
How to make a paper ship
You need a rectangular piece of paper and your hands.
Step 1
Put the piece of paper in front of you, vertically.
Fold it in two lengthwise : the top on the bottom.
Step 2
Take the two top corners and fold the paper to the middle to make a triangle.
Step 3
Fold bottom edge up on every side.
Step 4
Open the triangle until you have a lozenge.
Step 5
Fold the bottom edge up : the bottom on the top, on every side.
Step 6
Take the left end right parts of the triangle and pull them apart.
