Dennis

Message: 8485 From: djn@dennisnewson.de Received: Mi Apr 27, 2005 5:32 Subject: EfromZ: 2000 words

Had a short talk in German with S. when he called round to explain that there have been some changes to his timetable at the Technical University which could affect us. I asked him what exactly he meant when he said several times that what we had done yesterday was ' very different' . He said when he had had French at the grammar school (so it's not true he's never learned a language at school) they learned vocabulary, and did grammar and the teacher gave them exercises to do at home. It was quite new to him to speak English for the whole lesson.He'd spent three hours last night writing down the words we'd done together (one, two, three etc.) and looking them up in the dictionary...... And then he'd worked with the English 900 tape. "It was pretty chaotic at first, but then I got my younger brother to help me and he pointed out where I was pronouncing it wrong." He said that he'd worked for three hours, actually, which was too long. He 'phoned a friend who is also having private tuition in English and the friend told him: ' It's very simple. There is this list of the 2000 most used words in English. All you have to do is learn and remember the meanings of these words. It's easy, man." I'm just driving to the local post office tower, the tallest building around here, to jump off. I leave all my TEFL books to dogme list members. :-)ennis