WEEK 1
Date: 10th of July 2007
Location: Bilik Meranti
Today was the first day of class for me for Vocabulary for the Social Sciences and to be honest, I have no idea what this course is all about. Of course, I did not pick it out at random just to fill my credit requirement for external electives. I have to admit, I had already decided taking it previously but somehow I couldn’t find a proper time slot which would suit my time table at the Law Faculty.
I didn’t get an opportunity to listen to Madam Ruth’s introduction on the course in full as I had arrived late. There were only three students already in the class so it somewhat made me feel ‘less’ embarrassed for walking in late.
Madam Ruth’s introduction was smooth and comprehensive. Thank Goodness I had no difficulty in catching up with what she was trying to say. She was talking about the usage of the right words to describe something, may it be an object, an emotion, anything! What she was curious to know was the method that we used to remember a ‘new’ word that we’ve learnt or rather, if we even bothered to use it or look it up in the dictionary for its meaning.
I could see that Madam Ruth’s approach towards in encouraging us to find and use new words rather subtle. In other words, she made me feel inspired to read more in order to improve in my vocabulary. But of course, this did not mean I could just forget the technical aspects of vocabulary-something I have overlooked over the years of learning English. This is mainly due to the fact that I converse mainly in English and I guess in a way I have personally assumed that my English was alright, well, at least not that bad and that the technical aspects of vocabulary such as phonetics and grammar was learnt only by linguistics majors. How wrong was I? No wonder I difficulty in pronouncing new words or worse, had no motivation in using a newfound word. For one, I didn’t know how to pronounce some.
Madam Ruth explained about prefixes, suffixes and affixes on the whiteboard. And later on, she touched a little bit on phonetics. I know there are reasons to why certain things are in the dictionary. I realised what such a big loss it was for me for not paying attention to the words in little brackets after the word I was looking for in the dictionary. According to Madam Ruth, these were the right way to pronounce the word as there could be many correct ways to pronounce a word depending on whether you are in Britain, America or Australia. And that was a very interesting fact because all along I thought that those were the ways these people from different speak. But to get it all codified in a dictionary? I was getting really amazed with what I was learning.
Later on, Madam Ruth taught us the right way of pronouncing the word, meringue, debris and almond. She taught us what was a stress mark (which is like a little apostrophe on the top of a word) and demonstrated how to use the stress mark. A stress mark basically indicated which part of the word we have to stress on in order to pronounce it correctly.
Then, Madam Ruth listed out several words, such as presentation, vitamins, director, direction, sherbet or sorbet and how these words are pronounced correctly in the context of Britain and America. She also mentioned the word rendezvous, a French word which was commonly used in English. Deep down, I knew very well that I wanted to use that word in many occasions, but just didn’t know how to. Now I do.
We were all given handouts towards to the end of the class, of which Madam Ruth made us describe our feelings about learning vocabulary and the methods available when learning a new word, in order for us not to forget to incorporate the word into our vocabulary. The methods as explained by Madam Ruth came in forms such as by listening and later asking someone the meaning of the word in order to remember it better, visual learning, where a person usually remembers a word by visualizing the word by relating it to a certain object and finally, to stumble across a word and just plainly dismissing a sophisticated word. Only if the word is important enough, then will the person look up its meaning in the dictionary. Sounds a little bit like me. In fact, it’s a little bit of everything. Sometimes I do ask people of the meaning of the word I’m unsure of, depending who the person is. Of course, I wouldn’t want to embarrass myself by walking up to just anyone! Regarding visual learning, I must say it is one of the most effective ways to remember a word. I mean, yes, visualize ANYTHING you want (because it is only in your head) but somehow or another, I remember words better that way. Last but not least, the most ‘correct’ approach in learning proper English is to look it up in a dictionary. It is without a doubt, time consuming but it will be worth while once you get used to it, I guess. So where did I put my dictionary?
The final task was to describe our attitudes towards learning English. The first thing that came to my mind was my constant blog reading and eventually (I hope) my own blog writing. I wrote about how by reading the blog of others, I would occasionally stumble upon words I am unfamiliar with. Usually, I would just dismiss the word or worse try to assume its meaning. But when it does bug me and sparks my curiosity, then I get more motivated to find out its meaning. One good reason why is that I do inspire to become a good blog reader and how on Earth am I going to achieve that if I keep missing out in incorporating good words in my vocabulary. I wouldn’t want to see myself being a dull blog writer someday and say, “I know that word! I should have used it!” Well for one thing, there a lot of ‘could haves, should haves and would haves’ out there, but I’m glad I decided to take this class.
WEEK 1
Date: 12th of July 2007
Location: Bilik Meranti
A second hand out was distributed to day. Task Two was to see what we knew about English vocabulary. Deep inside, a voice was screaming TECHNICAL! GRAMMAR! I was unaware of what an active vocabulary or a passive vocabulary was. Surprisingly enough, there was exactly what they meant. Madam Ruth encouraged us to activate our passive vocabulary and BANNED generics today.
Then we were asked to explain what it meant when we say, “I know that word!” Believe me when I say that I have uttered that line so many times but I don’t really know what I’ve done to help myself improve. To know a word is to know who it is spelt correctly, pronounced correctly, used correctly, the right collocations, appropriacy and so on. Now that is a really big task to fulfil when we are learning up a word but I figured that with a dictionary at hand, it couldn’t possibly be THAT bad, right?
Later on we were given six new words to learn up-cantankerous, bauble, insatiable, crème de la crème, kleptomania and claustrophobia. At first we were asked to think of what these words meant. Just by looking at these words, there were some that I already knew but some were just hard to guess. In a normal situation, I would have ignored the word. But this time, there was a big desire for me to grab a dictionary and find out their meanings. Then, Madam Ruth gave the meanings of the words with relevant examples. For instance for the word bauble, she showed us what a bauble looked like and I must say, until today, I still remember what it is. There were different kinds of examples for each word. I had visualized some by relating them to something familiar (such as my aunt for cantankerous and the actress Winona Ryder for kleptomania). I was amazed at how my brain was absorbing so much within so little time. Is this due to the fact that deep down, I was really curious to know the meanings of these words? Well Madam did ‘unleash the lions and tigers’ in all of us. We’ll be hunting down new words to satisfy our hunger for a better vocabulary!
