VIV'S
ENGLISH NEWSLETTER
By Viv Quarry. Edition Number 33 The ninth of April 2003.
Study English in England with Cicero International - See Viv
for information & discount.
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Welcome!
A warm welcome to Carolina, Cristina, Cynthia & Viviana who have started English classes recently.
Happy
Birthday!
I wish Elaine (14th May) and Carolina (23 May) a very happy birthday.
Easter
Holiday
Viv will not be working between the 18th and twenty-first of May. For some people, the 23rd will be a holiday, but I will be teaching normally on the 22nd and 23rd of May. If you do not want to have a class on these days, please let Viv know by e-mail or call him (it's best to ring after 9.30pm).
Tests
Nearly everyone has passed their vocabulary tests. These tests are important because your ability to communicate and understand a language is directly related to how many words you know. Providing you don't fail a vocabulary test more than four times, the only thing that will happen is that the course material will be put aside and intensive work will be directed at improving your vocab.
Wordstore
This is a program designed to help you learn vocabulary. If you fail a vocab. test twice, Viv will introduce you to this program and give you a copy to use at home. However, BE CAREFUL! After working on the disk for half an hour, leave the program and make a backup copy of the files (Viv will show you how to do this if you don't know). Then if anything goes wrong with the program, you'll have a safety copy of most of the new words you have saved onto the disk.
If you would like to see how Wordstore works, just ask Viv for a copy and he'll show you the program and make one for you.
NOW VIV HAS DESIGNED HIS OWN VOCABULARY DATABASE WHICH PERFORMS A SIMILAR FUNCTION TO THIS PROGRAM. A COPY OF VIV'S PROGRAM CAN BE DOWNLOADED FREE FROM THIS SITE.
Free
conversation classes!
Unfortunately, there isn't enough time for Viv to dedicate too much class time to conversation (although you should spend most of your classes speaking English). This doesn't mean that fluency in speaking English isn't important, just that the priority is on completing your language course.
If you would like to practice speaking, why don't you arrange to meet another student with more or less the same level of English and agree to spend one hour only speaking English. The first person who speaks a word of Portuguese (even to the waiters!) has to pay the bill. If no one speaks Portuguese, the bill is shared. If you don't know anyone you can practice with, ask Viv and he'll give you the e-mail address of one of his other students.
Student of
the month
My student of the month in April is Patricia Alpande who is studying law at the Catholic University. She started having classes with Viv in November 2002 and has made excellent progress since then.
Features
A few of my students have been warned about not doing homework regularly. On page two of this newsletter are the rules for this situation.