How to Use the Learning Guide: Part 2

I hope you’ve had a chance to read over our first newsletter.

If you missed it, you can read it here:
Guide to the Learning Guide: Part 1

NOTE: Don’t worry if you’re not an ESL Podcast member right
now or are not using the Learning Guides regularly. Read this
newsletter (and the two next ones) anyway! They contain LOTS of
good information about improving your English in general.

In the first newsletter, I told you about the “BIG
thing”: the importance of *understanding* in picking up or
“acquiring” languages. In this part, I want to explain
how you can apply that “big thing” to the different parts
of the Guide (and other English language learning materials).

Let’s begin our tour of the Learning Guides with the…

*****Glossary*****

All of the Learning Guides start with a list of the definitions for
the main words or terms. These definitions are usually a little
different from the ones I say on the audio.

I suggest you read each definition quickly. Remember that you
usually have to see a word more than once to really understand it.
The glossary is your “second pass” or second chance to
understand what we discussed on the episode.

What NOT to do: I do NOT recommend trying to create flash cards or
memorize these like you were a child in school. Why? Because
language learning isn’t helped much by trying to memorize
individual words.

Remember the BIG thing of Part I: You learn by understanding;
everything else will “take care of itself” (will happen
without you having to do anything). So don’t try to memorize
each word or term. In place of that, take a few minutes to read
(and re-read and re-read again, if necessary) the next part of the
Guide, the…

*****Sample Sentences*****

The sample sentences give you another opportunity to really
understand the words and phrases we use in the podcast episodes.
They’re great for reviewing what we talked about, after either
you’ve listened or read the episode.

When you read them, don’t try to memorize them, but just
understand them. Since I explain all the terms in the episode, I do
not recommend trying to “preview” or read them before
reading and/or listening to the episode itself.

After you finish reading the sample sentences, take a look at the…

*****Comprehension Questions*****

In the Guide for each “dialog” episode (the Monday and
Friday ones), we include two quick questions to test how much you
understood. Why? Well, to be completely honest, because some people
really like this sort of thing.

Personally, I think that if you don’t like answering questions
like in a classroom or as a homework assignment, then you can just
“skip” (not do) these. (I won’t tell anyone if you
don’t!)

But if you think it helps you, then, of course, try to answer them.
The answers to the questions are the bottom of the next page, after
the Culture Note.

Whether you answer them or not, the next thing you find on the
Monday and Friday Guides is…

****What Else Does It Mean?*****

This is my favorite section. In each episode, we take two terms or
words from our dialog and explain what other, additional meanings
they have, beside the ones we talk about in the episode. Have you
heard me say something like, “This word has other meanings as
well. Learn all about them in our Learning Guide”? Well, here
is where you find those other meanings. Many words have more than
one meaning in English, so knowing those “extra” meanings
will help you use the words more effectively in the future.

This section also gives you additional words and phrases related to
those two terms, explaining their differences in meaning and how to
use them. So by reading this section, you can learn even more words
and phrases not mentioned in the dialogs.

****Cultural Note*****

We don’t always have time during our Monday and Friday dialog
episodes to go into (explore) a lot of cultural topics. So the
Learning Guide includes some cultural topic related to the dialog
topic of that day. For example, a dialog about taking a trip to
Hawai’i might include information on the history of Hawai’i
or a famous person from there.

For our Cafes, we have a special kind of cultural note called…

*****What Insiders Know (WIK)*****

Our Cafes are all about American culture, so the What Insiders Know
section of the Guide usually focuses on some movie, song, book, or
other aspect of popular culture that most Americans born in the
U.S. would know, but others might not. For example, English Cafe
266 talked about doctors in the United States, so the WIK for that
Guide was all about a popular medical television show from the
1990s called “E.R.”

There is just one part remaining to talk about, and it’s the
biggest section: the Transcript.

We’ll tackle (discuss) that in Part III, which you will get in
your inbox in a couple of days.

That reminds me of a saying we have in English, “Good things
come to he who waits.” Wait until the next email, and then
you’ll see!

That’s all for now,
Jeff