ESL Podcast 470 – Avoiding Show and Movie Spoilers

(1)ESL Podcast 470 – Avoiding Show and Movie Spoilers
season: a period of time a series of tv program are being shown
premiering: sth that is shown for the first time
spoiler: sth that is said or readen that other people know what happen at the end of a book, movie, or a show, if a people do that, it is called a spoiler
guest star: an actor who appears on for one or few more show,but not a regular part of a program.
plot twist: sth unexpected to happen in a story, in book or movie. a change in a story.
coming up: it will happen in the near future.
movie tralior: an advertisment for a movie, which shows in the movie theater before the movie your are going to see.
reviews: a written opionion about a book, movie or TV show on newspaper or websites.
spoil: make sth less fun, less useful or less helpful.
suspense: a feeling of anticipation or excitement before sth happens.
spoil alert: when someone tell you on newpaper article or on websites that they are going to tell you about how a book or a movie ends.
stay in the dark: not to know something, not to be told sth, to be ignorant.
ex.when my gf left me, i was in the dark -->it was a mystery to me.
let the cat out the bag: to accidentally to tell someone a secret which is not supposed to be told.
in for a wild ride: going to have a lot of fun excitement or surprises.
(2)comment
this podcast websites is really a helper for increasing ability of listening and volcabulary
Through the short conversations of various subjects, it provides exhautive interpretations for a new volcabulary in different aspects and also provides vivid examples,which makes audiences grasp the meanings right away without looking up dictionary again. Those volcabulary are really useful in oral conversation which motivates me to memorize them.
Furthermore, the podcasts are avilable for downloading, and could be put in the mp3 player, which also facilitates learning also.
however, comparing with another listening comprehensive website Randall's Cyber Listening Lab, i do think the speed of this podcast is relatively slow for english major students. Randall's Cyber Listening Lab provides listening activities in different levels and different area such as lectures, interviews, or daily conversations , and also give some quiz below. I think it is more effective for training english listening comprehension, for the reason that you want to get the answers right, so it makes you more concentrate on the content.
These two introduced websites are really helpful for self-training of listening, and it would not give pressure during learning. i will definitly make the best of the two websites!

A Reflection toward ALLT Conference

The conference was the first time that we had held as an international one, and which is significant to our department.
at first i thought, it is a bit bothersome for undergraduate students like us to get involved in such a big conference during the most hectic time when most of us are busy with graduating school examination, job seeking, GRE...
i was assigned as a receptionist for MariaChiara Russo, a professor from Italy.
Being charged as personal receptionist, besides the conference, we have to look after her whenever she needs help. Our job includes taking her to the place where the conference was been held, getting her oriented to the campus, accompanying with her in every section of conference (or just wait outside for her), making sure that she arrives the place she stays every night without failure. During the three days, i went to school at 8am and off the duty at 9pm.
although being exhausted, i have learned something and found out something that i had never discovered. Since i was used to be looked after by others, it was a new experience for me to take care of other, and from which i've learned that how to be atttentive and sense other's need.
Furthermore, to be involved with something, which everyone focus on, is actually great.
and i enjoyed this conference, and it would be a precious memory for me!

Corpus and Collocation Retrieval Systems

For any english learners, the common problem that often happens to us is that
when we try to find a right word while we are writing an essay, we take out our digital dictionary, and enter the chinese definition of the word, and then pick up random word that shows up.
However, for the english majored student , ignoring the fact that writing in this way would lead to incorrect usage when the picked word is not actually go with the verb, adj, adv or even the situation. and which is not acceptable.
Having known about this systems, i used it right away when writing my essay and traslation assignment. It did help alot!
whenever i'm not sure about the usage or whether the word goes witht the preposition, i check on this systems and it makes my writing less awkward and the usage are more precise

how large is large? how big is big?

"Large" and" Big"
they have same meaning in Chinese as 大
but how exactly to tell the differences between them
To answer the question, i've checked the VLC Concordancer & NTNU Web Concordancer to find out the discrepancy.


1.ve been just another statistic in a big city or on a motorway devastated t
2.taphorical pinny, looking after the big house and garden, the laundry,six

1.ishes in Tehran and more in other large cities. Some three million people ar
2.s full salary. {para} He lives in a large house in central Beijing, which is

* In the examples above, we can tell that both of them can be used in describing the size of an object or the measure or scale or an area.


1. do that on a teacher-training course by having a large amount of group activity, a large amount of stud
2. A spokesman for the board said a large number of employees in the clothing

* We usually use "large" to describe quantity like "amount" or "number".
I could not find such usage when checking the examples of "big"

Feedback on march 5th

After knowing various sorts dictionary and their functions and usage provided in class,
as an English major student but without a real dictionary
i felt terribly ashamed.
In my experience of using dictionary
i simply jot down the vocabulary which i'm not familiar with, or look it up in my digital dictionary right away.(if i do bring it to class)
then write down the vocabuary and its chinese definition in my notebook.
but i found out that when i flip through the notebook after awhile
i may still remember the chinese meaning of the word, but not the exact usage. (especially the words which have similar definition in chinese, but quite different in English)
so i end up checking my digital dictionary again.
After trying some websites of online dictionary, ex. oxford, cambridge, alphaDictionary
i realized that if i do use dictionary properly by checking monolingual dictionary, and more than one source, i should get a more gerneral concept of the vocabulary, also enhence the impression toward the word while looking it up.
It is much more efficient than what i did before, even it takes a bit more time.
but i do understand the word from different aspects.
now i sort of feel the pleasure of looking up dictionary that the author mentioned about.
and i've learned alot in the class!

: )

hey, it's Elaine.
Since we have been classmates for one year and half,
i guess it is not nessarry to introduce myself so exhaustively
therefore, i will just simply talk about what i have been intereted in
I enjoy all sorts of music
I listen to Suede and Electric Six lately,
Both of them are my favorite bands now and they have a great talent for composing various amazing songs.
If you tend to listen to soft and light jazz music
I strongly recommand Lisa Ekdahl
whose voice is so sweet and transparent that could melt your heart
and recently i found out that bowling is a lot of fun
you will never forget the feeling that when you get strike
cause it feels so greeeaaaat!
you may get sore fingers and wrists next day though haha
let's play bowling some day, must be fun! (instead of the botanical garden) ((just kiddinghaha))