#11 Please register and get a BBC account. Ask a question there

I'm very surprised at receiving the response immediately. I've tried to find the answer through the internet before, but I still couldn't find the meaning of teddy bear is used to describe a person. I'm very satisfied with the answer . The response is clearly and detailed. BBC message board is very awsome. You can solve the problem and get the correct answer by professional teachers. The most important benefit is that it doesn't cost you.

#10 Please comment on one of the sites--either MIT Open Courseware or Academic Earth.

I took a course about visual arts of architecure department in MIT. Actaully, this course is not related to my major. I have a little interested in architecure, becuase all the bulidings around the world are very different and special. I am curious how they did it. This course did not provide a text of the lecture, so I'm a little hard to really understand the teacher says. From their reading part, I found an art is called puppet that is a specific and important arts for them. Let me think of a fairy tale book is called "The adventure of Pinocchio"(木偶奇遇記).

MIT has a volunteer-based organization that has translated OCW(OpenCourseWare) courses into Traditional Chinese is called Opensource Opencourseware Prototype System (OOPS). This is a very nice organization for me that you can learn the course more clearly. Although translated courses are more former courses, they are enough for me to learn english.

I also surf the Academic Earth website and its interface seems more friendly and comfortable to me, and the video is clear than MIT's. I took a course is called Operation System of computer science in Berkeley that I am studying in this semester. I feel the PPT's contents are more rich than my professor's, and the lectures are much beautiful than my professor's too! The most important is the professor teachs better than my professor. But it didn't have a text of the lecture, I 'll miss some information.

I observe that oversea professors must introduce theirself at first class, and our professors almost just introduce the course's rule. Our professors feel not freindly. However, through open course ware you can learn any courses that interested you. Learning from open courses might be a trend in the future. Just like it says "Unlocking Knowledge Empowering Minds", but your english ability must be very well. It's hard for me to really understand what the open course taught without translated courses.

#9 Pick a radio program from the website RadioTime.

Station: Engadget Podcast (Science-Technology)
Host: Joshua Topolsky, Paul Miller, Nilay Patel
Genres: Science-Technology, Computers
Producer: Trent Wolbe
Song: Take On Me
Location: United States

Engadget Podcast 145 - 05.08.2009
Sure, you love the Engadget Podcast... but how much do you love it? Allow the power of your undying devotion to the sounds of Engadget chatter be tested this week as Josh, Paul, and Nilay take a journey through space and time. This week, you'll hear the guys dissect Amazon's Kindle DX launch, wax excited about Android v1.5 (that's Cupcake for us pros), talk openly about Google's netbook designs, and generally rap about a whole bunch of really cool junk. Don't miss it. Seriously.
00:01:04 - Amazon Kindle DX announced: $489, ships this summer
00:37:44 - Android 1.5 coming to T-Mobile UK now, USA next week
00:52:00 - Is Dell cooking up an Android-powered netbook?
01:00:20 - HTC working on an Android netbook for T-Mobile?
01:02:50 - Xbox 360 to get motion-sensing add-on with full body game control?
01:13:37 - DJ Hero announced at last, along with Band Hero for the family and Guitar Hero 5 for the face melters


Engadget is a very popular website about many technology informations. I've known it for two years, but I didn't know that it has a radio service. Engadget Podcast provides a review of latest trends in digital technology every weeks. It has an organization discuss and clear references. You can understand what it says more easier.

#8 Find an English song that interests you and post its lyrics, audio file & video (if any) file in your blog.

Yael Naim - New soul

About "New soul":

"New Soul" is a song by the French-Israeli R&B/soul/electropop singer Yael Naïm from her eponymous album. The song has gained popularity in the U.S. following its use by Apple in an advertisement for their MacBook Air laptop. In the song Naïm sings of being a new soul who has come into the world to learn "a bit 'bout how to give and take." However she finds that things are harder than they seem. The song features a prominent "la la la la" section as its hook.

The music video story:

The video shows Naïm moving into an empty apartment. She covers the walls in wallpaper depicting a lake surrounded by forest. She then begins unpacking several other things, including furniture, a piano, a goldfish in a bowl and a number of photographs of people, which she hangs on the wall. As she hangs the photographs, the people in the pictures are shown in real life, in the setting depicted in the pictures. Naïm then begins painting on the photographs, and whatever she paints appears with the people in real life. She removes one of the pictures to discover a hole in the wall, revealing the actual forest setting shown in the wallpaper. She pushes on the wall, and it falls away into the lake. The remaining walls fall onto the water leaving the floor of the apartment like a raft floating on the lake, together with her furniture. The people from her pictures reach her by boat. They climb onto the makeshift raft with her, as they all celebrate, dancing and playing instruments, whilst she empties the goldfish bowl into the lake.

Lyrics to New Soul :

I'm a new soul
I came to this strange world
Hoping I could learn a bit bout how to give and take.
But since I came here,Felt the joy and the fear
Finding myself making every possible mistake

-la-la-la-la-la-la...

I'm a young soulIn this very strange world
Hoping I could learn a bit bout what is true and fake
But why all this hate?Try to communicate
Finding trust and love is not always easy to make

la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la...

This is a happy end
'Cause you don't understand
Everything you have done
Why's everything so wrong?
This is a happy endCome and give me your hand
I'll take you far awayI'm a new soulI came to this strange worldHoping
I could learn a bit bout how to give and take.
But since I came here,Felt the joy and the fear
Finding myself making every possible mistake
I'm a new soul...
(la, la, la, la,...)
In this very strange world...
Every possible mistake
Possible mistake
Every possible mistakeMistakes, mistakes, mistakes...
Take take take take take...
take a mistakeTake,
take a mistakeTake,
take a mistake
(oh oh oh oh...)
[fade out]
(oh oh oh oh...)

This is one of my favorite songs. I love both of the melody and lyric.
The melody is soft. I love the sound of trombone in this song. Its register is lower than that of the trumpet and makes you feel comfortable.
The lyric touched my heart. When you're growing up, you think what's the value of you. You want to catch something, but you don't know what it is or if that is you search for. You must take a lot of mistakes. That's ok! You just a new soul!

#7 Find a talk, a commercial, or a presentation from YouTube that interests you and add a hyperlink to your blog

David After Dentist

What's medicine the dentist gives him? I don't remember trips to the dentist being that fun. He just look like a drunk!!

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Lisa Wong Wins 60th Narcissus Pageant

This amazing talent act you may have seen it on TV show in Taiwan. That's right!

He is 范學文.

On the weekend, you should go to taipei city hall near the VieShow ciema to see his live show. You can encourage him by putting money into a bucket.

#6 ESL Podcast 466- Having a Good or Bad Bedside Manner

This is a conversation about doctors and use a lot of vocabulary that doctors might use when you go to visit them.

1. cut out: be created to do something.

2. bedside manner : the way how doctors threat and communicate with their patients .

3. callous: without considering anther person's feelings.

4. turn for the worse: be getting worse. <=> better

5. blurt sth. out:to say something without thinking about it first and how it will sound to the other person.

6.dianosis: is doctor's conclusion about what the medical problem is. It's the doctor's idea about what the problem with your healthy is.

7. soften the news/below: to make it nicer and easier to accept. tell someone something in such a way that it doesm't upset them.

8.prognosis: is the doctor opinion about how your health will change in the future.
if you have a good prognosis that means you will be healthy.
9. reassure: make them feel better about something. similar to confort.

10. feel sorry for Sb.:is to understand the person's difficulty or to empathize with someone.

11. faze sb.: you are surprise because someone else wasn't affective by something or didn't have strong reation with something that he should have reaction to.

12.hysteric: is when you have uncontrol emotions. You can't stop crying because the emotions is so strong than you.

13.compassionate: to be nice or caring to someone.

14. against sb. nature : is something that you can't do, because is not part of your personality.

15. anything but : to emphasize the next word by saying definitely not true.

Tips for Saving Gas

This article is very useful for me. Because I need to ride a scooter for commute from home to school. The gasoline costs a lot of money. With those tips, I will change my driving for saving some money!


----------------------------------------------------
Learn from "Tips for Saving Gas"

Words
1. country: countryside that away from city.
2. gasoline: refer to the liguid gas that a fuel only for your car.
gas: a fuel you put into a car or the fule you might use to stored in your kitchen or your hot water heater at home.
3. mileage: the total number of miles or distance you can go on one gallon of gas.
4. shade: is a part where there are shadows.
5. usage: how much something is use.
6. hood: is a front part of a car metal part cover the engine and mashine in the car.
7. evaporation: happened when you turn ligul into gas.

Phrases
1. Do you often have to fill(加汽油) your gas tank?
2. Cut back on(=reduce) your electronicity usage, and you will save money each month.
3. Light-color car which throw back(=reflect) the heat.
4. Shut it off = Turn it off

Gammar
1. along with (= in addition to)
(I can't catch the example >"<) 2. up for (informal) = you want/able to do something.
ex: Do you up for a movie? Yes, I'm up for it.
up to = You have strength that is necessary for doing something.

My first english presentation...

I was too nervous at the final part of the presentation! I almost forgot what should I say and how to make an end! Becouse time was going out, I couldn't calm down in that situation. Maybe I should not ask teacher that how much time I have. I apologize to my partner for the awful ending. >"<

However, this is an unforgetable experience for me. I learned how to present it better next time. Just be more relaxed.

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A YouTube Downloader supplement:

You can cut a video by YouTube Downloader! When you just want to show an important part of a video for viewers. You can convert the video formats and cut video at the same time.

Step1: Select the box of the cut video function.

Step 2: Set the start time and the end time of the video that you want to cut.

#5 ESL: Meeting Single & Leisure Activities

1. We could whip something up together. whip something up (ph.) : to prepare quikly.
2. "I thought you said before that you quit your job."
3. Getting together with friends on group date.
4. "School is so crazy these days"
5. "10:30 . . .Midnight. It's all the same."

These sentences are useful for me. I can use them to express my feelings easily and clearly.
I can't wait to learn more from ESL.

#4: Please comment on the corpus-based reference tools.

• How do you like these tools?
  They are really useful for us who are non-native speakers. These tools can help non-native speakers to use a word certainly. Especially lextutor had a more friendly interface for me. There are a clear corpus downlist and a option to find keyword(s) with associated word within 4 words to right/left/either side. The most sweet thing is the statistic in the end of the search. But lextutor without an alphabet sorted. Furthermore, Collocation retrieval system is very nice for non-native speakers. Sometimes there was no reasons to use a word that was connected with a specific word. With these tools, Non-native speakers can speak and write more fluently.


• What are their strength and weakness, in comparison with a dictionary?
  
Dictionary's :
strength
1. Organize a word's attributes, phrases and idioms.
2. Use a monolingual dictionary can make you more english thinking.

weakness
1. Sometimes words are in same meaning, It's puzzling to use correctly.

Concordancer's :
strength
1. There are lots of sentences of a word. Maybe you can find a similar sentence that you want.
weakness
1. Need to find the rules of a keyword by yourself.
2. Not easy to use for a tyro.



• What are the difficulties you encounter when you used these tools?
  At beginning in concordancer, I don't know how to classify types that keyword belongs to . I just confirm my words whether they are used like I think. It might be a vocabulary problem. However, It says "Skill comes from practice", I am doing better now.
  

"pull up to the bumper, and get out of the car"

is a part of a lyric, now we can use Google to find the whole lyric.

I use a double quotes around the phrase and put it into Google search engine, as following:

It's very easy and correct to find the lyric even song's name and artist.

• Artist: PINK


• Song: Get This Party Started


• Lyric:
  
  

Google is awesome!!~

#3-Q: Is there any rule governing the use of "big" and "large"?

A: Yes.
When you use a ditionary to find the define of "Big" and "Large", you may confuse about how diffirent they are, they both describes by each other.But, through searching corpora, you can know how to use them better.

"Big"

• is often used to describe the shape of an object.
  => big car, big house, big TV, etc.
• sometimes to emphasize the important of things
  => a big difference, the big challenges

"Large"

• is often used to describe the amount of objects.
  => large number of books, large quantity of documents, large sums of money, large classes, etc.
• usually used in standard things.
  => large coke, large fries

#2-Dictionary- Love vs. Like

• Love(verb)

1. [vn] (not used in the progressive tenses) to have very strong feelings of affection for sb.
2. to like or enjoy sth very much.
3. would love: used to say that you would very much like sth .

• Like(verb)

1. to find sb/sth pleasant, attractive or of a good enough standard; to enjoy sth.
2. [no passive] to prefer to do sth; to prefer sth to be made or to happen in a particular way.
3. [vn] [no passive] to want.
4. used in negative sentences to mean ‘to be unwilling to do sth’
5. would like: used with would or should as a polite way to say what you want or to ask what sb wants

I didn't sure how to use the words 'love' and 'like' sometimes . I didn't know what's 'like' different than 'love' in some aspects. After searching Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary, I think they are really different to be used.

Introduce you an awsome bolg~

Why I want to introduce U this, because it's created by my favorite star Daniel Wu and his friends. I've been a Daniel fan since I was a senior high student. I love him very much, not only he is so cute, especially he is an awsome actor! He got the Golden Horse for the Best Supporting Actor in "New Police Story" , 2004 .



How did the blog happened? Daniel Wu and his freinds, Conroy Chan, Andrew Lin, Terence Yin created a boyband Alive. I was surprised at the news. Daniel's going to sing! That's so cool he!

(The fist music vdeio of Alive)

Actually, all of the alive was fictitious! This is another movie "The Heavenly Kings"! They wanna provid a behind-the-scenes look at the challenges facing artists in Hong Kong. Some of Alive fans felt bed when they heard the turth. However, he is exactly an awsome actor! I still crazy about him.

(It's a mockumentary movie.)

Now, alivenotdead.com is an online community dedicated to helping artists. Their goal is to strengthen artist communities worldwide and to help connect these communities together. Through their website, artists can connect with and grow their audience, share their creative works, and meet and collaborate with other artists.

I think you can find artists who attract you from the bolg and there are three language to choose. It might could help your reading.

#1-Who am I ?

Welcome to my blog! My name is Kiky. I'm a junior student and major in Computer Sceince of Information Engineering. It sounds that I'm very good at computer but not really. I don't wanna be a mouse potato. I love to go travel, visit exhibitions about design, beauty art and look for good snacks.

I have been to Taichung, Chiayi, Tainan, Kaosiung, Pingtung, Ilan and Hualien during my university time. The next goal is going to Taitung to play paragliding. Futhermore, last winter vacation, I went to Macau by myself. By the way, it's my first time to take an airplane. It was an unforgettable experience and an impressed memory for me.

I like English but how to learn it well troubles me. I think the traditional teaching on the textbook couldn't attract me. I hope that I can learn better and more by this course.