Pukman @ WinK: the community that time didn't forget

For students who want to improve their vocabulary, there are two main ways:

1. Extensive reading
2. Learning from your own wordcards (or an online flashcard service such as V-Flash or iKnow)
3. Working through vocabulary textbooks

Each has its own special characteristics and advantages. Learning through extensive reading may not feel very satisfying, because we don't know exactly what we are learning, and learning may seem very slow. On the other hand, extensive reading allows us to meet the same words many times, and we can pick up vocabulary without much effort. Also, words that we have picked up through extensive reading are not easily forgotten.

Learning from wordcards takes some determination, and for many people it seems very troublesome. However, it has the big advantage that it allows us to learn many words in a short time. Because we notice that our vocabulary is growing, this way of learning can be very satisfying. The most important thing to remember with this way of learning is that it works best if you do lots of repetitions at the beginning.

There are lots of good vocabulary books available. For serious students who want to build their vocabulary to 6000 words and beyond, however, the Vocabulary in Use series is generally recommended. The two chief attractions of this series are that the words are carefully chosen and the books also teach thoroughly the ways the words are used.

How was the V-Check test? I recommend you take it twice a year until you graduate, to see how much your vocabulary is growing. As a guideline, you should aim for a vocabulary of at least 6000 words before you graduate.

Many people have quite a big vocabulary, but they have gaps at the lower levels, usually the second thousand words. These are the most important words so you should try to fill this gap as soon as possible. Take a look at the LDV list!

A friend of mine who's a professor at Aoyama Gakuin University has made a company that makes software to help Japanese students test and learn vocabulary. So today let's take a short test to estimate our vocabulary size (students only please, not class auditors). Please visit Lexxica and register, then take the V-Check test. When you take the test you need to enter the class code that I will give you in class.

Related to the previous post introducing websites related to chocolate, don't forget that there are some interesting books about it too.

My favourite is the Usborne book, The Story of Chocolate. We have this in the PUK library. There are also two other books with the same title, one from Dorling Kindersley, and the other from Black Cats.

Another book, Does Chocolate Grow on Trees?, features chocolate but also talks about other things. And, of course, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is always interesting!

I've just found some interesting links related to chocolate. If you're interested take a look!

First, the Cadbury chocolate site. Cadbury is Britain's most famous chocolate company. I recommend the "Make chocolate in our virtual factory" game.

The biggest chocolate company in the USA is Hershey's. Take a look at some of the recipes.

Oxfam has a site called Chokky Central that tells us about how chocolate and chocolate biscuits ("chokky bikkies") are made, introduces fair trade, and has interesting quizzes.

Hi everyone,
Sorry about the confusion with the rooms and computers. The computer rooms are in great demand, so everybody hoped that our small class would move out of the big room. I hope you'll think of our new room as a nice, cozy place to study!

It can be very annoying if people leave comments on your blog that are aimed at selling something. These are called "spam". To avoid spam, I recommend the settings you can see in these screenshots. If you do this, when people comment on your blog, they will have to enter some letters into a box. This stops robots from leaving comments at random.

Sometimes I will choose a student's blog, or some other blog, and write some comments about it. Maybe you can learn something new from looking at the blog. And sometimes I might have a suggestion for the blog I'm commenting on.

The first one is Aya's Blog. I would like to draw attention to Aya's use of Labels. She uses "Book Review" for her book reviews and "Blog" for diary-type posts. She has a list of labels at the bottom of the page, so that we can read all her book reviews, for example.

One little problem is the "Book Review" heading at the top of the sidebar, because not all the things under that heading are book reviews. Can anyone think of a better heading?

Hi, everyone,

An important part of the course is reading and linking to blogs in your own class and in other blogging classes in Kumamoto. So you need a list of other students' blogs. Please visit this temporary list. There are many, many students in different classes, so it's possible I have made some mistakes. If your blog is not there, or if the link is incorrect, please email me as soon as possible. When you email me, be sure to use the correct subject so that I know which class list to work on.

When I have the full, corrected list, I'll post it on the official WinK site.

Hi, everyone, great to meet you. I was surprised to see so few people taking this class, but I think we're going to have fun!

A few words about this blog. This is my teaching blog, and I use it in addition to my personal and research blogs. Until last semester I used a different blog for each class; now I use this Blogger beta blog for all of them. To see posts connected to your class, click on "me4".

A big advantage of blogs for a class is communication. So I hope you'll link to each other's blogs to create a blogging community, not only in this class, but also in my Faculty and in KGU. Bye for now.

Here are some screenshots of the GMail sign-up process. Take your time, and be careful not to make mistakes. Remember that GMail has millions of users so, for example, "taro" is not an acceptable username. If your name is Taro Miyamoto, you might try "taro.miyamiya".

We're going to use Blogger beta. Go to www.blogger.com and choose the Blogger beta command at the top of the page.
Then choose "Create a blog".
You will be taken to Stage 2, which is naming your blog. The blog title is the words you want to appear at the top of your page. You can use any letters (upper or lower case), spaces, etc. Use your imagination!
But the blog address (URL) is not so free. Please DON'T use SPACES, UPPERCASE LETTERS, !, ?, commas, or any other unusual symbols. Just use lowercase letters, numbers and hyphens. (Only lowercase letters is easiest to remember.) But remember that there are already millions of blogs. If you write something very simple and short, that URL probably won't be available.
After you have input your URL, click "Check availability". If that URL is already taken, choose one from the list of suggestions, or try a new one. Be patient!
When you have a blog title and URL, type the word verification code and press continue.
Choose a template. Don't spend too long deciding because you can choose from a wider selection later.
Then write your first post! The purpose is to test your blog, so make the post very short. (You can edit it later.) Press "Publish".
Choose "View Blog in a new window". Can you see your blog? Write down the URL that you can see in the address bar. This is your blog address to tell me and your friends.

This is my first post on the new Blogger beta. The only change I can see is the addition of labels, or tags, and that is a really big change! I encourage all students to create a blog here, and use the labels imaginatively!

Let's create a list of suggested labels. Of course you can use others, too, but having a standard list to start will help everyone organize their posts. My ideas:

• books (for book reviews)
• vocabulary (for wordlists, or any posts about dictionaries, Visual Thesaurus, etc.)
• quickpost (any post you finish in less than 10 minutes, e.g. for "十分は十分" posts at the beginning of the class)
• personal (anything you write about friends, what you did at the weekend, etc.)
• essay (any major writing assignment you post to your blog)
• task (any small assignment you do in class, e.g. playing a game and reporting your result on your blog)
• photo (any post with a photo and a proper title -- NOT "xht2345677.jpg")
• link (any post that includes a link to another blog or web page)
• classlink (any post that includes a link to another blog in your class)
• winklink (any post that includes a link to a blog in another class or another University)
• otherstudy (any post that discusses your other classes)
  

Any more ideas? Remember, you can use several labels in one post.

In addition I will use some special labels. The most important one is the special label for your class. Posts with this label will include instructions for what to do in class, homework assignments, information about exams and what you need to do to pass the course, and so on. You need to read all of these. Another label is "teachertalk". This is general advice for all the classes I teach.