Computer Tutor in Dhanbad

Computer Tutor in DhanbadIf you are a college student in Dhanbad, you may find it hard to find a computer tutor in Dhanbad. There are a lot of colleges and universities around the country that have good programs for education but not all these schools will offer a well-equipped program for education that will give you the best education possible. For these people, some information about available jobs in Dhanbad can help them find a good tutor in Dhanbad and also get back to school. The jobs here include teaching computers and work with companies that require people to teach a large number of students.One of the places to look for a good computer tutor in Dhanbad is the internet. You can find a lot of jobs and you can even look for jobs that will pay decent money. Some people can find a job as a teacher online as well. Most of the schools use the internet as a medium to recruit students and teachers. If you happen to have a computer and access to the internet, then you may be able to find a job as a teacher in a good college or university.The internet can also be used to find other jobs like construction job opportunities, retail jobs, retail clerk jobs, data entry jobs, and some other types of jobs. It is a good idea to use the internet to look for these jobs. The internet will help you find the information on the type of job you would want to have. There are many companies that can help you find these types of jobs.Of course, you must be careful when looking for a computer tutor in Dhanbad. The internet is a great place to look but remember that you should not fall for fraud sites. Remember that all you need to do is go to the government's website to check your eligibility to work in a certain country. A lot of the countries that do have computer tutors have a smaller workforce than others. This is because the country has a lot of education institutions and so it has a lot of people who have a good degree or educational background.You should also be sure that the company you will be working for is a legitimate one. Always remember that you are working for yourself only. If you want to earn and pay your bills, then you need to make sure that you choose a company that is legitimate. You should not choose a company just because you find them very interesting.As you go to the government's site, you should read through the small print so that you know what you are signing up for. Some of the small print that you will read can affect your financial situation and can make you have problems with things later on. Make sure that you read through it all. Once you are done reading, you should register with the company.Getting a good computer tutor in Dhanbad is not hard if you know where to look. If you think you would like to work in the computer field, then go online to the internet and start searching for a new job.

Networking Neurosis Heres Your 9-Step Program to Overcome It - Introvert Whisperer

Introvert Whisperer / Networking Neurosis Here’s Your 9-Step Program to Overcome It - Introvert Whisperer Networking Neurosis? Here’s Your 9-Step Program to Overcome It Career Attraction August 18, 2014 Communication, Networking, Neuroscience No responses Go to top Alone. In a sea of people you don’t know. And they all seem to know each other! Could you feel any more naked? Should you leave as quietly as you walked in? No! Networking has a bad reputation for being intimidating, unnervingâ€"but it shouldn’t. Networking is a powerful tool that will help you as your career grows and develops. For those who suffer from a networking phobia, have no fear! Here are the nine seriously easy steps you can take to overcome it: 1. Understand Your Motivations The first step to conquering your networking nightmares is understanding why networking is important. The most obvious importance is when you are looking for a job. But the real power of networking comes from using your connections to help someone else. You will be amazed at how good it feels to help a friend solve their personal dilemma by connecting them with another acquaintance of yours. 2. Start Early Start building your network when you don’t need help. It’s much harder to reach out to someone for the first time when you need something from them. Lay the groundwork when you’re just asking to be connected, nothing more. 3. Get Out There! Admittedly, your first networking event is probably going to be tough, but it will get easier as you do more. I promise. So get out there! 4. Don’t Judge At your networking event, don’t just look around for the most well-known or senior person. You never know who may become a connection for you in the future. So, just walk up to anyone who looks interesting! Hopefully, someone will take the same approach in getting to know you. 5. Business Cards Exist for a Reason Always introduce yourself (concisely) and hand out your card. When someone gets a business card, they will share theirs in return. And make sure you actually look at their card when it’s handed to you; it’s much easier to remember names when you can link them to a face. And, let’s be honest, we all love when people actually remember our names! 6. Listen More, Talk Less Try to spend more time asking questions than talking. Not only does this alleviate some pressure from you, but most people like to chat about themselves, and they will probably remember you better if you’re the one asking engaging questions that show you’re actually interested in them. 7. Be Interesting When you do chat about yourself, share something that’s relevant or interesting to the other party. It could be a brief summary of a trip you took to Africa to work in an orphanage or a recent case competition you participated in. Your goal is to get the other person to want to ask you more questions and to remember you! 8. Move Around! Talk to more than one person. You’re here to meet people, so make sure you have the opportunity to do so. An easy way to leave a conversation and move on is to be polite but frank: “It was so terrific to meet you, but I’m new to this group and I want to make sure I socialize a bit more.” 9. Take Notes and Follow Up When you leave the event, make notes on the business cards you collected about anything that struck you. That way, when you do follow up to meet for that coffee, you can reference something that you talked about. It will let the person know you paid attention and allows you to connect in a non-generic way. Remember, networking takes time, practice and follow-up, so try to get into a regular routine of meeting new people. (And, BTW, try to have some fun while you’re at it!) Do you suffer from networking phobia? What tips can you offer for working through it? Share with us in the comments! This post originally appeared on Career Attraction. Image: Flickr Go to top Bottom-line â€" I want to help you accelerate your career â€" to achieve what you want by connecting you with your Free Instant Access to my 4 Building Blocks to Relationships eBookâ€" the backbone to your Networking success and fantastic work relationships.  Grab yours by visiting here right now! Brought to you by Dorothy Tannahill-Moran â€" dedicated to unleashing your professional potential. Introvert Whisperer

Rational Function Online Tutoring - Rational Function Help

Rational Function Online Tutoring - Rational Function Help Rational function f(x) is an algebraic function written in p(x) / q(x) form. The condition for the rational function is the denominator cannot be equal to zero i.e. q(x) 0. The rational function can be solved or simplified using different mathematical properties such as multiplicative property, associative property, additive inverse multiplicative inverse and many more. The rational function f(x) can take different values of x. Example 1: Solve the given rational function and find the value of x. f(x) = 5x/(x + 12) if f(x) = 1. Solution: Given is the function f(x) = 5x/(x + 12) and f(x) = 1. 5x /(x + 12) = 1 Multiplying (x + 12) both sides of the equation. (x + 12) [5x /(x + 12)] = 1 (x + 12); 5x = x + 12. Subtract both sides of the equation with x. 5x - x = x + 12 x; 4x = 12. Divide by 4 on both sides of the equation. 4x/ 4 = 12/ 4; Hence x = 3. Example 2: Solve the given rational function and find the value of x. f(x) = (2x 10)/3x if f(x) = 0. Solution: Given is the function f(x) = (2x 10)/3x for f(x) = 0. (2x 10)/3x =0 Multiplying 3x both sides of the equation. (2x 10) = 0 Add both sides of the equation with 10. 5 x = 10 Divide by 5 on both sides of the equation. 5 x/ 5 = 10/ 2; x = 2. Hence x = 2.

What Was It Like in the Tudor Period

What Was It Like in the Tudor Period Living in Tudor Times: How You Would Have Lived ChaptersReligion and Church in Tudor EnglandClass in Tudor HistoryGoing to War in Tudor and Elizabethan EnglandWhat Did People in Tudor England Do for Work?What You’d Do for Fun in the Tudor EraFood in the Sixteenth CenturyThe Tudor dynasty is one of the most exciting and well-known periods in English history, featuring all sorts of political and social turmoil, intrigue in the royal court, and a variety of wars, dramas, executions, and controversies.But whilst we still, as a country, hold a fascination for this grisly and gruesome period, our attention generally stays with the kings and queens themselves, from Henry VII and King Henry VIII through to Edward VI, Queen Mary I, and Queen Elizabeth I of England. At school, and in everyday conversations about the Tudor era, rarely do we look beyond to see what the normal people would have been doing.Yet, to focus only on the Tudor monarchs is to miss some of the most fascinating parts of the era â€" and it is to overlook the effects of the actions of the monarchs themselves.So, whilst you can find plenty of information about the monarchs in our article on the lives of the Tudor kings and queens â€" and in our piece, Who Were the Tudors? â€" we’ll be looking here at what it was like to be you in the Tudor age.Whilst it is incredibly fun to imagine, we can assure you: you’ll probably prefer to be alive right where you are now. Let’s take a look! MarkHistory Teacher 5.00 (3) £25/h1st lesson free!Discover all our tutors JohnHistory Teacher 5.00 (8) £30/h1st lesson free!Discover all our tutors MarjotteHistory Teacher 5.00 (4) £35/h1st lesson free!Discover all our tutors ErinHistory Teacher £15/h1st lesson free!Discover all our tutors ChantelleHistory Teacher 5.00 (2) £17/h1st lesson free!Discover all our tutors AndriyHistory Teacher £25/h1st lesson free!Discover all our tutors PeterHistory Teacher £40/h1st lesson free!Discover all our tutors SerenaHistory Teacher £15/h1st lesson free!Discover all our tutorsReligion and Church in Tudor EnglandLet’s start with one of the most well-known aspects of the Tudor era: the religion.As you’ll know, the Tudor monarchy were fairly concerned about religion. However, throughout the period, different monarchs and their heirs couldn’t quite agree on what sort of religion they wanted in the country at the time.Roman Catholicism â€" with its power in the papacy in Rome â€" and, after the Reformation, ‘Protestantism’ were the two major religious forces in Europe at the time. However, Protestantism was never really a unified way of thinking. There were many protestantisms, almost as many as there were protestants themselves.Generally, Protestant thought suggested that anyone could read the Bible â€" which was probably not you, because you probably couldn’t read â€" and that there should be some differences to the Church service.If Henry VIII of England broke with papal power to set up the Church of England â€" a move continued by his s on, King Edward VI â€" Mary I, or ‘Bloody Mary’, Edward’s half-sister, desperately wanted to return England to Roman Catholicism. Lots of political violence followed (which means violence against you), and it wasn’t until Elizabeth that compromise was found.What all these religious changes would have meant for you is complicated. If you were particularly committed to one side or the other, and you were quite an important person, you may well have been executed â€" depending upon which monarch reigned whilst you were alive.Otherwise, it would have meant that you would have had merely to stop paying tax to Rome, but pay increased taxes to the monarchy. Great!Discover awesome facts about the Tudor period! One of the monasteries that suffered under Henry VIIIClass in Tudor HistoryMuch more than these days, a lot of what you were able to do in Tudor England was determined by your class, or your general position in the social hierarchy.The Different ClassesTo put it quite simply, there were four main classes in Tudor England: the Nobility, the Gentry, the Yeomanry, and the Poor. These were fairly fixed categories â€" and your place in each one would determine the things you were allowed to wear, eat, do, and, really, even think.As the House of Tudor was in the early modern period, which came at the latter end of the feudal period, you still find reference in this age to the Great Chain of Being, an idea of a hierarchy that stretched from God, through angels, to kings, noblemen, and down to the poor, and ultimately to animals. By basing hierarchy on theological terms, the poor were less likely to resent their position in life.Being a NobleAs a noble, you didn’t have a bad life â€" parti cularly if you came from an ancient family like the Howards, the family of the Dukedom of Norfolk, or the Earldom of Pembroke. You could be sure to wield a fair amount of influence in the Tudor court and have plenty of cash from the people on your land. Your position, however, was dependent on the favour of the king.Not all people who held influence over the king were born into nobility, however. Look at Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII’s most important advisor. He was the son of a blacksmith and brewer â€" and look where he ended up!The Poor in Tudor EnglandIf you were poor, you were obliged to work â€" and to work hard. If you were unemployed and you went looking for work, you’d end up in a fairly unpleasant position. With one offence, you’d be whipped; with a second, you’d have an ear cut off. If a third time you were caught as a ‘vagabond’, you’d be executed.As about a third of people lived in poverty, it wasn’t great to be poor, particularly during times of famine an d economic decline. The best you could expect was alms â€" or charity â€" from the rich.Generally, as a poor person during the Tudor period, you would go to fight when you were told to. Elizabeth I (1533-1603) Queen of England and Ireland from 1558, last Tudor monarch. Version of the Armada portrait attributed to George Gower c1588. (Photo by: Photo 12/UIG via Getty Images)What Did People in Tudor England Do for Work?Working, in the Tudor times, was another thing that was entirely dependent upon your class and upon your geographical place.Again, if you were a noble, you’d be fairly free from anything strictly called ‘work’. The chances are that you were born into land from which you earned your money, taking part of the produce directly created by the poor peasants working on your land.If you were lucky, as a poor person, you would be a peasant who would rent the land off the nobleman. ‘Lucky’ is a bit of a stretch, because, really, you’d be working all day for all of your life. But at least you would have a stable life (and we saw above what would happen if you didn’t get work).If you lived in the city, however, things were a little different. Maybe y ou would work in the textile industry, or, if you were of a higher sort of class, you’d be a clerk or a professional: a solicitor, a doctor, or another such trade.What You’d Do for Fun in the Tudor EraFor many people, ‘fun’ wasn’t really a thing that happened. There wasn’t really such a thing as leisure time, with labour laws being absent and with people living generally at a subsistence level.Sundays, however, being the Lord’s day, were generally days of rest. You’d go to church, for sure, but afterwards you could play a bit of sport, see travelling musicians, or dance.In London, you could attend the theatre whether you were rich or poor â€" and see plays by the likes of Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe.If you were a noble person, much of life was leisure time. You could have private musicians, you might write poetry, go hunting, or even play tennis. Shakespeare was one of the great Tudor artists. Image from the Independent.Food in the Sixteenth CenturyOf course, the food that you would eat was dependent entirely on class too. And, if you were poor, you wouldn’t eat very well â€" and there may have been times of the year, or particular times of hardship, in which you didn’t eat very much at all.Pottage was the general dish for the poor, a soup or stew of vegetables and oats. Bread and cheese were staples too â€" alongside whichever vegetables you could get your hands on.Of course, things were different for the rich, who could afford to employ cooks and who could afford much more extravagant foods. Meat was always on the menu.Most importantly, all foods were eaten seasonally. There would be no chance of anything else â€" shipping foods from all over the world, as we do now â€" as there was simply no chance of keeping it fresh!Find out more about the Tudor period!

Looking After Your Voice

Looking After Your Voice Ten Tips for Taking Care of Your Voice Chapters1. Warm Up Your Voice before Singing2. Sleeping Well to Sing Better3. A Good Posture4. Exercise Regularly5. Don’t Smoke6. Rest Your Vocal Cords7. Protect Your Voice from the Cold8. Don’t Speak9. Stop Singing if Your Airways Are Inflamed10. Consult a Speech Pathologist or ENT Specialist“The only thing better than singing is more singing.” - Ella FitzgeraldWhether you’re a singing teacher or a singer performing in a show, you need to avoid vocal fatigue, sore throats, voice loss, and inflammation.  Most people will sing from time to time and it tends to be the younger generation who sing more often.Whether it’s in your car, bathroom, or around the house, lots of people enjoy singing.  Your voice is an instrument and you need to take care of it. Vocal health is hugely important for singers as damage to the vocal folds can lead to hoarseness and other vocal disorders.In this article, we’ve got 10 tips to help you look after it. TraceySinging Teacher 4.92 (13) £25/ h1st lesson free!Discover all our tutors PortiaSinging Teacher 4.91 (11) £35/h1st lesson free!Discover all our tutors NicolaSinging Teacher 5.00 (11) £40/h1st lesson free!Discover all our tutors JazzSinging Teacher 5.00 (6) £40/h1st lesson free!Discover all our tutors PerrineSinging Teacher 5.00 (3) £50/h1st lesson free!Discover all our tutors TiemSinging Teacher £40/h1st lesson free!Discover all our tutors TomSinging Teacher £25/h1st lesson free!Discover all our tutors MiriamSinging Teacher 5.00 (4) £35/h1st lesson free!Discover all our tutors1. Warm Up Your Voice before SingingYour vocal cords include muscle tissue and the cricothyroid muscle. The latter is used to tense your vocal cords. To sing well, you need to warm up your vocal cords. (Source: TeeFarm)Like any muscle, you need to tense it to use it and it’s recommended that you warm it up before you do so that you don’t strain it.You also need a good lung capacity and vocal endurance to get the most out of your voice.  Preparing your voice is a way to avoid vocal injury.How?Start by singing quietly and doing vocal exercises and ranges before singing more powerfully. Warming up will also help you alleviate stress and stage fright before getting on stage.After all, singing involves a good degree of physical exertion.Find out more about looking after your voice.2. Sleeping Well to Sing BetterYou mightn’t think of it, but fatigue is your voice’s worst enemy.  Sleeping well is important for your energy levels and resting your voice. Sleep also allows you to renew your voice through rest.Poor sleep can lead to feeling hoarse, inflammation, dysphonia, or even voice loss.  If you lose your voice following a viral infection, a good night's sleep can help you get better.When we sleep, we don’t use our voices. The night  is an important time for singers as it’s when your vocal cords regenerate.3. A Good PostureYou need a good posture if you want a good vocal technique and voice. Stand up straight and lift your chin to open the airways. To sing well, you need to be standing up straight, not sitting or slouching. (Source: langll)A good posture can also help you to relax. Singing while tense won’t help you get a good tone out of your voice.  You need to work on the relationship between your body and your voice.  You also need to find the optimum vocal comfort.We recommend using abdominal breathing, tensing your stomach as you breathe out and relaxing it as you breathe in.  Sing standing up with your legs straight first. Then, sing sitting down with your back straight.Then sing lying on your back.Can you see how singing while standing up is much easier?The best position for singers is as follows:Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart.Unlock your knees.Ensure your pelvis is in line with your spinal column.Lower your shoulders and relax your arms with your hands apart.Tension in the body affects your vocal cords.Do your best to avoid vocal cord injury.4. Exercise RegularlyExercising comes with many benefits for the human body and limits the risk of disease.Regularly exercising can help improve your breathing. Additionally, a  singer who regularly exercises will also have more endurance.During physical exercise, you’ll consume oxygen and expel carbon dioxide as your blood provides muscles with oxygen which they use when burning energy.Healthy lungs have a higher capacity, allowing them to hold more oxygen.This means a singer won’t have as much shortness of breath when singing. TraceySinging Teacher 4.92 (13) £25/h1st lesson free!Discover all our tutors PortiaSinging Teacher 4.91 (11) £35/h1st lesson free!Discover all our tutors NicolaSinging Teacher 5.00 (11) £40/h1st lesson free!Discover all our tutors JazzSinging Teacher 5.00 (6) £40/h1st lesson free!Discover all our tutors PerrineSinging Teacher 5.00 (3) £50/h1st lesson free!Discover all our tutors TiemSinging Teacher £40/h1st lesson free!Discover all our tutors TomSinging Teacher £25/h1st lesson free!Discover all our tutors MiriamSinging Teacher 5.00 (4) £35/h1st lesson free!Discover all our tutors5. Don’t SmokeWe could have put this tip first since whether you’re a singer or not, you probably shouldn’t smoke.  There are plenty of illnesses that are caused by smoking including cancers and respiratory problems.There are many benefits to quitting smoking, too:Opening the airways.Reducing the risk of throat cancers.Reducing the risk of irritated vocal cords.Reducing the risk of cancer in the lymph nodes, polyps, nodules, etc.The same could be said of alcohol as well. Additionally, you should drink at least 2 litres of water per day.Here are some singing lessons that may be useful to you.6. Rest Your Vocal CordsAfter having sung a lot, such as during a concert, or spoke a lot (if you’re a teacher, for example), it’s recommended that you rest your voice. To rest your voice, you just need to stop singing or talking. (Source: MabelAmber)A speech pathologist or ENT specialist will probably recommend it, too.Hoarseness can lead to muscular tension in the abdomen and lead to disrupted breathing. It can also cause problems around the shoulders and collar bones.  This will cause you to strain your voice as you try to sing, leading to an alteration in your voice. If you regularly strain your voice, you can damage your voice.  This is why vocal timbre changes; your voice is made by vibrating vocal cords in the larynx.A loss of voice, known as aphonia, is due to a vocal cord malfunction.  Aphonia is caused by injured vocal cords. In the event of hoarseness, it’s recommended that you stop singing completely and rest your voice.Make sure you look after your voice!7. Protect Your Voice from the ColdThe changing of the seasons is harmful to your vocal cords.  This is why you should consider wearing a scarf during winter, to protect your larynx f rom the cold.You can end up with laryngitis, a sore throat, fever, or bronchitis for a few days.  While these infections are pretty harmless, they’re not ideal the night before a concert.You might want to drink some herbal tea, lemon juice, honey, or take some eucalyptus lozenges. Your doctor may suggest antibiotics if the infection is bad.8. Don’t SpeakSilence is sometimes the best solution for a bad voice.  It’s not the easiest thing to do, but you want to use your vocal cords as little as possible while they heal.You might only be able to do this on your days off, especially if you need to speak during work.  However, this is one of the quickest and easiest ways to heal your voice.9. Stop Singing if Your Airways Are InflamedDon’t think that you can take some anti-inflammatory medicine and keep singing.  If you’ve got a sore throat or laryngitis, you need to stop singing immediately.There are four main parts to your airways: the nasal cavity, pharynx, larynx, and the bro nchial tree. If you’ve any inflammation for over 7 days, you must stop singing immediately while it heals.If you keep singing, you’ll strain your voice and damage your vocal cords.Find out about singing lessons Glasgow.10. Consult a Speech Pathologist or ENT SpecialistIf you have any long-lasting problems with your voice, you should see a speech pathologist or ENT specialist. They can help diagnose any issues and have a look at your throat. In some cases, you'll need to see a medical professional. (Source: drshohmelian)Similarly, they’re the first ones to spot any grave illnesses (such as tumours, etc.).  Women are four times as likely as men to suffer from problems with their voices.  So when you sing, make sure you take care of your precious voice.If you want to work on your voice and improve your singing, you might want to consider getting a vocal coach or private tutor on Superprof. They can help you improve your singing, take care of your voice, and provide bespoke singing tuition. There are three main types of tutorials on offer and each one comes with several advantages and disadvantages.Face-to-face private tutorials are just between you and your tutor. The sessions will be tailored to you, your needs, and your strengths and weaknesses. Of course, since the tutor will be dedicating a lot of time to you and your tutorials as well as tailoring them to your needs, this type of tutorial tends to be the most costly . However, it's also the most cost-effective.Discover the best singing lessons online here.Thanks to the internet, webcams, and video conferencing software, you can also get online tutorials. Again, these tutorials are just between you and the tutor with the main difference being that you're not in the same room. With fewer travel expenses and the ability to schedule more tutorials each week, the tutor can charge a more competitive rate for these tutorials.Finally, there are group tutorials. These are more like your traditional classes with several students and one teacher. The cost of the tutor's time is shared between all the students in the class so you can expect to pay less per hour for these tutorials. Unfortunately, this means the tutor can't spend as much time focusing on you and your singing.

French Grammar Rules Distinguishing Between Imparfait and Passé Composé

French Grammar Rules Distinguishing Between Imparfait and Passé Composé Megan L. French grammar guru  Carol Beth L.  is back on the blog with this guide to the  passé composé,  the  imparfait, and when you should use each of them If youve been studying French grammar long enough, you may know that French has two different forms of the past tense: the passé composé (composed past) and the imparfait (imperfect). It is sometimes difficult for those who have just learned them to distinguish between situations that require the passé composé and situations that warrant the imparfait. There are patterns, however, that can help you tell when to use each one. Generally speaking, the passé composé is used for things that happened only once in the past, and that happened at a specific time, not over a duration of time. If you want to talk about the one and only French lesson last happened last Thursday, for example, then you doubly know that you should use the passé composé. It happened at a specific point time (last Thursday), and there was only one such lesson on that particular Thursday. So you might say: Jai eu mon cours de francais jeudi dernier. I had my French class last Thursday. If your teacher asks you if you did your homework, then you probably also both know which homework that was, and either youve done it or not. If you did do it, you hopefully only had to do it once. So if youve done it, youd probably say: Oui, jai fait mes devoirs. Les voici! Yes, I did my homework. Here it is! A side note in this example: “devoirs,” or homework, is plural in French while the English version is singular. As a result, even though it may seem odd to us English-speakers, it is correct to use the plural possessive pronoun “mes” and the plural object pronoun (and under some other circumstances plural article) “les.” Or, you might hear your less diligent doppleganger say: Euh, alors, mon chien a mangé mes devoirs. Ahhh, well, my dog ate my homework. The imparfait, on the other hand, is usually used under different circumstances. The first common situation is a repeated action in the past. Au lycée, je faisais mes devoirs tous les jours. In high school, I did my homework every day. Aux années soixante, il visitait la France tous les ans. During the 60s, he visited France every year. The second common situation is when one enduring event or action is happening, and something else happens during the first one. In this case, the surrounding, more long-term event takes the imparfait, and the interrupting event takes the passé composé. In this sort of situation, the event that is conjugated using the imparfait might under other circumstances require the passé composé â€" sometimes even in an adjacent sentence. Mais cest vrai, jai fait mes devoirs hier soir. Pendant que je faisais mes devoirs, mon chat a sauté sur la table et a marche sur mon travail. But its true, I did my homework last night. While I was doing my homework, my cat jumped on the table and walked on my work. Pendant que nous dinions, ma mere a appelé. While we were eating dinner, my mother called. Lets look at a few examples and see if you can tell whether to use the imperfect tense or the passé composé. 1) Lannée dernière, je (j) __________________ (visiter) la France. Last year, I visited France. 2) Pendant que je (j) __________________ (être) en France, je (j) __________________ (rencontrer) une vieille amie. While I was in France, I met an old friend. 3) Quand nous __________________ (être) petits, nous __________________ (jouer) sur le meme equipe de football. When we were little, we played on the same soccer team. 4) Pendant notre séjour, nous __________________ (voyager) a Strasbourg, une petite ville alsacienne a la frontière allemande. During our stay, we travelled to Strasbourg, a small Alsacien town on the German border. 5) Pendant que nous __________________ (rester) a Strasbourg, nous __________________ (visiter) la Musée dAlsace. During our stay in Strasbourg, we visited the Museum of Alsace. How do you think you did? Here are some answers to check yourself: 1) ai visité (passé composé) 2) étais (imparfait); ai rencontré (passé composé) 3) étions (imparfait); jouions (imparfait) 4) avons voyagé (passé composé); 5) restions (imparfait); avons visité (passé composé) How well did you do? If you missed some of them, dont be discouraged. Keep looking for examples and practice using them. While there are general rules you can use to figure out which one is appropriate, it takes time to internalize the logic of a new language. Remember to keep it fun and enjoy studying French! For more help learning French grammar, study with a private tutor. Tutors are available to work with you in-person or online via Skype depending on your location. Search for your French tutor now! Carol Beth L. teaches  French lessons in San Francisco, CA. She has her Masters in French language education from the Sorbonne University in Paris and has been teaching since 2009.  Learn more about Carol Beth here! Interested in Private Lessons? Search thousands of teachers for local and live, online lessons. Sign up for convenient, affordable private lessons today! Search for Your Teacher Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Take a deep breath... its exam season!

Take a deep breath... it's exam season! Are you feeling stressed by the amount of revision or exams you have? Or do you tend to panic just before going into an exam? Mindfulness and breathing techniques can help you enter your body and mind into a state of calm, helping you to relax and focus.  By simply focusing on nothing but breathing in and out for one minute you can slow down your heart rate calming your nerves and overworked mind. You can practice these easy techniques sitting or standing, eyes open or closed or even as you’re walking in to the exam hall. Easy Breathing By simply focusing on nothing but breathing in and out for one minute you can slow down your heart rate calming your nerves and overworked mind. Here’s how in 4 easy steps: Inhale through your nose gently for two seconds. Hold your breath in for one second. Breathe out through your mouth slowly for four seconds. Repeat for one minute (or longer if you like) and you should feel a difference in your mood! If the 2-1-4 count feels too short, try to lengthen your breaths slightly. As long as you breathe out longer than you breathe in you’ll feel the calming benefit! Top Tip During your breathing, if you find yourself distracted by worrying, try counting each breath, count “one” to yourself as you exhale. The next time you exhale, count “two,” and so on up to “five.” Then begin a new cycle, counting “one” on the next exhalation. This will help you focus and become more mindful. Mindful Moments: Taking a mindful moment can help you concentrate and focus, it will also strengthen your immune system and helps to switch your nervous system out of flight/fight mode and into a relaxed aware state. Repeat this exercise every now and then to deliberately bring your awareness to what is happening in the present moment and to build your resilience to deal with exam anxiety and general pressures around this time of the academic year by cultivating mindfulness in this way. Pause what you are doing for a moment and take one or two deep breaths to help bring you into the present moment. Look around you, and silently name three things that you see in your immediate vicinity Now opening to the sounds around you, silently note and name three things that you can hear right now Bringing your attention to your body, silently name three sensations that you can feel in this moment (maybe warmth, tingling, contraction, coolness….) Bringing your attention to smell and taste, what do you notice in your immediate awareness when you bring your attention to these senses- lightly name what you experience. Mindful advice for parents and tutors: As we enter the exam season, when kids get stressed about exams, teachers get stressed about kids not living up to expectations and parents getting stressed about trying not to nag too much about revision, it's important to stay calm and positive. Andy Cope is a happiness expert, author and founder of training company The Art of Brilliance.  He offers the following advice for parents and tutors in the lead up to exam season The 8:1 Ratio Nagging, punishment and pointing out what's wrong means kids will learn to stick to what they know to be safe which, over time, leads to a fixed mindset (example, ‘I'm rubbish at maths. I'll never be able to learn it').  If you mix in a healthy dose of positive reinforcement you will be rewarded. One of the most effective things a parent/ tutor can do is to use a positivity/negativity ratio of about 8:1.  It may seem a lot and it can be difficult to get it right, but try to catch your child/ pupil doing things well.  Notice the little things and tell them. Celebrate Achievements better: How we behave in a moment of success makes a huge difference.  Parents should aim to be ‘actively constructive', that means celebrating success with genuine enthusiasm. Your active constructive response means they know you're proud. The message is they're proud and you're proud. The result is that everyone feels great and your child will want to repeat that behaviour. Praise for effort rather than talent The advice from positive psychology is that if your child accomplishes something, try to avoid saying things like, ‘Well done, you are such a little genius!' But rather, ‘Well done, you put the effort in and got the reward.' We hope you find these tips helpful! If you need a tutor for the upcoming exam season, you can choose from 1000s of tutors on Tutorfair by clicking here.

Absenteeism and a Cooperative-Learning Attendance Policy for ESL

Absenteeism and a Cooperative-Learning Attendance Policy for ESL Absenteeism and Anxiety By Smash the Iron Cage (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons There are plenty of good reasons to skip class: if you have a contagious disease or have a doctor’s appointment that you cannot reschedule, if car trouble or bad weather interferes with your commute, or if you are flat broke and need to work an extra shift to make rent and avoid eviction. Most people would understand if you had to miss a lesson under these circumstances. Surprisingly, these are not the reasons most university students give for cutting class. Students at one university rated low-quality lectures as the most important reason, followed by deadlines for other academic work, the lecturer’s inability to entertain, a lack of sleep, and attendance  being  unnecessary due to the availability of lecture notes outside of class (Clay Breslow, 2006). These are the reasons students will admit to. But what about hidden reasons? Absenteeism and Anxiety If students skip their English as a Second Language (ESL) class frequently, it could be a sign of language anxiety. Other indications of anxiety related to learning a second language include coming to class late, arriving unprepared, avoiding speaking in English, not volunteering, and the apparent inability to answer even very simple questions (Oxford, 1999). Research has shown that speaking provokes more anxiety than any other form of communication (MacIntyre Gardner, 1991; McCroskey Richmond, 1982), with some speaking tasks provoking more anxiety than others. Koch and Terrell (1991) report that most students find oral presentations to be the most anxiety-inducing activities in an ESL course. With that in mind, teachers can reduce language anxiety by assigning fewer oral presentations, by employing ice-breakers, where students learn each other’s names on the first day, and by including lesson-warmers, such as a game to help students relax at the start of a lesson (Dornyei Malde rez, 1999). Students can reduce their own language anxiety just by coming to class. Greater frequency of language use is linked to lower levels of language anxiety (Baker MacIntyre, 2000). Absenteeism and Failure Reducing anxiety is only one good reason to attend your ESL course on a regular basis. There is another good reason: you might fail. Two studies (Colby, 2004; Newman-Ford, Fitzgibbon, Lloyd, Thomas, 2008) found that 80% attendanceâ€"attending only 12 classes in a 15 week semesterâ€"produced a 50% chance of failing lecture-based courses. A 70% attendance rateâ€"attending 11 classes in 15 weeksâ€"produced a 66% chance of failure. For interactive ESL courses, missing a single week made ESL students 3 times more likely to answer a content question incorrectly and caused a 7-8 times greater chance of getting the target structure wrong during a test (Fay, Aguirre, Gash, 2013). These are compelling statistics for going to class, so why do rational-minded students miss class? The truth is that it is difficult to be rational when comparing the immediate benefit of getting more time away from class and the remote danger of one missed lesson (Romer, 1994 as cited by Koppenhaver, 2006). Collaborative Learning A more immediate reason is that your classmates need you. They need you to come to class so that they can get to know you, and they need to get to know you before they can trust you. Only after they know you and trust you will you be able to work together efficiently and productively as a group. In other words, group productivity depends upon group cohesiveness (Evans Dion, 1991), and the cohesiveness of the group depends upon the amount of time group members spend together (Dornyei Malderez, 1999). Cutting class reduces the overall productivity of the team, reducing the ability of group members to learn from each other in collaborative learning environments.  Reseach shows that not only do absentee-prone students perform worse on their exams and homework assignments, their absence causes the other team members to score lower on their exams and homework as well (Koppenhaver, 2006). Oral Exams The problem becomes much  more acute  during interactive speaking exams, evaluations that require the active participation of one or more partners. English Second Language courses often employ collaborative speaking exams, where students are required to exchange information with each other using the target language. The interactivity makes for a more valid exam since competence in a second language is the ability to participate effectively in an exchange of meaningful and appropriate messages. However, since absentee-prone students come to the exam knowing less and producing more errors, their noticeably ill-prepared, ill-informed answers and incorrect grammar during the exam make them less effective conversational partners. Implicit Learning Research into implicit learning reveals another, less obvious way that absentee-prone students make exams more difficult for their partners. There is a tendency for people to reproduce a structure encountered in recent discourse, even if they do not notice that it was used (McDonough Mackey, 2008). In other words, what you hear, whether you consciously notice it or not, activates the area of your brain where related sounds, concepts, and  structures are stored, creating the tendency for you to want to repeat what you heard. This phenomenon is called priming, and you can see it at work in this fun experiment    (as suggested by Dornyei, 2009). Ask your friend to say the word “silk” five times and then ask him immediately afterward, “What do cows drink?” Most likely, your friend will say “milk” because the sound of the word “silk” and the concepts “cow” and “drink” activate the concept “milk” in your friends brain. A more logical answer to the question is â €œwater” since that is what cows drink most, but that is not what people tend to say. Now imagine that the target is not the word milk but a sentence containing the Present Perfect Progressive such as, I have been studying Diagnostic Imaging for two years. In the context of an exam, absentee-prone students are less likely to prime their partners to remember the complex grammar and specific vocabulary needed to pass the interactive exam. Attendance Policy Seeing how absenteeism negatively affects classmates explicit and implicit learning opportunities and performance on interactive exams, what policies should teachers and colleges put in place? If you think about the effect of absenteeism on individual students only, it is tempting to emphasize students’ right to self-direction, trusting in their capacity to make wise choices. Students will learn through trial and error that their attendance affects their success. However, in light of research into cooperative learning environments where students learn from each other, we know that cutting class is a bad choice for both the individual and the group. It would be irresponsible for teachers to adopt such a laissez-faire attitude, knowing how absentee-prone students reduce group productivity and negatively affect their partners performance on interactive exams. A collaborative-learning attendance policy would require the student who misses multiple cooperative learning activities in an English course to be ejected from the course permanently because of the negative effect their absence and subsequent return has on the group. Instead of saying, “You are an adult now. Do what you want,” ESL teachers should make it clear that cutting class is highly uncooperative behavior that harms the other students. To be consistent, if teachers are going to use collaborative-learning activities and evaluations in their classrooms, they should also set a collaborative-learning attendance policy. They should tell students on the first day of the semester, If you intend to cut class, do us all a favor and dont come back. References Baker, S. C., MacIntyre, P. D. (2000). The role of gender and immersion in communication and  second language orientations.  Language Learning,  (50), 311â€"341. Clay, T., Breslow, L. (2006). Why students don’t attend class.  MIT Faculty Newsletter,  18(4).  Retrieved from http://web.mit.edu/fnl/volume/184/breslow.html Colby, J. (2004). Attendance and attainment. Presented at the Fifth Annual Conference of the  Information and Computer Sciencesâ€"Learning and Teaching Support Network (ICN-LTSN),  University  of Ulster. Retrieved from http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/sysapl/www.ics.ltsn.ac.uk/events/conf2004/programme.htm Dornyei, Z. (2009).  The psychology of second language acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University  Press. Dornyei, Z., Malderez, A. (1999). The role of group dynamics in foreign language learning and  teaching. In J. Arnold (Ed.),  Affect in Language Learning  (pp. 155â€"169). Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press. Evans, C. R., Dion, K. L. (1991). Group cohesion and performance: a meta-analysis.  Small Group    Research,  2(2), 175â€"186. http://doi.org/10.1177/1046496491222002 Fay, R. E., Aguirre, R. V., Gash, P. W. (2013). Absenteeism and language learning: does missing  class matter?  Journal of Language Teaching and Research,  4(6), 1184â€"1190. Koch, A., Terrell, T. (1991). Affective reactions of foreign language students to Natural Approach  activities and teaching techniques. In E. K. Horowitz D. J. Young (Eds.),  Language Anxiety:  From Theory and Research to Classroom Implications. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Koppenhaver, G. D. (2006). Absent and accounted for: Absenteeism and cooperative learning.  Decision Sciences Journal of Innovative Education,  4(1), 29â€"49. MacIntyre, P. D., Gardner, R. C. (1991). Methods and results in the study of anxiety in language  learning: A review of the literature.  Language Learning, (41), 85â€"117. McCroskey, J. C., Richmond, V. P. (1982). Communication apprehension and shyness: Conceptual  and operational distinctions.  Central States Speech Journal, (33), 458â€"468. McDonough, K., Mackey, A. (2008). Syntactic priming and  esl  question development.  Studies in  Second Language Acquisition, (30), 31â€"47. http://doi.org/10.10170S0272263108080029 Newman-Ford, L., Fitzgibbon, K., Lloyd, S., Thomas, S. (2008). A large-scale investigation into  the relationship between attendance and attainment: a study using an innovative,  electronic  attendance  monitoring system.  Studies in Higher Education,  33(6), 699â€"717. Oxford, R. L. (1999). Anxiety and the language learner: new insights.  In J. Arnold (Ed.)  Affect in   Language Learning  (pp. 58â€"67). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Please follow and like us:

4 Wise Lessons from Four Seriously Good Language Learners

4 Wise Lessons from Four Seriously Good Language Learners 4 Wise  Lessons from Four Seriously Good  Language Learners Weve got your back.If youre looking for motivation and encouragement in language learning, other language learners are your best bet, no doubt.Weve all shared tips and tricks with our classmates, harried our tutors with questions, and mined online language communities for new resources and techniques.But if you  really want to jumpstart your studies and reach your goals,  theres one group of people whose advice  you  cant afford  to miss:  the very best language learners!I’m talking about the masters, the ones who innovated or made history with their techniques and drive. Past and present have provided us with a host of big names in language learning, although you may not have heard of them yet.The best teacher is one whos been down the path before, one who devised a better way of doing things.Without further ado, here are four  ground-breaking lessons from four  champion language learners!4 Wise  Lessons from Four Seriously Good  Language Learners 1. Don’t let age hold you back .Kató Lomb: Hungarian translator, simultaneous interpreter, polyglotLomb is one of those polyglots everyone should know about. She was a pretty intense lady with a crazy life. She knew 16 languages at various levels by the time she died, and she was always curious about more. And she lived a long life, tooâ€"94 years!She certainly wasn’t one of those people who insist that adults are hopeless at picking up languages. Sure, she started her languages young, but she kept gathering more and more throughout her entire life. In her late 40s, she walked into an advanced university Polish class (she wasnt an enrolled student) and boldly told the professor she had no experience with Polish and she certainly didn’t have the prerequisites. The professor allowed her to sit in on the class, and Polish became a language in which Lomb was quite proficient.In her 80s, Lomb chatted  with Dr. Stephen Krashen (a professor at the University of Southern California who created the famed “input hyp othesis”), which he chronicled in his article here. Krashen was then in his 50s, and Lomb envied his youth, saying, “So many more languages to learn!”How  to apply this lesson:Remember it’s never too late to start learning a new language. Life is long, and theres enough time for all of your projects and pursuits! Be like Kató Lomb and just dive right inâ€"no matter your age.Try doing one small thing today to get you closer to fluency in your chosen language: study a textbook for 10 minutes, watch a TV show in your target language  or sit down with some flashcards.Adults are way better at hacking their studies than kids, so try resources that take advantage of thatâ€"like  SRS, online games  and novels in your target language (a favorite technique of Lombs).  It all adds up!2. Be creative with your learning methods.Khatzumoto:  Author of the blog “All Japanese All The Time”Here’s a more modern example for you. On his blog, Khatzumoto wrote about how he achieved fluency in Japanese in 18 months, all without living in Japan. He then chronicled his Mandarin and Cantonese learning processes as he navigated Chinese media and newer learning methods.That’s all very impressive, but here’s where Khatzumoto should really inspire you: He wasn’t happy with how Westerners presented and learned East Asian languages. Sure, he had a lifelong admiration of Japanese and Chinese, but the standing rhetoric was, and is, that those languages are impossible for Westernersâ€"that the writing systems take a decade to learn  and  foreigners would never achieve native-sounding tones.Hearing talk like that can get discouraging!But Khatzumoto examined the traditional learning techniques for Japaneseâ€"namely, textbooks, language tapes and rote memorization for kanji  and hanziâ€"and decided to abandon those methods in search of a better way of doing things.He lifted the methods from Antimoon,  a website that shares the techniques of a couple of Polish guys who learned English by watching TV, reading and playing video games:  immersion. He studied Dr. Krashen’s input hypothesis, which advocates that with enough exposure to the language, retention of vocab and grammar becomes much more natural.He discovered Dr. James Heisig’s book Remembering the Kanji,  which uses  mnemonic devices to efficiently teach all 2,042 everyday-use kanji. He combined and tweaked these as needed, and used sentences in his SRS to pick up grammar and vocabulary organically.And he achieved his goal! He reached fluency!How  to apply this lesson:If you’re not happy with your course or textbook, critically examine your methods. Ask yourself: Do any of your resources bore you to tears? Have you made notable progress in the last couple of months using a certain resource? Keep a journal where you keep track of your progress in reading, writing, speaking and listening.Check in every month or so, and make sure youre still on track and still having fun. If something isnt workin g for youâ€"or if its plain unenjoyableâ€"toss it out. Believe me, theres plenty more you can use!Try immersion like Khatzumoto, and use apps like FluentU if you get stuck for resources. Find a conversation partner to practice with, or shift your focus from speaking to understanding à la Krashen’s input hypothesis. There’s no one way to do things, so if something isn’t working for you, try something new. Never stop experimenting!3. Don’t be afraid to look ridiculous at times.Dr. Alexander Argüelles:  Intellectual, educator, hyperpolyglotArgüelles is the intellectual’s polyglot. He focuses on reading ability, and can read books in a massive  number of different languages. But don’t think that means that he’s too reservedâ€"he advocates the technique “shadowing  whereby learners simultaneously speak the target language along with a recording to improve pronunciation and prosody.Don’t think that sounds ridiculous enough? Well, in the book Babel No More  by Michael Erard, the author examines the lives of a number of polyglots, including Argüelles. The author has the chance to meet up with Argüelles and begins to study Hindi under his tutelage.Argüelles soon has Erard shouting Hindi phrases along with a recording all while briskly walking through a public park. Sure, Erard felt embarrassed doing this, but he gained confidence in those phrases he acquired.How  to apply this lesson:Try out shadowing, or even just talking to yourself for practice. Check out this video to see Argüelles himself demonstrate the technique. First, acquire audio samples in your target language. High-quality course recordings from  Assimil, Teach Yourself  or Pimsleur  work great for this, but so do many others.While listening, and without using a transcript, repeat the sounds of each word almost simultaneously with the recording, whether you understand it or not. Try to include shadowing  in your daily sessions, even for short periods of 10 to 15 minutes.It might fe el strange  at first, but embarrassment is a feeling all language learners need  to get past in order to advance, so it’s best to get used to the feeling early on.Especially if you can’t find someone to practice with, these techniques increase your speaking confidence. You’ll be that  much more  prepared for when you do get the opportunity to speak in a real-life situation!4. Milk limited resources for all they’re worth.Giuseppe Mezzofanti: 19th  century Italian cardinal, hyperpolyglot, the MezzofantiIf you’re interested in languages and haven’t yet heard of Mezzofanti,  Id be pretty surprised.He’s famous among language enthusiasts for good reason. It was said he spoke at least 30  languages excellently, nine other languages fluently, and had basic knowledge of dozens of others. History is rife with stories of Mezzofanti’s prowess at picking up languages in short periods of time.Some of this can be chalked up to legend and hyperbole. I, however, am a believer that Me zzofanti did possess rare skillâ€"one he cultivated through dedicated study and practice. After all, in Babel No More, Erard has the privilege to read Mezzofanti’s multilingual letters and flashcards. He used flashcards just like everyone else!In other words, anyone can emulate Mezzofanti.One Mezzofanti story is especially reassuring and helpful. Mezzofanti heard prisoners’ confessions regularly, in a number of languages. If he didn’t know the language in question, Mezzofanti would ask the prisoner to say the Lord’s Prayer in the language, and Mezzofanti would tease apart this short snippet to glean basic vocabulary and grammar.After all, this particular prayer was something he knew very well and in a number of different languages. By comparing short samples of the same text, Mezzofanti turned language acquisition in something more like decoding. He started all of his languages with the Lord’s Prayer.I have my doubts that this would give Mezzofanti the ability to understan d everything prisoners were saying, but there’s no doubt in my mind that this a great way to use limited resources to gain a basic understanding of a language. Mezzofanti lived at a time when it was much more difficult to come across resources in different languages. He capitalized on what was available, since he didn’t always have the luxury to get more.How  to apply this lesson:Getting the most out of our resources is something all language learners can take advantage of. Some of us just don’t have the ability to get to a country where we can buy all the books and movies we want. Some of us have limited money for such things. But even then, we surely have more than just a short snippet of text in our target languages, so imagine what we can do with that and  a little focus!Try comparing Wikipedia pages in your target language and native language and see what words you can define. Choose a topic you already know a lot about, and get yourself comfortable with the English Wikip edia page first. Compare small sections, perhaps under similar headings. Define all the words in a paragraph, and write them down in a notebook. Examine the grammar and take a stab at what it means.  Study deeply instead of widely!Obviously, Wikipedia pages wont be an exact translation, but you can still compare word usage and match up sentences where the writers were saying similar things. Another  free resource to try this with is  news articles. Find a hot topic international news article in English, and then find an article on the  same topic  in your target language. News articles tend to be short and succinctâ€"perfect for comparing languages! Again, hunt for places where the text is likely to be similar, such as headings or near proper nouns like famous names or places. Then figure out what you can!If you want to pull a true Mezzofanti and study exact texts, its easy to find translations of popular English-language books in common languages. For example, Ive read Harry Potter in Spanish, French and Dutch, as well as in English! Im a huge fan, so I already know the books well. Comparing chapters of Harry Potter makes parsing a new language fun and easy. If you like Harry Potter, e-book translations are easy to purchase at Pottermore. Choose texts you already know well (it doesnt have to be Harry Potter!), and then dive into the translation.There are plenty of polyglots, past and present, who mastered language learning. And they  have lots  to teach us, whether it’s through their own writings or simply through how they lived.By examining these heroes of language learning, we can amp up our own studies, stay motivated and achieve the goals we’ve set!