TO BE DONE TOMORROW - 12 de março de 2009

DEVO FAZER DIA 12 DE MARÇO:

• ler o segundo capítulo do livro
• fazer o reading do cd número 1
• escutar o cd número 2 (listening capítulo 1 e 2)
• ver as datas para o teste do TOEFL e decidir que dia vou fazer

DONE TODAY - 11 de março de 2009

O que eu fiz hoje:

• Acabei de ler e digitar o primeiro capítulo tendo como tema história.
• Fiz alguns exercícios manuais do primeiro capítulo.
• NÃO comecei o segundo capítulo, portanto, estou atrasada um dia.
• Finalizei a parte do listening do CD número 1.
• Completei parte do reading do CD número 1, mas não acabei, ficou faltando uma questão com três respostas certas que eu não achei a resposta certa, e muitas das perguntas eu não consegui responder corretamente. Devo fazer esta parte de novo.
• Escutei alguns textos pequenos do CD número 2.

DONE YESTERDAY - 10 de março de 2009

O que eu fiz ontem:

• Li e digitei os conselhos de como responder as 4 seções do TOEFL tendo como tema história. Li o livro mas não acabei o primeiro capítulo.
• Fiz um plano de como estudar todo o livro em uma semana mais ou menos.

SPEAKING - Chapter 1 - Theme: History

Content and Function Words

Two of the speaking tasks that are covered in this lesson include:

• Describing Something from Your Own Experience
• Summarizing a Lecture

Whether a word in a sentence is stressed or unstressed in spoken English depends on several factors. One factor is the importance of the meaning of a word to the phrase or sentence in which it appears. Which words or phrases do you think are the most important for the meaning of the following sentence?

America was the underdog in the War of 1812.

The words that carry more meaning are in bold in the sentence. The other words contribute less to the overall meaning of the sentence, though they convey grammatical meaning.

The words that carry the meaning of a sentence are called content words. Content words are often nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs. The words that convey grammatical meaning are called function words. Articles, conjunctions, and prepositions are often function words. A tendency in spoken English is to stress many of the content words. The function words generally remain unstressed, but this dependes on the context and message being conveyed.

Describing Something from Your Own Experience

There are 6 tasks in the Speaking section of the TOEFL. The first requires a 45-second speech sample based on personal experience.

The first question of the Speaking section asks you to talk about something from your personal experience. You will be asked to describe or explain somethng about yourself, your family, your country, or some similar topic.

Summarizing a Lecture

There are 6 tasks in the Speaking section of the TOEFL. The sixth requires a 60-second summary of an academic lecture.

The sixth question on the Speaking section asks you to summarize information from a short lecture. You will listen to a short lecture. As you listen, you should take notes on the main idea and important points. Then you will present a summary of the lecture.

When taking notes:

• Identify what kind of lecture it is: descriptive, cause and effect, informative, narrative, etc.
• Identify key parts by listening for stressed words and phrases
• Note key pieces of information such as names, dates, and places
• Identify how the lecture is organized, what the main points are, and what are examples

When summarizing:

• Present the main idea of the lecture
• Paraphrase some of the examples and details

LISTENING - Chapter 1 - Theme: History

Taking Notes

As you listen to lectures on the TOEFL, you should take notes, trying to:

• Write down key words, names, numbers, dates, or anything else you think is important
• Listen for strong general statements by the speaker, because they may be topic sentences or concluding sentences for paragraphs

The note that you take as you are listening will help you answer questions such as:

• What is the main idea of the lecture?
• What is the purpose of this lecture: to inform, to persuade, to evaluate, to recommend?
• What are the important details in this lecture?

Outlining

An outlining is a skeletal structure of a text.It contains the main and supporting ideas in the order they are presented, but does not necessarilly include any specific details. Usually, an outlinie does not contain full sentences. Each subsection is listed in order using Roman numerals, and supporting ideas will be listed under each subsction using letters or numerals.

Creating an outline as you listen to a conversation or lecture on the TOEFL sill provide you with a more structured set of notes that you can then use to anserw questions. Here is an example of the beginning of an outline:

• I. War that produced Amercian national anthem
• II. War of 1812 strongly opposed
• A. Key for negotiations, not war
• B. Others fed up with British interference in American transatlantic trade
• C.War finally declared

Question Types

There are several different question types on the Listening section of the TOEFL. This lesson will cover two of these question types:

• Understanding Rhetorical Function
• Understanding an Idiomatic Expression in Context

Understanding Rhetorical Function

There are 2 conversations and 4 lectures in the Listening section; each lecture is followed by 1 or 2 rhetorical function questions, for a total of 5 or 6 rhetorical function questions in the Listening section.

On type of question that you will find on lectures - but generally not on conversations - in the Listening section of the TOEFL asks about rhetorical function. This type of question asks about the speaker's intent - for example, is the speaker defining, exemplifying, explaining, or doing something else. In order to answer this type of question correctly, you will need to be able to recognize the rhetorical devices used to achieve various rhetorical functions, as well as order context and intonation cues.

Understanding an Idiomatic Expression in Context

There are 1 or 2 idiomatic expression questions on the lectures in the Listening section of the TOEFL.

Idiomatic expressions are words or phrases in which the literal meaning of each word does not necessarily help you understand the meaning of the words together. Look at the following examples:

• John really looks blue today.
• John is looking a bit green.

Neither sentence is saying that John's skin is blue- o r green- colored. Which sentence means that John looks sad? Which means that John looks sick?

You will probably encounter one question, sometimes two, on the lectures - but generally not on the conversations- in the Listening section of the TOEFL that tests your understanding of an idiomatic expression in context. You can often guess at the meaning of an idiomatic expression by looking at the parts of the sentence that you do understand.

WRITING - Chapter 1 - Theme:History

The Descriptive Essay

There are 2 tasks in the Writing section of the TOELF.

In the first writing section, you must read a passage, listen to a lecture, then write an essay about what you have read and listened to. In the second, you must write an essay based only on a short prompt that asks you to describe or explain something or to express and support your opinion on an issue. In this lesson, we will focus on the second type.

For this essay, you do not need any specialized knowledge. The prompt is based on topics that will be familiar to all test takers. You are given 30 minutes to plan, write, and revise this essay. Typically, an effective essay will contain a minimun of 300 words. Essays will be judged on the following?

• the quality of the writing, including idea development and organization
• the quality and accuracy of the language used to express these ideas

When you begin either writing task on the TOELF, always read the prompt carefully to make sure that you know exactly which essay type you are being asked to write.

Recognizing Descriptive Essay Prompts

The most important function of a descriptive essay is to provide information. The second function is to explain that information so that the reader can best understand it. A descriptive essay is not intended to argue a point or defend an opinion.

What does the prompt for a descriptive essay look like? Look at the following examples:

What do you consider the distinctive qualities of a good student to be?

Identify and describe the most interesting geographical feature of your country.

In your opinion, what has been the most memorable event of the last ten years?Describe the event, supporting your answer with specific details.

The active verbs in these prompts include consider, identify, and describe. All of them are asking you to provide an explanation and details about a particular topic in order to help the reader to understand it better. That is the function of a descriptive essay.

Planning a Descriptive Essay

Good planning is essential to succesful essay writing. Even experienced writers make careful plans before beginning to write.

There are several steps to planning an essay. All of them should be followed closely; following them will help you write your essay more easily. Following is a list of steps you should use to help you write a better essay. It is important to remember that the steps of the writing process do not necessarily have to be in this order, nor does one step need to be completed before another step is started.

1. Read the prompt (or the assignment) very carefully to make sure you understand what it is asking you to do.
2. Consider the topic, thoroughly.
3. Brainstorm ideas about the topic.
4. Evaluate your ideas, and select those that will best help you respond to the prompt or assignment.
5. Organize your ideas in the order you wish to present them. (This is sometimes called outlining.)
6. Identify and list details, examples, and other supporting information you can use with each of the ideas in your list.
7. Write your introduction.
8. Write your body paragraphs.
9. Write your conclusion.
10. Revise, edit, proofread.

Note that at any point you can go back to an earlier step if you need to.

Brainstorming

It is a process that you use to generate ideas about a topic before you actually begin writing. If you have lots of ideas down on paper, you can think about each of them, how they best fit together, and which ones you actually wants to use in your writing. There are several techniques for brainstorming. They are sometines referred to as listing, clustering and freewriting.

Listing

Listing is a good technique for getting lots of ideas on paper quickly. You simply write down every idea related to the topic that comes into your head. It isn't necessary to stop and consider each one - the main thing is just to get lots of ideas written down.

Here's a list of writer has generated in response to the prompt, " What are the most important impacts of automobiles on society?" : expense, smog, traffic accidents, can be beautifull, fun to drive, time spent commuting, noise, economic importance, convenience.

At this point, you may decide to divide the list into positive and negative impacts. Another possibility is to select only those effects that are most clearly social, and not personal, that is, the importance of automobilies in the national economy, the pollution they cause, and the harm done by the many accidents hat happen every year. Alternatively, you could select only those with which you jave personal experience in the blank space below. It's up to you to rank, organize, or rearrange your list.

Clustering

One method of brainstorming is called clustering. Clustering is much like listing, except that it allow you to begin organizing your ideas as you think of them. You begin with just a few central ideas, and then link each new idea as you think appropriate. For example:

• Negative: noise, smog, commuting, expense, economic importance
• Positive: convenience, artistic merit, economic importance, fun

Freewriting

Another brainstorming technique is called freewriting, and it works just the way it sounds. You put pen to paper and start writing about the topic, noting down whatever thought comes into your head, until enough good ideas take shape to write the essay. There are two important things to remember about freewriting. First, don't worry about grammar and spelling. Those can be taken care of later. Second, don't stop writing until you're finished. It's important to let your thoughts keep flowing. Here's an example:

Impacts of automobiles on society, well, there are lots, there's the cost of ownership, fuel, insurance, and so on, there's traffic accidents, noise from engines, noise from alarms beeping, all the time you have to spend in your car if you commute to work - but I'm only thinking of negative things - let's see, they're sure convenient, and they can be fun to drive and some them are really quite beautifull, and can be collector's items, and building them sure provides a lot of jobs for people. But smog's a real downside...

From this, you can draw lots of ideas for an essay. Freewriting also offers the advantage of allowing you to begin to experiment with expressing your ideas in phrases and sentences.

Outlining

Once you have generated enough good ideas for writing your essay, the next step is to organize them and to procide supporting details. A good way to plan your essay is to prepare an outline. An outline is a chart that shows exactly how the essay is to be organized, giving you a kind of blueprint to use as you write. This way you won't wander away from your topic, get distracted, or forget what you were going to say next.

In an outline, each subsection is listed in order using Roman numerals, and supporting ideas will be listed under each subsection using the alphabet.

Here is an outline for an essay about the impact of automobiles. If this were an outline for a 30-minute TOEFL essay, each Roman numeral would represent one paragraph of writing.

• I. Introduction
• II. Social
• A. Economic importance
• B. Traffic accidents
• C. Air pollution
• III.Personal
• A. Time spent commuting
• B. Convenience
• C. Hobby
• 1. Recreational driving
• 2. Collection
• IV. Conclusion

An even more detailed outline could be prepared, including all the supporting information and examples the author intends to use. It's not necessary to use so much detail, however - an outline like this one that uses just the main ideas and the supporting details van be very helpful on its own. Nor is it necessary to use all the numbers and letters exactly the way they are used here - just make sure that you can understand what the outline is telling you.

Finally, don't imagine that just because you've drawn an outline, you have to follow it exactly. As you write, you may change your mind about how to organize the essay. That's not a problem - just adjust the outline to reflect your changes.

Writing the Introduction to a Descriptive Essay

Like any essay, a descriptive essay should be composed of several identifiable parts, each with its own specific function. These parts usually include an introduction, a body, and a conclusion. First, we will focus on the introductory paragraph.

You may recall some information about introductions from the reading lesson. Remember, an introduction must accomplish several tasks. First, it should introduce the topic of the essay. Ideally, this can be achieved in an interesting manner that catches and holds the reader's attention, which is a rhetorical device called a hook. Second, an introduction must provide some context for the discussion, including any information the reader may need to understand the essay as whole. Third, an introductory paragraph to a descriptive essay should provide the reader with a good idea of the topics that will be addressed in the essay, and the order in which they will appear. This function is called forecasting, and it is accomplished in a thesis statement.

The Hook

A hook can take several forms. It might be a fascinating fact, a provocative, emotionally charged statement, a novel interpretation of an accepted fact, or even a few sentences that briefly relate an event exemplifying or introducing the essay's topic. Whatever its form, the hook's principle function is to attract the reader's attention and make him or her want to read further.

Background Information

Having grabbed the reader's attention, the introductory paragraph can then provide any necessary background information. Some of this may have already been provided in the hook. It is important to provide enough information here to introduce the topic, but not so much that the introduction becomes a part of the discussion itself. You may need to answer some of these questions:

• Why is this topic important?
• What background information should the reader have before reading further?
• What has motivated me to address this topic?

Definitions are often helpful in introduction, especially when you suspect that readers may initially misunderstand the topic. It may also be desirable for your reader what sources you used to find the information you used in the essay.

The Thesis Statement

The last sentence or two of the introduction to an essay is usually to tell the reader what to expect from the essay, or to forecast. You can think of it as a kind of table of contents for the essay: a list of topics, and the order in which they occur. For shorter essays, you can simply list the topic of each paragraph of your discussion. Of, if your essay os divided into more general subsections, you can refer to the main idea of each of the subsections.

Writing the Body Paragraphs

When you have finished your introduction and have written your thesis statement, the next step is to write body paragraphs. A body paragraphs has two main parts.

The Topic Sentence

The first part, the topic sentence, introduces the main idea that the paragraph will discuss. It also provides supporting details, which explain the topic. Usually, a topic sentence is a general comment about the idea that paragraph will discuss. Sometimes you can include a closing sentence, of a transition to the next paragraph, though these are not always necessary. Can you see how a body paragraph looks a lot like a mini-essay?

Supporting Details

Supporting details can also take a variety of forms. Typically, these can be descriptions, explanations, definitions, examples, or a mixture of the four. In all cases, the supporting information should include specific discussion of the idea introduced in the topic sentence and should be carefully chosen to help the reader understand the topic. A paragraph should never include information that is not directly related to its topic.

When describing an aspect of your topic, try to use words that are carefully chosen to carry the most information in the least space. Efficiency is important in academic writing. Remember that it is your goal to help your readers understand, not to overwhelm them with unimportant details.

The same is true of explanations. If your topic requires a reference to complex processes, mechaninsms, or systems, supply only enough information to help your reader understand how this fits into the topic as a whole and no more. Too much information can quickly become exhausting for the reader, and writing it all down takes up your valuable time.

Definitions are mos useful when you suspect that the reader may be unfamiliar with a particular term or label that is a key part of your essay. The definition supplied when the term is first mentioned prevents confusion.

Examples are the most important kind of supporting detail you can provide. Beginning writers often fail to use them enough. A well-chosen example can turn a weak argument into a strong one, help to convince a skeptical reader, and add a measure of interest and color to an otherwise dull discussion.

READING Chapter 1 - Theme: History

LESSON 1 - READING

The Introduction to the Reading Passage

TOELF reading passages follow the typical organizational structure of academic English: there is an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion.

• The first sentence in the introductory paragraph often establishes the topic of the reading: that is, it tells what the reading is generally about. As you read the introduction, you should ask yourself, “What is the topic of this passage?”
• Another question you should ask yourself as you read the introduction is, “Are the remaining sentences in the introduction more general or more specific than the first sentence?” Sentences that are more specific serve to more clearly define the topic.
• The last sentence in the introduction is often a thesis statement. A thesis statement introduces the main idea that the reading passage will develop. Ask yourself, “What is the thesis of this passage?”

The Body Paragraphs of a Reading Passage

The introduction is followed by body paragraphs. These present and develop the most important points of the passage. Here are some things you should consider as you read body paragraphs.

• The first sentence of each body paragraph is often a topic sentence; that is, it presents the topic of the paragraph. As you read each body paragraph, you should ask yourself, "What is the topic of this paragraph?"
• The remainder of each body paragraph presents key details that support the topic. Ask yourself, "What are the most important points expressed in this paragraph?"

If you ask yourself these questions as you read, you will be able to learn about the most important points in the passage, as well as the organization and the function of the passage.

The Conclusion of a Reading Passage

The conclusion is usually the final paragraph of a reading passage. Occasionally, a conclusion is not a full paragraph, but the final sentence or tow of the last body paragraph. The conclusion summarizes the most important points expressed in the passage, It does not present any new information.

Rhetorical Function

The specific purpose of an academic writting is called its rhetorical function: this refers to how the author intends to persuade the reader that the content of the writing is sound and believable. Some of the ways that the author can convince the reader include: defining, describing, exemplifying and explaining.

It is important that you understand what rhetorical function is because the TOEFL Reading section includes 3 - 4 questions in this topic.

Skimming

Skimming is a reading process in which you read quickly to identify important points and don’t focus on specific details. Skimming a passage is fast and effective way to determine its main idea, most important points, organization, and what type of text it is. There are a few key purposes for skimming:

• Identifying the thesis statement and topic sentences of the passage
• Recognizing the basic organization of the passage
• Noting repeated key words in the passage

Because the TOEFL is a timed test, you won’t be able to read through every passage thoroughly, so skimming is critical.

Summarizing

The ability to summarize is essential for success on the TOEFL. Note-taking is a step in summarizing, whether you are reading a long text in the Reading section, listening to a lecture or a conversation in the Listening section, or reading or listening to shorter passages in the Speaking and Writing sections. Summarizing is also required in your responses to several of the tasks in the Speaking and Writing sections.
To summarize any type of reading passage you need to understand two important things:

• What is the main idea?
• Which supporting details are the most important?
  

Summarizing is critical skill, so take the time to practice it now.