Os habéis preguntado nunca porque no hay manera de que os acordéis de como se dice "aprovechar" en inglés. Pues porqué_
1. no hay una sola manera de expresar la idea
2. no hay una sola palabra equivalente
3. a veces no expresamos la idea de "aprovechar"
en castellano se usa mucho más que en inglés
Since
you’re here, I’ll ...
Aprovechando
que estamos aquí podríamos ir...
Aprovecha
que estás en Londre para visitar...
Take
advantage of your stay in London to visit...
Aprovecha
las instalaciones del hotel
Take advantage of the
facilities and equipment of the hotel
Aprovecha que estás para decirle
(since we you’re there), tell him
that....
Aproveché mucho el curso / saqué mucho provecho del curso
I got
a lot out of the course I benefited greatly from
the course
(I made the most of the course)
Aprovecho para agradecerles...
I take this
opportunity to thank you for...
I’d
like to thank you for
Aproveché mucho mis
vacaciones: leí, dormí, fuí a la playa...
I
made the most of my holidays.
Aprovecha el día y
no duermas hasta las 12
Don’t sleep till late and make the most
of the day
Aproveché el día de
fiesta para ordenar
I used my day off to tidy up
Lo aprovecha
todo porque no le gusta tirar nada
He uses it
all up because she doesn’t like to waste anything
Se aprovechó de ella y de su buena fe
He took advantage
of her and of her good nature
La palabra “profit” is mostly associated with “money earned in
busienss”. It is true that “You can benefit /
profit from something” but it’s not extremely common in the sense of
“aprovechar” in Spanish. Se pronuncia /profit/ no /profait/
Apuntad más
frases si queréis, y las traducimos!
When is the right moment to teach pronunciation?
Is there "a" right moment to teach it?
written in August 2011My piece of advice is open up to the little sounds, the -t/d of the past tense, the neutral, almost unnoticeale sound of I am a little bit.../amalitelbit/
get someone to help you identify these little sounds and not only will you pronounce better but you will also understand a lot more
and read read read to gain vocabulary
and try to understand grammar and discourse markers and how it all sounds and comes together
Proven! They like pronunciation, even if they think they don't.
I was discussing with Ester, a student who has drawn up the "essential grammar" wiki around in my wikis, that I think that teaching pronunciation can not be done until they are ready for and open to it, which when they have gained fluency enough to use English and they themselves realise that yes! pronunciation matters. A lot. My statement of "can not be done until they are ready" is possible a bit of an understatement and is wrong as a matter of fact but that's how i have experienced it with my current students.
This reluctancy to do pronunciation, specifically, may be due to their previous experience at school, where hardly any emphasis was given on how important it was so as to be understood and to understand, in other words, for effective communication. The teachers themselves had sometimes poor master of intonation and pronunciation. On how many occasions have i heard my students say their teachers had always pronounced x in a given way, incorrect and sometimes ununderstandable to uncooperative native speakers!
My adults were not open to learning (about) pronunciation when they started English with me, it was and is not until a couple of years have elapsed that now they truly understand and see for themselves the need for improving this "scary" area of the language learning process. Now that they have gained confidence, have a better command of the language and actively use it in their day to day that they see how important pronunciation is. But then again, it's worth "playing with" it early enough to raise a consciousness of the different sounds, so dominoes and quizzes and words-with-the-same-sound competitions may be the way to go with the unacquainted students!
By pronuciation I mean knowing how a word or a phrase or a sentence is pronounced, the sounds. Gaining an awareness of the different sounds of English, the distinction about the number of vowel sounds in particular and how using a different vowel sound or dropping the final consonant can affect the message when speaking to an uncooperative native speaker as some can be (or at least that's the students' perception!). You may add and argue to this, that pronunciation is pitch, intonation and all this hard-to-change aspects. Of course it is, but I am going to delve into this now, as i give it fairly little focus in class myself, much as it can hinder understanding or lead to misinterpretations of the message passed on! on how many occasions have I been told that Spanish sound as though they were angry and shouting at each there when speaking!
Often I find that they know every single word of is said to them but still can not understand. They don't understand because in their heads there's "their" pronunciation of the words, which often doesn't match with the correct pronunciation. That's why they don't understand. It's obviously not as simple as that but I can vouch this is a very important part of their lack of understanding skills. In addition, there's some kind of mental blockage that prevents them from understanding, plus the sound simplification, the so-weak forms, of auxiliaries, prepositions, etc. To help them gain an understanding of these issues and to "train their ears to catch these little sounds" the teacher comes into play. It's hard for many to reach this goal overnight. Awareness of how slow this can be can be discouraging for some but it works. I can vouch for that.
And, to go one step further, it's not only their understanding oral input skills but also their ability to produce understandable output.
Before, they lacked to knowledge, they didn't use English. Now they use it, with native and non-native speakers. So it's now it's the right moment to go more in depth.
I use a lot material from the bbc.co.uk learning english, as i said in How Adults Learn, plus books and plus brainstorming and providing examples for them to discover some kind of rule.
Another issue that often surprises them is that spelling things out in English is so common between native speakers because pronunciation doesn't always correspond to what it may appear from spelling and the other way round. We teach them the alphabet and to spell when they start learning but again, we never put enough emphasis on how an essential and active part of the use of English in English-speaking countries this is. Eureka, now they understand!
NO need to say that the -ed is a very tricky area indeed. I find that with the quizzes from the bbc and other material and by raising an awareness of transitive verbs with -ed in the past and a clear emphasis on the need for an Od, I decided it, I decided (what?) I decide it you'll surprise them and a bit of a surprise makes things more memorable! Not only will you be dealing with -ed pronunciation but the often forgotten Od when it's a pronoun. I think they don't say the -ed past mark because they don't hear it. They don't hear it because we teachers have not trained them enough to catch this little -d/-t/-id sound in speech. There you go, that's some work for us to put a lot of emphasis on.
All those homophones which can be so confusing if they are different word categories!
so and sew
rite and right
pear and pair
The above takes to what i said in an earlier piece of writing of how helpful it can be to learn what other words the word goes with .. the rite of , it is right , our rights, you are right,
a pair of.. the pear, I sew sth, etc. or the baffling pronunciation of -ough, our the different spellings for the sound of earn, and the different pronunciatins of the letters ea/ear, etc. No wonder our students get mixed up and mispronounce words! who wouldn't?! (will expand)
Their own mis pronunciation of words they own -----------------> they don't understand the word when pronounced correctly (and fast and within connected speech)
correct pronunciation= easier to be understood
easier to understand
Spelling is important in English because pronunciation is sometimes arbitrary and unreliable to pronunciation patterns.
I find that using dominoes, the quizzes, and right away exposing them to phonetic symbols and matching transcribed words to pictures, for example, works really well! start with monosyllable words, with a mixture of different-from-letters symbols and the-same-as-letters symbols. It fun and they like it. Where i work the word of mouth makes more and more students do pronunciation. It's so rewarding! Some of them are even transcribing and their pronunciation is certainly improving.Spanish speakers tend to have problems pronouncing:
CONSONANTS
the -sion , decision, sounds
the -sia , Asia, sound
the -ked sounds, looked
the voiced s sound
pronouncing certain final consonants
they find it hard to believe how words with radically different spellings can be homophones.
like so and sew, when sew looks like new (and then you have threw) and new in certain situations sounds almost like the vowels sound of through. Here is my argument when saying the spelling is of high importance in English, anglophones spell words out because pronunciation or spelling are arbitrary in many occasions. They find this bit of information good to know, it makes them feel relieved! As when i tell them that English sometimes struggle to understand Welsh or Scots English! and trust me, no wonder.
Update weeks after the main body of the text: Now I want to introduce pronunciation at earlier stages and see how it goes down.
VOWELS
Yes, something that looks or sounds as easy as a vowel can be one of the hardest things for Spaniards to learn to discriminate. All of the vowels are tricky.