Unit-6

                                Lesson 2: Nakshi Kantha

B Now read the text to know about nakshi kantha.

Nakshi kantha is a kind of embroidered quilt. The name was taken from the Bengali

word, ‘naksha’ which means artistic pattern. It is a kind of traditional craft and is said

to be indigenous to Bangladesh and West Bengal in India. The art has been practised

in rural Bengal for centuries. The name ‘Nakshi kantha’ became popular after the

poet Jasimuddin’s poem ‘Nakshi kanthar Math’was published in 1929.

Traditional kanthas are made for family use. Old or new cloth and thread are used to

make these quilts. Mymensingh, Jamalpur, Rajshahi, Faridpur, Bogra and Jessore are

most famous for this craft. Now it is produced commercially. You can find them in

many expensive handicraft shops in cities. The quilts are now in great demand because

of the colourful patterns and designs embroidered on them.

Vocabulary is a very important issue to learn English Language. Without having a good knowledge of vocabulary one cannot learn English and cannot understand or express their thought in English. As this an era of technology students can learn vocabulary through internet. Here I am going to discuss about three websites which teacher can use these sites to teach vocabulary in ESL and EFL classroom and students can learn vocabulary from these site as well.

1. Wordsmart.com

Web address -  http://www.wordsmart.com/wsc_d/index.html

Wordsmart is an online placement test of vocabulary learning which designed the tests appropriate for the level of level students. Each of levels has 200 cores words with five exercises. Through this tool we can speak, read and comprehend the English Language.

There are some strengthens of this site-

·         Learners can test their vocabulary skill.

·         In the wordsmart system we can receive accurate placement so that we improve our vocabulary knowledge.

·         Learners can challenge to prove their proficiency.

·         They can have fun with words and learn

There are some weaknesses of this site-

·         It does not show the meaning of the words

·         Only give  the scores

2. Cross puzzle for ESL learners

Web address- http://iteslj.org/cw/; http://a4esl.org/(solely for ESL/EFL understudies' vocabulary tests)

 It is a free site to learn vocabulary. This site has many exercises but mainly designed with cross puzzle exercises and has vocabulary tests begin from easy level to difficult level. It has more than 1000 activities.

There are some strengthens of this site-

·         Make the students interactive and engaged with lots of spaces.

·         Learners can practice vocabulary in a group or pair.

·         Create interaction between teacher and students

·         As it has easy level to difficult level students can improve their knowledge their stock of word step by step.

There some disadvantages of this site-

·         Students might get bored by solving puzzle work

·         In difficulty level students may face difficulty of solving the puzzles.

3. Vocaboly

Web address-  http: www.vocaboly .com

Vocaboly is a vocabulary builder website for SAT, GRE, GMAT and TOFEL tests and also for general vocabulary building. It has five books with 12000 words. Each word provides the meaning, phonetic symbol and pronunciation. Learners can select each book according to their purpose and level and can create their own book.

There are some strengthens of this site-

·         Helpful for building vocabulary

·         Huge amount of vocabulary

·         It shows the correct answer

·         Every multiple choice has noun, verb, adj indicator on answer side.

There are some drawbacks of this site-

·         Testing method is not suitable for beginner level learners as the vocabulary is set for advanced level leaner.

·         Students might get bored for giving tests.

I have prepared this material of vocabulary learning for EFL intermediate learners of rural area who have no access to internet. Only teacher can use internet through his/her personal devices. I have selected five words from AWL (Coxhead, 2000) to make these materials.

1. Read the following sentences of each word and try to find out the meaning of these words.

A) Accurate-

   i) The data is not accurate at all.

   ii) The watch keeps accurate time.

  iii) The sentence is not grammatically accurate.

   iv)Your analysis of the situation is accurate.

B) Brief-

    i) I have a brief statement.

    ii) The train made a brief stop.

   iii) He died after a brief illness.

   iv) The teacher gave a brief explanation.

    v) There was a brief pause and then the music began.

C) Conflict-

    i) I tried to avoid conflict.

    ii) His ideas conflict with mine.

    iii) It is impossible to resolve the conflict.

    iv) The conflict began over a simple misunderstanding.

     v) The European conflict was over.

D) File-

   i) My computer crashed and I lost a bunch of important files.

  ii) The journalist filed his report.

  iii) Could you please file these documents for me?

   iv) We will put your resume in our file.

   v) The teacher keeps a file of his students.

E) Terminate-

    i) He was advised to terminate the contract.

    ii) He is terminated from his job.

    iii) The train will terminate at Dhaka.

    iv) He is putting pressure on me to terminate you.

    v) Terminating of a person from his employment without strong reason is unfair.

2. Write down the definition of these words- accurate, brief, conflict, file and terminate.

3. Check the written meaning of the words with the dictionary meaning.

4. Write down you own sentences with each of the word.

5. Fill in the blanks with given words. (You might have to change the word form)

Brief

Terminate

Conflict

File

Accurate

i) His speech was _____________.

ii) I tried to solve the _________________ between them.

iii) I always keep my important documents in a ______________.

iv) He gave me an _________________ direction of the road.

v) He was ________________ from his employment because of his crime.

Review on Virtual Writing Tutor

Virtual writing tutor is free online grammar checker. One can check English spelling, punctuation and grammar using this free online grammar checker. It is founded by Nicholas Walker, an ESL teacher. The goal of the virtual writing tutor is to enhance the ESL pedagogy, to increase its frequency, to improve its timelines, to improve its quantity. As this it detects the errors of spelling, punctuation and grammar so I would like to explore and evaluate critically one by one.

First of all if we go to the spelling checker option we will find that it detects wrongly spelled words and give the suggestion of probable corrections. But VWT has a limited word stock. If anyone puts a wrongly spelled word and if that word doesn’t exist in VWT’s store it will unable to detect that wrong spelling. Another important issue regarding spelling checker is that VWT ignores the British version of a word. It only detects the American version of a word. So if anyone put any British version material VWT will be unable to find out the word and it’s wrong spelling. It has made all the possible suggestion in American version and avoid British version which would make it weaker. So the vocabulary stock should be increased and British version should be applied in VWT. So that learners can get actual feedback of their mistakes.

VWT claims to correct the punctuation mark. But in some cases it fails to find out. It can detect the capitalization, but it cannot find out the wrong use of apostrophe and at the same time it cannot also find out the uses of comma. So it is a big weakness of this site.

In grammar section VWT should have improved a lot but unfortunately while exploring I found that it only correct the basic subject verb agreement mistakes. It cannot detect any other grammatical mistakes. So VWT needs to go a long to give the correct feedback to the learners of their errors.

    

Review of Everwrite

Since this is an age of technology, we can use it to learn a language. Everwrite is such a software through which we can improve our writing skill by practicing many writing exercises. It is developed by VPG integrated media. It is designed in such a way that learners can easily explore and understand the learning strategy. It has six categories and each category has some sections. Those sections have some practice sessions through which learners can practice each and every different sector of writing skills. They can work on grammar, spelling, translation and paragraph writing through this soft ware. Now I am going discuss in detail about this software and it works.

Among the six categories first one is Editing Exercises in which learners will find various grammatical exercises. In this category they can practice exercises and can give test to evaluate themselves. They can also edit grammatical error and learn how to re-order sentence in an organized way through this section. They will find the correct answers by clicking on show answer button.

Second category is Identifying Rhetorical Paragraphs. In this section learners will find different paragraphs and their task is to read those paragraphs and find out the main methods which are used in organizing and developing in each paragraph from the given options. After choosing the answer they will get correct and incorrect answer. If the answer is correct, it is explained with the reason why it is correct.

Working with transitions is the third category of this Language learning software. Here in each practice session learner will get different paragraph from which they have to find out the transitions. They will get marks by clicking the correct answer.

Next category is organizing your thought in which Learners will find some disorganized paragraphs along with four options of numbers of sentences. They will have to choose the correct option of those numbers of sentences to make the paragraph organized. By clicking on any option they will get correct or incorrect answer.

The fifth category is Recognizing your thesis statement in which students have to find out the thesis statement from the list of scrambled sentences after reading those paragraphs and by clicking on any option they will get correct or incorrect answer with explanation.

Last one is Practice grammar where learners have to practice grammatical exercises again and choose the correct action.

Now I am going to critically evaluate this software on basis of some points:

Learner motivation and interest: This software motivates the learners by designing different types of exercises. Since it is an era of technology so today’s learner are habituated to use technology that’s why they will find it motivating and interesting to practice writing skill which is totally different from the traditional teaching method of writing. Apart from this when learners get the reason of the correct answer they will be more interested to try other exercises and make them correct.

User friendliness: This site is very much user friendly. Students can easily enter into this by writing their name only. There is no need for extra registration and the most important thing is each and every instruction is very clearly given here so that students will not find any difficulties to explore it. When the learners start doing the exercises they will get the instruction at the top of the page which make them to understand clearly what they have to do.

Interaction: Through using this software teacher student interaction will be increased because teachers have to give the instruction to the students and if the students face any difficulties they will ask their teacher. This is how their interaction may grow.

So after having this description ever write is undoubtedly an useful software for improving writing skill. But apart from this strengthens I found a weakness that is students might get bored by practicing same exercises again and again.