Comments on ESL Podcast-English Cafe 186

In my opinion, ESL Podcast is a very uselful tool for self-learners. And, it's free!!! This English learning multimedia is like Studio Classroom or Let's talk in English. An instructor will give you a brief introduction to the text, and provides you with the vocabulary. One thing that I like the website better is the speed of the text. Usually, the speech in the local ESL magazines is much slower. But one disadvantage of the podcast is that it doesn't have any visual aids in the context, and it might not be easy or appealing for visual learners.

Comments on the corpus-based reference tools

Compare concordancers and collocation retrieval systems with dictionaries, each has their own advantages and disadvantages. The formers can't be a good choice for a new English learners for they only provide with lots of datas without further explainations or analysis, which may seem valuable for an advanced learner but not for a beginner. The numerous ill-organized datas may confuse the learners. On the other hand, dictionaries are more user-friendly and well-organized tools. I myself like all of the tools. Concordancers and collocation retrieval systems are such great tools for me to do research on the language changes in usage or on the collocation. Dictionaries, however, provide with more formal and specific explainnation on the usages I want to know.

Semantic Analysis of "big" & "large"

After searching the corpora, the lexical entries for "big" & "large" would appear as follows:
big: +concrete +abstract +size +degree +animate (+quantity) +fame large: +concrete +abstract +size +degree +animate +quantity
In my opinion, the distinctive features are "+human and +quantity." But the latter has gradually changed these days.
And there's surely a rule governing the usage of "big" & "large" More often than not, the modern usage in "large" tends to describe a object possessing "number/quatity" features, such as large amount. But I also find out that the difference between the two words is not that clear in spoken forms. In some spoken corpora, big sometimes is used to describe "amount/ number." However, the most distinctive feature between the two words is "+fame." Big is used to describe a man or the nouns relating to it more often than large. The examples are as follows:
Mr. Big :to represent the man is really someting.
Mr. Large in Charge (a book character): to represent a big size body.
a big name (a well-known name)
*a large name (not found)

Semantic Analysis of "big" & "large"

As foreign learners, we are sometimes confused by synonyms.

Today let's take a quick look at two synonyms, "big" & "large".

big: large in size or amount( from Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary) / large in size, degree, amount, etc (from Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary )

large: big in size or amount (from Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary) / big in size or quantity (from Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary)

Well, there's no evident distinction between "big" and "large" from the two dictionaries. Now here comes the concordancer.

After searching the corpora, the lexical entries for "big" & "large" would appear as follows:

big: +concrete +abstract +size +degree +animate (+quantity) +fame large: +concrete +abstract +size +degree +animate +quantity

The analysis shows no evidence that "large" could only be used to describe abstract things or "big" to describe concrete things. In my opinion, the distinctive features are "+human and +quantity." And the latter has gradually changed these days.

In conclusion, there's surely a rule governing the usage of "big" & "large" More often than not, the modern usage in "large" tends to describe a object possessing "number/quatity" features, such as large amount. But I also find out that the difference between the two words is not that clear in spoken forms. In some spoken corpora, big sometimes is used to describe "amount/ number." However, the most distinctive feature between the two words is "+fame." Big is used to describe a man or the nouns relating to it more often than large. The examples are as follows:

Mr. Big :to represent the man is really someting.

Mr. Large in Charge (a book character): to represent a big size body.

a big name (a well-known name)

*a large name (not found)

Comments on on-line dictionaries

Comments on YahooKimo Mini Pen: I'm really impressed by the innovation of this tool. With just a click, you can look up the words on IE, Word, Excell, PowerPoint, PDF,etc. How convenient!!
Comments on online Learners' Dictionaries: Compare Cambridge with Oxford, I find that the interface of CambridgeAdvanced Dictionary is more user-friendly. It fist shows the entries of a word and you can choose part of speech to gain the further information of it. On the other hand, Oxford Learner's Dictionary gives too much information(kind of chaos) when you look up the word you want. This would not be easy for a new English Learner. Merriam-Webster's Dictonary is quite easy to use but seems to contain less informaton than the above two dictionaries. It also has the pronunciation function whcih the other two don't.

Self-Introduction

My name is Eric. The followings are a brief introduction to myself. When I was around three or four months old, my parents got divorced, so I was brought up by my grandparents in a military village in Kaohshiung. During the next twelve years, I had experienced the most pleasant time of my life. My grandparents loved me very much. They gave me what other parents can not give to their children—time. They sent me lunch every school day and always helped me do my homework after school instead of sending me to a day care center or a bushiban. Whenever I needed them they always stayed with me. I was very happy at that time. After graduating from elementary school, I moved to different places and lived with other family. These events in my life caused me to become more independent . I have many hobbies during my lifetime. But the most profound is music. I’ve played the guitar since I was around 17, because I fell in love with a Japanese rock band, L'arc-en-ciel. I was fascinated by their music then. And I used to have a band for two years because of them. Playing the guitar helpes me get away from my worries and pressure.