This month is evaluations for all students, in every level. You should get an interview with a staff member. They will discuss your future studies with you. Teachers will be evaluating their students until next week. Then the staff will schedule your interview. Ask a staff member for more information.

There’s no test. Just relax!

The word “raft” as a plural noun has a funny history. We talked about it last week in English class. Use it like this:

I had a raft of problems in my report.

“Raft” usually means a small boat, made from wood. You escape from a desert island on a raft. But there’s no raft in your report.

In that sentence, “raft” comes from “raff,” which means a lot of something. It also is related to the word “riffraff,” which is a word that means poor or dirty people.

For Americans, the word “riffraff” sounds funny because we usually use it as a joke …

I’m not going to his party. He’s riffraff.

It means you won’t spend time with him because he’s a lower class, or he’s dirty or poor. It’s never serious, and it sounds silly. But it is something people say, sometimes.

The CNN English report for this week was about caffeine for pregnant women. This news cast is probably one minute long, total. But the speakers have an American accent, even if they speak quickly.

Almost all the vocabulary is on the page, and the magazine does a good job explaining it. There are a few things I want to you remember after reading this.

1. The magazine uses very special verbs in this report — verbs like link, suggest, may cause and things like that. This is because in America, if you say something causes something, and you’re wrong, you might get sued. So the magazine is trying to avoid that, by using “fuzzy” words like suggest, instead of cause. It’s avoiding direct language.
2. The other thing is that this study is sponsored by Kaiser Permanente, which is a huge health management company. In America, most people are skeptical of news reports that come from companies — they’re not really news, they’re more like advertisements for the company. And since this is a CNN report, it’s one company telling the news of another company. So is it trustworthy? You can decide. Personally, I don’t know how much I believe it.

Other than that, we had a very easy class. This news report was much easier to follow than the report about obesity in British children.

Next week we’ll start the polite English lessons from the English Journal magazine. Those should be fun.

For TOEFL class we listened to two portions of the first practice test. The first one was easy, but the second one was difficult.

Most of the time we talked about the problems you can face in the test. Here are some of them:

• Speed of the speaker;
• The speaker’s accent;
• Vocabulary;
• Outside noise;
• Other environmental problems;
• You can’t control the test (you can’t go back);
• Strange subject material
• Taking notes;
• And a lot of others.

A lot of others, really. There were really only two suggestions for solving these problems.

• Take time and listen to many different native speakers, and learn new vocabulary. The more you practice, the easier this part will be. You can’t prepare for a lot of this test, but remember that it’s a test of your ability, so try to gain experience listening. Even if you don’t reply, listen to radio news in English, television programs and talk to friends. It will help a lot.
• Take really good notes. It’s very difficult, but you can solve some of these problems by taking good notes. I don’t understand a lot of these questions too, but if I take some notes I can try to learn a little, very quickly, and maybe get a question right.

The last thing we mentioned was the time problem — you get very, very little time to answer all the questions. But remember: One question out of the group will be a multiple-point question. You want to focus on that question. So try to answer the easier questions quickly, so you have time to spend on the big one.

Next week we’ll try more Listening exercises and see if we can overcome these obstacles.

If you are interested in joining the book club, our first meeting will be at 5 p.m. on June 6 at the Starbucks near school.

The book is “The Little Prince,” by Antoine de Saint Exupery. We ordered eight copies at Tsutaya and you can buy the book from us, if there are any left. Tsutaya had two copies on the shelf when we went there on Tuesday. I’m sure you can find it in a library, if you try.

Tell one of the teachers if you want to join us, and if you want us to hold one of the books for you. We’re expecting about ten people total, but there might be more or less.

Two prefixes that you might hear in environmental news are geo- and eco-.

Usually, generally, geo- means “earth.” For example, geography is the study of physical points of the earth — mountains, lakes, rivers and so forth. In geometry, you measure shapes and directions, which might make you think about the earth too.

Eco-, on the other hand, means life, the environment and management of resources. From that, we get words like ecology, economy and ecosystem — which means a system of living things.

Economize is a similar word, and it means to use resources in the most efficient way possible. Maybe that makes no sense, but there’s a lot in English that doesn’t make sense!

The last skill we will talk about is synthesizing. This is a combination of all three of the previous skills — taking notes, paraphrasing and summarizing. You use each one of these skills when you synthesize. Some of them you use more than others, but that’s always true.

When you synthesize, you combine information from several sources to make something new. You will probably take notes from two (or maybe even three) sources. Usually you will write a summary about one of those sources, and then add more information from the other source.

The final synthesis is not a summary, and not a paraphrase. It’s bigger than a summary, and uses too much information to be a summary. It also isn’t a paraphrase, since you’re really starting with a summary and adding to it. The information you add might be a paraphrase, since it’s written in your own words, but the final product is not.

Your final synthesis will be longer than a summary, made of a summary, but using extra stuff. So it’s different.

Here’s how you make one. Here are notes from a reading about ice cream.

Here are some more notes, this time for a lecture on ice cream.

Ice cream
Ice cream	Flavored dessert
	Made from milk
Chocolate	Made from cocoa beans
	Is very popular
	Usually not expensive
Vanilla	Made from vanilla beans
	Not as popular
	Sometimes expensive
Strawberry	Made from strawberries
I had vanilla ice cream for breakfast today.

The first thing we need to do is identify the main source — which we can’t do until we know the question. So you have to take really good notes for both sources, because maybe one will be summarized, but you’ll need details from the other. Always, always, always take good notes.

Next start a summary of the main source. For this example, the question is, “Summarize the reading, adding information from the lecture.” That’s easy. We just start a summary of the reading, and add details from the lecture when they are important. Here’s a start:

Ice cream is a dessert made from milk, sugar and a flavor.

That’s the start of a summary. Now we add details from the lecture.

Ice cream is a dessert made from milk, sugar and a flavor. The most popular flavor is chocolate, which is made from cocoa beans.

That’s part of our synthesis. See how we used details from one source, to explain the other? Let’s keep going.

Ice cream is a dessert made from milk, sugar and a flavor. The most popular flavor is chocolate, which is made from cocoa beans. Vanilla is not as popular as chocolate, but is also made from a bean. Strawberry is made from fruit.

Almost done. There’s only one thing that’s important, and it’s from the main source.

Ice cream is a dessert made from milk, sugar and a flavor. The most popular flavor is chocolate, which is made from cocoa beans. Vanilla is not as popular as chocolate, but is also made from a bean. Strawberry is made from fruit. Ice cream was invented in 1731 by a Finn called “Icey.”

And that’s all there is to it. Your answer is not a summary. It’s not a paraphrase, and it’s a lot more than notes. It’s all of those things combined to make something new.

Some final tips:

• Make sure you identify the main source. As soon as you read (or hear) the question, you will know which one is the most important. Remember to focus on that one.
• Make sure you understand the relationship. Some questions will ask you to compare two sources. Some will just want the information added. Some will ask you to “cast doubt” on a source — for that, you use information from one source to show how the other source is wrong. Read the question carefully and make sure you answer it properly.
• Take really good notes on both sources. Remember: You don’t know which one is important until you hear the question. So take lots of notes on both.

Try some of the practice exercises in the book. There are no time limits and you can try them in any order.

Here’s a snapshot of the whiteboard from Sunday, so you can remember what we talked about.

Good luck!

Some of the teachers are planning a book club, and if you like, you’re welcome to join. It is intended for strong BE students or higher, and will probably meet on Friday afternoons. We don’t have a specific time yet.

The first book we read will be “The Little Prince” by Antoine de Saint Exupery. The book is about 1000 yen at Tsutaya. Don’t buy it until we find out how many people are interested; we might be able to get it at a discount, or cheaper online. If you want, you can find the book now and start reading it.

It’s not a difficult book to read, and it has been translated into many, many languages so it’s possible you read it before — in French or in Japanese. It has also been made into a movie, but I don’t recommend it. I saw it a very long time ago and I thought it was awful.

The book is a simple story, but it has a lot to do with how adults see the world, and how children see the world. It’s a very nice story.

When we have a time and a location for the club meetings, we will announce it in class. I hope it matches your schedule.

This week the advanced classes tried the listening lesson from the May 2008 CNN Express magazine, page 35 onward. This was a short, but fast, news report on obesity rates in British children. It is a difficult exercise because the reporter speaks very fast, but also because British accents can be very different from American accents.

Here are the notes from the whiteboard, from Wednesday’s 1 p.m. class. The Monday class will have an easier time with these notes than the ones we made on Monday! The Tuesday 8:10 p.m. class didn’t do this lesson, but can try it if they want.

The magazine has most of the key words listed in the exercise, but there are a few that were not discussed. Here are the ones we saw, and explained in class.

• aged – This is the verb form of age, used in the past tense and as an adjective. This means “children that have aged from 2 years old to 15 years old.”
• obese (obesity) – Obese is an adjective and a medical term that means fat. Obesity is a noun that means “the state of being obese.”
• (to) tackle – Tackle is a word borrowed from sports. It means to grab someone and stop them. In this report, tackle means to stop something. So when she says, “To tackle this problem, the UK government plans to …”, she means, “To stop this problem, the UK government plans to. …”
• (to) ditch – Ditch as a noun is a canal or stream, usually near a road, that carries away water or garbage. As a verb it means “to throw away” something … because if you throw something out of your car while you are driving, it might land in the ditch.
• compulsory – Required. Not optional. You must do this.
• consensus – This means everyone agrees on something.
• tummy – Tummy is a kids’ word, meaning stomach. That should be easy to remember.
• raft – Usually a raft is a small wooden boat you make so you can escape an island. This time, raft just means “a lot.”
• gospel – Gospel is a message or a lesson or a testimony. It is usually something religious, but it doesn’t have to be.
• trendy – Trendy means stylish or cool. It’s something that you use with clothes or fashion, not people.

That’s all the vocabulary we found. There are two things you should be listening for, when you hear the report. First, some British speakers don’t pronounce the “r” in words that have an “ar” sound in them. For example:

1. popular sounds like “pop-u-lah“
2. Oliver sounds like “O-live-ah“

American and Canadian accents usually will pronounce the “r” sound, but some British speakers don’t.

This can also happen in the middle of words. One of the women in the report says “schools have a part to play,” but it sounds like “schools have a paht to play.” If you listen to the report again, it’s easy to find words with the “ar” sound that are pronounced “ah.”

The second thing you should listen for is the change from a long “e” sound to a long “a” sound in words that end with “y.” The best example of that is

1. trendy sounds like “tren-day”

The last speaker on the report is the best example of all these things. Her vowels and speech patterns show all of these things, at the same time. Listen for them, and see if you can figure out what she says without reading the text clues.

Sometimes if we have two sentences, we can make them into one. They must start with the same subject though. Here is an example.

• Kumamoto is hot. Kumamoto is muggy.

I can put the sentences together with and. There are many ways to do this. This way is the easiest:

• Kumamoto is hot and muggy.

See? Just put “and” after the first sentence. Then put the second part after it. Here’s another example.

• Fukuoka is expensive. Fukuoka is fun.

Answer:

• Fukuoka is expensive and fun.

Try it with these:

• Tokyo is busy. It is crowded.
• Sapporo is cold. Sapporo is quiet.
• Beijing is polluted. It is overcrowded.

Try it with your home town too.