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Issue #029 -- Week 23/11/14-29/11/14 December 04, 2014 |
Hello,Greetings and General InformationApologies my friends, for not having posted this issue as scheduled. Put together, Internet connection problems, work pressure, a cancer threat for a friend of mine (which turned out to be a false alarm, luckily), and a root canal treatment managed to postpone the publishing of this issue yet by three days again - I'm sorry. A warm welcome to our new subscribers! I wish you will find My English Club fun and instructive and I look forward to welcome you as a new valued member soon. Read, learn and communicate around the world! Please feel free to contribute to these pages when you have a minute. They are meant to be a platform for exchanging ideas, stories and opinions - an ideal medium for practicing your English, which should be used to the full. Together, let's bring it alive, let's make it the welcoming community you wished for, when you joined. You and your friends can subscribe individually through the form on My English Club. If anybody mentions to you that they are interested in receiving it, please tell them this - many thanks. Also, they can read the previous issues on Back Issues for English Corner E-zine. Month 4 ~ Lesson 13We started studying three subjects back in September 2014: pronunciation and grammar for improving your communication skills, as well as website design and development, for applying your English in practice once you get skilful in English and website building. Once we covered the basics of pronunciation, we started a new course in reading. You can find our past lessons as follows: Pronunciation: Reading ~ Step 1: Understanding Meaning in Context [2]Last time we had an example of level 1 reading comprehension level, in the story "Bob Is Happy", and I promised to write some more stories, possibly with pictures, which I managed to do. The stories are written on the writing platform of Story Bird, is you remember from our chapter on writing. Please do not worry about buying the story, this is a Story Bird feature. You can read the story by hovering the mouse over the cover page and clicking on the '>' button for forward and '<' button for backward. Enjoy! 1) In this issue we shall consider level 2 for reading comprehension in the story
Living in a Tree House in the Forest
. - Who is the King in the forest? 2) For level 3 we have the story
It's Good to Have Friends!
. - Who is Rudolf? The answer for the last question can be 'yes', and the reason is that the child was good enough to have Santa bringing around gifts this Christmas, in which case Rudolf will come along too, as he's pulling Santa's sleigh. Is your child that good? OK, that's great! 3) For level 4, we have
Sharing Your Rainbow with Your Friends
. - Who could not sleep? Grammar ~ Linking Sentences [2]As we covered talking about the three ways of linking sentences last time, we shall now look into a couple of sentence linking for other reasons. We shall consider ways of expressing time and cause/reason/result in this issue, leaving other reasons for future issues. 1) Linking sentences to express time i) We can have two sentences in coordination, in order to express a sequence of events. These sentences are equal in value. For example, if you enter a room and utter either of the sentences to an audience, they will understand both sentences equally. [Co] [The doctor consulted the old man patiently] and [(then) he prescribed some medicine for his stomach ulcer.] ii) We can have the case of two sentences in subordination, in which case one of them depends on the other one in order to make sense. [Sub] [After he paid for his new car in cash,] [Tony took it for a ride around the Eifel Tower, to impress his girlfriend to bits.] If you came into a room and uttered the first sentence, nobody would understand the complete meaning of the situation, they listened to the second sentence, you see. iii) A third situation for expressing a time connection between two sentences is the adverbial link: [Ad] He talked on the phone for a long time. Then he turned to his wife, with a sad look on his face. 2) Linking sentences to express cause/reason/result The same applies in the case of a message expressing cause, reason and result, as follows: [Co] [He lost his job, due to the recession] and [(therefore) he had to look for another job.] [Sub] [Since there were children in the room], [the visitor controlled his language more than he would normally.] [Sub] [The two boys had a walkie-talkie], [so (that) they could speak to each other from their own bedrooms, after bedtime.] [Ad] [In China, the bride and groom usually have two weddings: one for the extended family and friends on the bride’s side and one for those relatives and friends on the groom’s side.] [They therefore have double the fun, as well as the headache for organising two big parties, instead of one.] I remember going to a few weddings in China, so I’ll take this opportunity to wish my friends a long and happy life together yet again, should they happen to read this lesson. Next time we shall look at linking sentences for expressing conditions: some positive conditions, some negative and some with a contrast – wait and see. Website Design ~ The Site Content BlueprintImagine the blueprint for your website like the blueprint an architect creates for the design of a building. The contractor does not start construction of the building when the architect has the plans only half done. He waits for the entire set of plans so that he has an idea of what needs to go here, what there, when he needs concrete, etc. In the same way, you will be planning out which keywords will go where (TIER 2 or TIER 3, and, if needed, TIER 4), and how much you will be writing about each topic - how many TIER 3s for each TIER 2. The diagram below will give you a good idea of the SBI website structure, where KFCP stands for Keyword focused content page, i.e. a page on which the content is focused around one of your chosen keywords.
Another thing you need to understand before we step on to the full brainstorm process for your site concept blueprint is the importance of Search Intent and a Site Concept Blueprint. As you brainstorm and research to fully develop and define your Site Concept, consider the search intent for each keyword in your Master Keyword List. This will help you understand which keywords are likely to earn you some income, and which would be "filler" keywords to help you grow your site and your authority in your niche. To understand search intent, think of a person who is searching for "anguilla villas" - are they looking for info about villas ("informational" search) or do they want to rent one ("transactional" search)? You could write a wonderful page on "anguilla villas," but if folks just want a list of them, you are not giving them what they want. Understand what each search term is getting at, what the person using that term really wants. These are some types of sites that primarily show up for each particular search term, and rest assured that no specific "type" of page is good or bad: • Informational sites, with a Wikipedia listing All this information is included in the SBI Website Building Course that comes with the SBI system and guides you all along your building process. Next time we shall continue with the complete brainstorm process on a site concept.
This Is It, Folks!I hope you find this information useful and not too confusing. Even though you're in the stage of building on it, have patience at this point in your learning and you'll be able to reap the fruit of your work later on, whichever aspect of our lessons you are concentrating on. Please feel free to comment and suggest your ideas by replying to this email - I look forward to hearing from you. Have fun, as always! Lucia da Vinci Founder of My English Club |
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