Let’s learn new vocabulary through reading…….

Buffet Revival

The rise of the buffet restaurant

When was the last time you went to a buffet restaurant? According to a recent survey, they are becoming more and more popular. But why?

Part of the reason is that they are cheap. And with the recession, most people want to save a bit of money. Some buffets have some incredible offers, “All you can eat for £10” says the Fryburn Inn in Wokesmaster, England. “Unlimited portions for just £7.99!” exclaims Tayburns. And, “Eat as much as you like for just £5!” boasts Kormas of London with its Indian-food buffet.

Buffets also offer quantity. “I always have the buffet breakfast on the ferry from Portsmouth to Santander. I can sit there till lunchtime stuffing myself, drinking coffee and watching dolphins. After that, I don’t eat again for 8 hours!” explained Mark Jones, who often travels to Spain by boat. “I always a buffet lunch on Fridays,” explained Daniel Carrington, a city worker. “It’s great fun as there’s just so much food to choose from. And there are no limits!”

Buffets offer variety, too. The Dragon King Buffet in Manchester offers dinners more than 101 dishes. There are meat and fish dishes, cold and hot choices, and sweet and savoury items to choose from. “I loveit because you mix and match,” explained Ellis Harper. “I often put sweet food with meat. My girlfriend thinks it’s disgusting, but I love it.” And another fan said, “I think it’s a brilliant way to make combinations. I often combine salad with pasta, sandwiches, potatoes and lots of meat.”

But not everyone likes buffets. “I hate all the pushing and shoving,” said Sam Paulson. “The food is terrible,” said Harriet Jones. “It’s often cold, and people breathe over it, touch it and do all sorts of horrible things with it.”

“I hate it because it’s all so rushed,” explained Maddison Smithers. “People are trying to eat as much food as they can in as short a time as possible. I don’t find it an enjoyable experience at all. I like to sit down for my meal and eat it calmly and quietly; but at buffets, my husband just stuffs himself – it isn’t pleasant at all. He’s got no control.”

So, what do you think of buffet restaurants? 

Glossary:

a buffet restaurant: a type of restaurant with food placed in a public area. Diner serves themselves.

a survey: a series of questions asked in order to get people’s opinions on things.

a recession: a period of poor economic activity.

to save: if you keep your money, you keep it and don’t spend your money

to boast: if someone “boasts” about something, they say how great/ good/ wonderful it is

a ferry: a boat for taking passengers/ vehicles from one side of a river/ area of water to another – often found in a city by the coast or with a river.

to stuff yourself: to eat a lot of food – so much that you feel very full

a diner: a person who is eating in a restaurant

a dish: a plate of food

savoury: not weet

to mix and match: to create a combination by having a bit of one thing and a bit of another

to shove: to push aggressively

to breathe over: if someone breathes over food, they push air out of their mouth and onto the food

rushed: if something is “rushed,” it happens in a quick, non-calm way

enjoyable: pleasant and nice

a meal: a period of time when you sit down to eat: breakfast, lunch, dinner, etc 

Workshop and Expo on Education

Making Writing Engaging and Accessible to Students

(Elementary to Advanced Levels)

with ELF Erica Balazs and ELF Fabio Coelho 

from Regional English Language Office (RELO)

Embassy of the United States Jakarta

in collaboration with Universitas Negeri Semarang (UNNES)

Session 1

Writing Interesting Long Sentences

(Simple Sentence – Compound Sentences – Complex Sentences)

It seems that students are unable to write long, informative and interesting sentences properly. This is a very quick introduction to some techniques to show students how to use various types of words to improve their sentences. Here we are introducing only adjectives, prepositions showing location, and conjunctions to form compound sentences (formed from 2 independent clauses), but there is much more you can introduce adverbs, prepositions that show time, conjunctions to form complex sentences (formed from 1 independent clause and 1 or more dependent clauses), verb tenses to describe time, and ..

These activities are best done in small groups, with students doing individual work when writing, but working in groups from brainstorming, and perhaps, peer review.

1. Complete the sentences from the words below.

                                                                                                  Blouse

                                                                Sleeping

                                          Hit

                                                                                                                                         Ice cream

                London

The cat is _________________.

The man loves to eat _____________________.

She didn’t buy the ______________________.

________________ is a city.

The girl ____________________ three home runs.

2. Brainstorm some adjectives.

Black                  ______________           _______________        _____________

Dirty                   ______________           _______________        _____________

Big                      ______________           _______________        _____________

_______             ______________           _______________        _____________

_______             ______________           _______________        _____________

_______             ______________           _______________        _____________

3. Now, use the adjectives to make longer sentences.

The cat is sleeping

The dirty, big, black cat is sleeping.

4.   Brainstorm some prepositions.

On                      ______________           _______________        _____________

Near                   ______________           _______________        _____________

After                   ______________           _______________        _____________

_______             ______________           _______________        _____________

_______             ______________           _______________        _____________

5.   Now, use the prepositions to make longer, more interesting sentences.

The dirty, big, black cat is sleeping.

The dirty, big, black cat is sleeping on the expensive, white leather sofa.

6.   Brainstorm some conjunctions.

So                      ______________           _______________        _____________

Until                    ______________           _______________        _____________

And                    ______________           _______________        _____________

_______             ______________           _______________        _____________

_______             ______________           _______________        _____________

7.     Use the conjunctions to make even longer sentences.

The dirty, big, black cat is sleeping on the expensive, white leather sofa.

The dirty, big, black cat is sleeping on the expensive, white leather sofa, and the rich, old woman is crying.

8.    Now, write your own 20 word sentences.

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IELTS Short course

IELTS Short course with Mr. Ernest Lada from US

Aziza Restu Febrianto - IELTS Simulation

Writing task 2

Band Score 6.5

 My original handwriting 

Revised version

In many countries such as China, Japan, Brazil, and Indonesia, fixed punishments for people who committed crimes are a really important way to deter crime.  The government hopes that by giving certain fixed punishments to criminals, it can prevent crime.  However, some people have a different view on how to punish criminals.  The reason why criminals commit a particular depends on their motives.  They are considered an important factor in the sentencing process for the sake of protecting a person’s legal rights.

Those who think giving fixed punishments to criminals point out that many crimes harm the victims.  If there is no way to stop crime, people lives will be threatened, which leads to chaos.  In their view, the only way to stop crime is to create a deterrent, and fixed punishments are one solution to this problem.  Once criminals are strictly punished, they will think twice before doing such crimes again.  Not to mention, law enforcement considers this particular method as a great lesson or warning.

On the other hand, people who are concerned about legal rights think there are other ways to fight crime.  Instead of giving fixed punishments such as the death penalty or life in prison for certain serious crimes, the court should actually consider the motives and reasons or even the mental state of the criminal.  It is really important to review the many aspects of each criminal case when giving a court verdict.

In conclusion, I think giving fixed punishments is the best solution for stopping crime and maintaining law and order in society because it makes people obey the laws.   

271 words

My Writing Task 1 Practices

by Aziza Restu Febrianto

February 2015

The table illustrates some date gained by a university bookshop in February 2000.

The data shows three different kinds of books bought by non-book club members in a month. It can be clearly seen from the data that magazines were the most popular books among non-book club members. In contrast, the book club members apparently did not quite like them. There were only 33 books bought by the members.

Compared to Magazines, non-fiction books were the most popular among the book club members. 942 books were sold. As shown in the data, among the non-book members, group of people who like it best were college students (194).

On the other hand, fiction was the least preference among the both different people. The number of the book sold was 151, and only those from college staff and students liked it. College staff (44) and college students (31).

It is clear that these three different books were quite popular among people in university with 3134 books sold.

(165 words)

February 2015

The graph illustrates the data on the rate of children watching TV and listening to radio every day and night reported in 1994.

According to the data, it can easily be seen that radio became so popular in the morning. The number of students listening to radio increased dramatically from 6.00 am to about 8.15 am. However, as is shown in the figures, the percentage of children listening to radio declined gradually after 8.15 from 25% to less than 11%. And it also shows that radio became little popular from afternoon to evening for children.

On the other hand, we can see from the graph that children liked watching TV from afternoon to evening. The data shows that the percentage of children above 4 years old rose significantly after 4 pm and reached a peak at over 45%. However, TV became unpopular after 8.00 pm for children, and the percentage dramatically decreased until 2 am. This was probably because children of age above 4 had a rest and slept early after having a lot of activities all day long before.

(180 words)

April 18, 2015

The pie chart and the figure illustrate the Coca Cola products distribution and share prices from 1996 to 2000 in five different countries.

The pie chart shows that the total products distribution across the five different continents in four years was 17.1 bn with the highest rate intake in the North America (30.7 bn). The second place was Latin America with 25.7 bn, and the three remaining continents were Europe (20.5 bn), Asia (16.4 bn) and Africa and Middle East (7.0 bn) of the total products distribution.

The figure shows the data of Coca Cola share prices from 1996 to 2000. It can be seen from the data that the peak of price was reached in 1998 with the price around 75 dollars. In the beginning of 1996, Coca cola firstly started the price around 32 dollars, and it significantly increased almost 70 dollars in a year. Even though the price slightly declined a bit in several months, the company could successfully push the price and significantly reached 70 dollars before the peak in 1998. However, it shows that the company was not able to maintain the price and it finally dropped gradually from 1998 to 2000. It was shown in the figure that there was an effort to increase the price from 49 dollars to over 56 dollars before 2001.

(220 words)

Just keep writing! ...:) 

Writing Practice 1

Reading as part of writing

One of the techniques of writing successfully in academic environment is to be able to integrate the important points of what you have read into your own writing. To do this, you must have a clear picture of what you have read, and this in itself entails active and focused reading. With academic reading, it is necessary to maintain a constant grip on what the author is saying. Yet many academic texts are densely written in unfamiliar ways, which make them much more difficult to manage than, for example a novel or a magazine article.

Although sometimes there may be reasons why you need to skim-read an article or book, this is likely to be only to get the gist of what is being said, as a way of deciding whether it is appropriate reading material or not. In general, skim-reading is not a particularly useful strategy for a student, but you may well be used to doing this in other contexts, for example, skimming through a newspaper article or surfing the web. Instead of skim-reading, you will be developing ways of concentrating on large chunks of quite dense text and making sense of them.

Even though you may only be reading for short burst of time, it is likely that you will have to concentrate far more intensely on academic reading material than, for example, when reading for pleasure. You don’t necessarily have to work in the library, but you will need to decide what type of location and atmosphere suits you best, and establish conditions that are conducive to effective study.

The initial stumbling block that most students face is choosing their reading. The first thing to do is to consult the reading list you have been given for books and articles that seem relevant to your particular assignment. Doing a library search, by keywords or subjects, is also useful if the references on your reading list are already on loan from the library. Your tutor should also be able to advise you as to which are the most relevant publications or websites.

Writing practice (Day 1)

 

Typing on net book screen

Writing 1

Independent writing

30 minutes

227 words

Topic: Do you agree with the following statement? Advertisement can tell you a lot about a country. Use specific reasons and examples to support your opinion.

I disagree with a statement that we can get a lot of information about a country through advertisement because it is not the only way we can do for that. The followings are some reasons I provide.

Firstly, advertisement just gives us general information about a certain country not the details. In order to get people interested in visiting a country, advertisement plays a very important role. The information given by the advertisement has a strong effect to make people curious about what the country looks like. Therefore, it the information in the advertisement does not need to be detailed. 

Secondly, we can get a lot of detailed information from other people. We will find a lot of things about a country from the people who live in it through chats and asking some questions about it. We do not need to visit the country to meet the people. We can just ask our friends who come from the country or experience visiting the country before.  

Thirdly, the information of a country can also be gained by accessing the official website of a country. To get a lot of details, internet is really helpful. We can actually visit the country official website or some other sites which provide information related to it. In addition, they have some menus we can click and access to get what we need.  

Bloody weekends ahead: TOEFL iBT preparation

 

One step closer to TOEFL iBT test

(Day 1)

In order to get an opportunity to study overseas or to get a promising job, we need to meet the qualifications needed by the institution or company we would like to apply. Some developed institutions or companies usually require the candidates to have good standard language competence before considering the other components of qualifications that they have.

Language competence is measured by the score of TOEFL, IELTS, GRE, or GMAT that the candidates have. It means that the candidates have to make sure they take one of the English tests, depending on which test the institution or company needs before applying. And certainly, each institution or company has different standard score of language test for all candidates.

I believe that there are always many overseas studies including scholarships and job opportunities   offered every year. It is obviously a great idea to get myself prepared to the qualifications that the institutions or companies commonly set in advance by the end of the year. Hence, taking TOEFL iBT test is the first thing I need to consider before thinking of the other qualifications. To get the score which is above the average is a challenge. And it is going to be my first experience, for I never took this sort of test before. I firstly assumed that the test would be like the other similar one that I have taken before, TOEFL PBT (Paper Based TOEFL). But in fact, it is totally different after I searched information about it through friends and internet. The basic thing that makes them different is the TOEFL iBT requires computer and internet for the test, but the TOEFL PBT does not. There are no speaking and writing sections in TOEFL PBT. And in TOEFL iBT, structure or grammar section is not included.  

Since I am not quite familiar with this sort of test, the best thing I need to do is just getting myself well prepared. Taking a TOEFL iBT placement test as a simulation in advance will be very helpful. Besides, buying some books, downloading materials and videos about the tips and strategies from reliable websites and doing some exercises and practices are going to be the only actions to take during the preparation time before taking the real test. I plan to take the test next year by January 2015. Therefore, I actually have three months of preparation. By a consultation with some experienced people and the institution which provide TOEFL test and its preparation, I decided to take a simulation test within this month. And the date is November 22, 2014. And it’s time to work hard. Wish me luck, guys!      

My first book..:)