All The Best To MUET Candidates!

Wishing You All The Best! I would like to wish YOU ALL the best in the MUET Mid Year Tests for 2011 that starts tomorrow, 04 April 2011. I hope all of you have got rid of your nervousness, qualms and the butterflies in your stomachs! I hope you will not sleep too late tonight as tomorrow some of you will be taking the MUET Speaking 800/2 test. Please be early as the test starts early. You will have to be at the MUET quarantine room by 07:30 am as you will have your attendance noted. Then you will be assigned to your Speaking groups of fours. Do not forget to have your IC and exam slips that you have obtained from the MPM - either the official exam slip posted to you or downloaded through the net and printed.  Please treat this Test as though it is a very important interview for you. Show your best impression and well rested the night before. Have your breakfast before you enter the Quarantine room. If you are the "cold engine" type try to engage in a conversation with somebody in the room where you can "warm up your engine" - that is you get yourself as a person ready mentally and emotionally for the test in the next room which is the Speaking Test room proper. With a "warmed up engine", I hope you will be more creative and will be able to come up with ideas that you can talk about in the test. In task A make full use of the two minutes speaking time. Fill up the two minutes with your speech. It is not time to keep quite. In task B please get involved in the discussion and try to help your fellow candidates that seems to be hesitant or "lost". There are marks for participation, there are marks for your content and there are marks for the way you convey your spoken words. Of course none for being quite.  All the best to you!

Vocabulary In Context

Contextual Clues This is the installment for the article posting I made sometime ago (Friday, June 18, 2010) on vocabulary in context where we can make an educated guess on the meaning of a new word. We do that by a strategy where we look for contextual clues that take us to the meaning of the word. Definition As Contextual Clues In this example the writer of an article or journal uses a strategy of giving the definition of the new word or phrase so that the reader will straightaway get the meaning of the new word. Example: "Everyone in the working world is a potential candidate for job burnout. It involves a long period of frustration with work, a loss of motivation that lingers, physical, mental and emotional exhaustion and poor health on the part of the employee." Can you pinpoint what is the new word or phrase in the excerpt quoted above? Yes, the phrase is job burnout. The writer uses the word 'involves' to introduce the meaning of that phrase. Therefore, when the employee has job burnout, he is frustrated, loses motivation; has physical, mental and emotional exhaustion with poor health. The writer knows that some people do not know the meaning of that phrase. So, he gives the definition of that phrase.