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If you are from a country which doesn't speak English as a first language and want to improve your English language skills without too much effort, then I have some advice for you.
Remember that you need three things to speak any language: 1. Vocabulary 2. Pronunciation (not accent) 3. Grammar. 4. (Optional) Practice. Let's see how we can improve these three! Vocabulary can be increased by working on the policy that whenever you see a new word, learn it. This is based on the logic that if a word has come before you, chances are that this word is a common word and that it may come before you again. First time it was not your fault because you were not educated, but second time you better know that word. So learn the meaning, see what it means in your native language, see its alternatives, and see one or two example sentences. Once you do it, forget about this event and your mind will bring up this word at the time when its usage will be needed. The word gets saved in your brain and is retrieved automatically. Pronunciation means the standard way to speak a word. You don't need to speak like the British or Americans or Australians etc. Their different styles of speaking are called accents. What we need to learn is the pronunciation, which for example tells us how long the "o" sound should be called, or should this particular "a" be called "aa" or "ay", etc. It is better to visit some dictionary websites or apps to see how Americans and British pronounce a word. In case of different pronunciations, both are correct and you can choose to speak either. This learning can be done easily while doing the Vocabulary part. Grammar may sound tricky, but is easier to learn in the presence of internet. All you have to do is to expose yourself to correct sentences. Think how a little child manages to speak the language of his parents before going to school. It is because he is exposed to correct sentences spoken by the parents and hence his mind knows what sound he should make when he wants food or when the nature calls. This kind of learning doesn't stop with age. We can also learn by reading correct sentences so that our mind will know the right manner to communicate. Correct sentences are found everywhere on the internet. The comments on Facebook, 9gag and other sites are a great source besides boring but educational articles. English movies coupled with English subtitles can also be used as an example. If you are reading this you may already know about tenses, forms of verbs, etc. When you are reading something, think how the writer has applied these things in his sentences. If you are more curious then a quick Google search can quench your thirst for knowledge within minutes. Practicing helps in applying what you have learned (Note that there is no stage where you have learnt everything). So how do we practice in a country full of non English speakers? If you don't have someone to talk with in English, you can imagine a scenario from your day happening in America, and imagine yourself among Americans in that scenario. What would you say to those Americans? Would you make a funny comment about the situation? Would you tell in detail about something if an American asks you curiously? Try to make sentences in your head like you're speaking to these Americans. This practice may not make your grammar better, but it will allow you to speedily make sentences. You will need to speedily make correct sentences when you will use English in real life. Regular practice like this can significantly boost your confidence and prepare you for the real life application of English. So make smart use of your smartphone and download some dictionaries today. Feel free to write your thoughts about this in the comments and share this post with friends.
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I saw international students struggling with using the terms "you and I", "you and me", "Jake and I", etc.
I learned a trick which makes it very easy to choose. Here's how it's done: If you can correctly use the words I and ME in a sentence then you can find out which one to use in a sentence containing more persons. Let's see an example. The sentence is: John and __ will go to Dubai. Now to fill the blank, try to imagine the sentence without any person other than yourself, that is to say, exclude John from this sentence and then fill the blank. The sentence may turn out to be either a) Me will go to Dubai, or b) I will go to Dubai. Now ask yourself, which one is grammatically correct? If you can identify the correct sentence, then use the term used in that sentence to fill the blank in the problem sentence. Here, the option (b) is correct. So the solution to our problem sentence would be: John and I will go to Dubai. Let's have more examples! Mom has instructed you and ___ to do the chores. There are two possibilities: a) Mom has instructed me to do the chores. b) Mom has instructed I to do the chores. The correct sentence is (a). Hence the solution is: Mom has instructed you and me to do the chores. ___ and Junaid are best friends. Working: a) I am the best friend. b) Me is the best friend. Correct answer: Option (a) is grammatically correct. Solution: I and Junaid are best friends. They've selected ___, John, and Jane for the competition. Working: a) They've selected I... b) They've selected me... Correct answer: Option (b) is correct. Solution: They've selected me, John, and Jane for the competition. Now you know how it's done. Just remember the method and you should not have an issue again. If this post helped you, do share this post on Facebook, etc. and write your opinion in the comments below. This post is going to tell you how we can get a contact's information using the phone number. First of all we need to obtain permission to read contacts. We must put the following in the Code Editor
Now, we need to make our own POJO (Plain Old Java Object) class. To avoid confusion with the real contacts database, we will name our class "Item.java" - which is an object for each contact 'item' in our app. This class will do all the background work so the part where we will actually query the name, photo, etc. will look clean. I have separated the difficult code into methods to ensure that the code remains easily readable Here's the code for the class named Item.java : Whenever we need to obtain the information of a contact, we need to make an instance of our 'item' object. Then we can query the relevant information from the item. This is done as follows: When we invoke getName(context), the following code is executed: Here, two more methods are being executed i.e. getNumber() and getContactDisplayNameByNumber(String number, Context context). The method getNumber() will return the String number which we used to create the Item. THE CODE FOR getContactDisplayNameByNumber IS AS FOLLOWS: Code Editor
This will return the name, or if the contact is not found, then it will return null. Now going back to the method getName(). When a name, or null, is returned, the method getName() checks if a null value is returned. If the returned value is null, it assigns the value of number to the name, so that the application will show something useful instead of showing a blank space or the text "null". Similarly, if we want to get the photo of the contact, we will query like this: This method getContactImageBitmap is found in Item.java; Before we go into that, we need to understand that there are two kinds of photos available: The thumbnail image and the display photo. Some contacts may have the low resolution thumbnail but they don't have the large display photo. So we want to get the photo of the highest quality which is available. In order to do this we will first look for the high resolution photo, and if that is not available then we will fall back to the thumbnail image. If that is not available as well then we will return a placeholder image which should be found in our drawable folder. Following two methods return the big display photo and thumbnail photo respectively: By using these methods we will get a reliable photo for our application. Now that we know how to query the basics, you may have noticed that the methods getContactIDByNumber and getContactDisplayNameByNumber are almost identical, with only one difference i.e. As we can see, the column name is the factor which tells the device which part of data to return. So if you want to look up another field, just find out the column name from Google search and query it.
So this started on the popular website called 9GAG when a user asked people to share their favourite quotes. This opened floodgates of quotes which made us ride an emotional rollercoaster as we continued to read the comments pointing out every genre of quotes. Have a look starting with the popular Dr House. "Somewhere out there is a tree , tirelessly producing oxygen for you to breathe. You owe it an apology" And here the fun starts: not everything in the internet is true This one's concerning though "The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts,meanwhile the stupid ones are full of confidence" So deep I can see Adele rolling in: No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible ~ Voltaire I approve of this one! "Everybody dies, but not everybody lives" And this one is definitely my favorite: THE FOOD IS READY !!! - my mom These reactions are no doubt hilarious, but we know that our readers are also filled with similar favourites. Do share your favorite quotes in the comments section below and may be they'll be posted somewhere someday. Now sing along like a good kid as we conclude the article with the mother of all quotes :) We did it ! |