Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[kerstin]

1.
There are only two *generations* of students in English department, so that the very first class is only in the second year.

Does that mean it's the second year after it was founded?

2.
My department puts more focus on *verbal communication* than filmmaking.

How do I indicate that it's a skill more related to making radio programs than just verbal training in general?

3. *details=contacts*?

=facts about somebody, e.g. his or her name and address

4.
The speciality of my school is foreign language learning, you should learn a language you are interested in.

Is that a good way to put it?

[redset]

1. A generation usually refers to people born within a certain number of years of each other, and one generation contains people who are old enough to be the parents of people from the next generation. So you're part of one generation, your parents are part of another generation, your grandparents are part of yet another generation... Like different cycles of life, if you want to think of it that way.

Anyway, we wouldn't really use that word to talk about people who are one year apart in age, but the second part of that sentence does say that it's the second year after the English department started to teach students. A better word than generation might be year, which is used to refer to all of the students who started at the school in the same year. Some Americans might say class, but that's ambiguous to me (a year of students may be divided into several classes, which are taught as separate groups). Maybe someone can think of a better word here.

2. 'Radio broadcasting' is a general term you could use, but it depends on exactly what aspects you're talking about (is it just verbal communication which trainee presenters would focus on? Or does it also involve the technical aspects of running a radio programme, such as using equipment and setting up a studio?). Since you mentioned filmmaking (which is a broad subject), I'd guess that something like 'radio broadcasting' would be fine. If you like you could explain exactly what your department does, and we could try to be more specific.

3. Contacts are people you know or who you may get in contact with in the future, details are the specific bits of information about those people (name, address, age, email address, maybe even a photograph or information on their eye colour). You can also say 'contact details', which could mean 'details about each contact' but is usually understood to mean 'details of how to contact this person' - address, phone number etc.

4. That's fine - you could also say something like 'my school specializes in foreign languages/foreign language education'. I think a semicolon would be better than a comma though: 'The speciality of my school is foreign language learning; you should learn a language you are interested in.'

A good thing to do in English is to avoid repeating words if you can help it, so if you say 'foreign language learning' it would be better to replace the learn in 'you should learn a language' with a synonym - a word with the same meaning in this case: study or take would work great here. Avoiding repetition like this makes your English sound more advanced

[kerstin]

Is it called 'Video broadcasting" as opposed 'Radio broadcasting'?

Thanks