| Hi, everybody. Welcome back to Ask Alisha, the weekly series where you ask me questions and I answer them. Maybe. |
| Let's get to your first question this week. First question this week comes from Sony Kossia. Hi, Sony or Sonny. |
| I hope I said your name correctly. Sony asks, what's the difference between earphones and headphones? |
| Oh, the answer is in the name. So earphones go inside your ear. |
| So they're very small things that sit right inside your ear. |
| Headphones, on the other hand, go over the top of your head and cover your ear. |
| So yes, technically headphones cover your ears, but headphones go over the top of your head and cover your ear. |
| So they're much bigger like this. |
| You might see these in like a recording studio or maybe somebody who really likes headphone fashion has a big pair of these. |
| But earphones are the small ones that go inside your ear. |
| So now when you want to be super specific the next time you are shopping online, |
| you can make sure that you search for the correct term. |
| So that's the difference between earphones and headphones for everybody watching. Great. |
| Okay, let's go on to our next question. Next question comes from AKM Tyfer Hassan. Hi, should I call you Tyfer? |
| Thanks for sending your question. |
| Tyfer asks, is there any rule relating to the definite article usage before a season's name? |
| Is it the summer or only summer? |
| If it's only summer, then is there any rule like the plus the season's name plus the season, for example, the summer season? |
| Or is there any kind of exception? |
| My teacher said, no article is used before summer, winter, autumn, late autumn, spring, and so on. |
| Yeah, this is a really interesting question. So there's not a rule necessarily. |
| So there are different ways to express seasons. |
| In this case, let's stick with your example of seasons like the summer or the winter or the spring. |
| The reason somebody might choose to use an article here, like before the summer as in your example, can be the rhythm of the sentence. |
| You might notice this in like poetry or other kinds of writing where the rhythm is very important to the writer. |
| So they might have a sentence like, the sky is so beautiful in the summer. |
| So this sentence is correct. You could also say, the sky is so beautiful in summer. |
| Both sentences are correct, but somebody might choose to use the summer for usually rhythm or stylistic purposes. |
| So this is the first thing that comes to mind when I read your examples. |
| There isn't necessarily a rule for when to use it. |
| It's kind of up to the writer, the person that is preparing the information. |
| We can do the same thing with all of the other seasons, as well as the ones that you mentioned, too, about like late autumn and like spring or early spring, that kind of thing. |
| Like all the flowers bloomed in the early spring this year. |
| You could say that or you could say the flowers bloomed in early spring this year. |
| Both of those are correct. We would say both of those. |
| But again, the reason for that would be just depending on the writer, depending on kind of the rhythm that they want to use and the sort of feel. |
| For me personally, including the before the season will sound a little bit, a little bit only older or maybe like old fashioned almost. |
| It sounds a little bit more poetic. |
| It's not how usually I personally would speak, but depending again on the person who is speaking or who is writing, you might hear that kind of choice. |
| It might be kind of a personal preference. |
| So if you're talking like an everyday conversation about, say, your vacation plans, personally, I would not choose to use the before my plans. |
| I would not say like, oh, what are you going to do in the summer this year? |
| It sounds a little too like formal, I guess. |
| There's a certain level of formality that kind of comes with the use of the in that situation. |
| Or what are your plans for the winter this year? |
| It just sounds a little bit too formal, kind of old to me personally. |
| So yes, you might hear this from time to time. |
| No, there isn't necessarily a specific rule for when to use, when not to use. |
| As I said before, it tends to be more of like a rhythmic or stylistic choice or a personal choice on the part of the speaker or the writer. |
| So I hope that this answers your question about whether or not we can use the before a season name. |
| So thanks very much for this super interesting question. |
| I hope that that answers it. |
| OK, let's move on to your next question. |
| Next question comes from Ayaan. |
| Hi Ayaan, I hope I said your name correctly. |
| Ayaan asked, normally when I watch a video or learn new phrases or vocabulary, I forget to remember them and I have a lot of words to recap. |
| So for me, using flashcards is quite stressful. |
| What can I do? |
| OK, so if you're using videos and maybe other kinds of like TV or movies, perhaps. |
| Yeah. How do you remember the new phrases that you pick up? |
| How do you remember new vocabulary words and so on? |
| I know it can be a lot of work to do like vocabulary flashcards for everything in a movie. |
| So I have a couple pieces of advice for this specific situation. |
| One is to break the video or to break the movie into smaller pieces. |
| So for example, if you watch a 30 minute video and you try to write all of the new vocabulary words, that's a lot. |
| It's really overwhelming. |
| If I had to do that even in English, my native language, I would feel tired and I would feel stressed. |
| So I would recommend to start, take just a small part of the video, take like maybe one to three minutes, maybe, and just choose the words from that. |
| Maybe choose your favorite part of the video or choose maybe the most challenging part, the part that you're like, I don't understand this. |
| Maybe choose that part that's most challenging for you and focus on that first. |
| So first, my recommendation would be to split that into smaller pieces for you. |
| You could do this with a movie, you could do this with a YouTube video, with a TV show that you like. |
| So first step for me would be to just choose a small part of the video to work on. |
| That would be number one. |
| Two, the second thing that I would do personally for me, like flashcards, I use them from time to time nowadays. |
| But for me, something that really works well is keeping a notebook, actually. |
| So I can, I have kind of like the system that I've made in my notebook where I keep like a column of new vocabulary words. |
| So I write my new vocabulary word in the left side of my notebook like this. |
| And then in the next column, I create another column and I write the translation of that. |
| And then something that I've done since I think university is when I want to study those words that I learned just from that piece of media. |
| This could be for a book, it could be a TV show or whatever. |
| I fold the piece of paper so that I can't see the original words. |
| I can only see the translation that I have in my native language. |
| And then in the next column, I have to write, I have to try to remember what was that word. |
| And so I put that word, or my best guess, in the next column. |
| And then I can open the paper and check to see like, oh, did I have it right? |
| No. Okay. |
| So and then I practice this way by folding my paper so that I always have to either recall the original word in the native language or I have to remember the translation of that word. |
| So this was a really, really helpful study strategy for me because there are lots of different parts of practice that are happening here. |
| So I get to practice writing. |
| Of course, I can practice writing the word in the language I'm studying and I practice the translation. |
| I can practice like remembering the meaning of that word. |
| And I'm physically writing the word down as well, which really helps with memorization. |
| So in my case, what I did in my notebook, in my case, the example, the most recent example of this, I was doing this for a book. |
| So I wrote the page number in my notebook and said, these are the vocabulary words from this page. |
| And I also highlighted the vocabulary word in the book that I was reading at the time. |
| So I could quickly look at that page in the book and quickly find the new vocabulary word. |
| And then I could check in my notebook and go, oh, yeah, that's what that word means and quiz myself that way. |
| So I had this very kind of simple system. |
| But I was very easily able to check the page that it was on and to see kind of where the word belonged in the sentence and on the page too. |
| So this is something that really, really helped me keeping a notebook instead of flashcards because that helped me to kind of have a context for those vocabulary words. |
| For me, when I learn like new words from media, it feels a little bit strange to put them into flashcards, like with maybe a bunch of other words that I learned recently. |
| But if I have a notebook with like, you know, a few pages that are only from that piece of media, I can remember that word and the related words much more easily. |
| So this is something else that might help you do. |
| So those are the two maybe big tips that come to mind for me. |
| And that's what's worked for me and in my own experience. |
| So maybe it'll work for you. |
| So to review that, first, I would say make smaller things for you to study first. |
| So make just like a one minute or a three minute section of the video to study. |
| And two, I would suggest maybe keeping a notebook or even just a piece of paper that you only use for studying that specific video or that specific media type. |
| So maybe this will help you. |
| I know that it definitely helped me. |
| And it also makes it really easy to review as well. |
| You can go and review all of those specific words only really easily with this kind of system. |
| So I hope that that helps you. |
| It helps me a lot. |
| I know. So thanks very much for sending that super interesting question along. |
| All right. Great. So I hope that that answers your question. |
| So that is everything that I have for this week. |
| Thank you, as always, for sending your great quest. |
| Thanks very much for watching this week's episode of Ask Alisha. |
| And I will see you again next time. |
| Bye. |
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