An ESL blog

Vocabulary is one of the critical part of language learning process. In English there are so many words which have many different meanings other than we read in a dictionary. Since most of the English words used as a term in certain fields. For example take the word “Gain”. We can find the meaning of this word in dictionary. But when it is used in “Market Gain” the meaning is more specific in financial terms. I found some Marketing-Sales vocabulary in this page. Very Useful

Among the immigrants in Canada;Cricket and Soccer are the most favourite sports but Hockey,Baseball and Basket ball are the most famous sports among the main stream population. But in recent years there are many Cricket,Soccer teams and leagues blooming among the immigrants. During th Soccer World Cup Season it’s amazing to see vehicles with Colorful flags of various nation from Portugal to Brazil.

But world cup Cricket doesn’t get much attention as Soccer does. I came across a helpful tool for Cricket fans. It’s a firefox addon. It updates the scores of your favorite team in the status bar of your firefox browser. You can change your favorite team with a single click. Here is the link for download the addon.
If you don’t use firefox. Download it here.

Taking TOEFL test is one of the most important things for anyone who learns English as a second language. Most if not all of the Universities and Post Secondary Institutions accept it as a standard for one’s English competency.
Once the computer based test is introduced TOEFL is scored out of 300. In Canada the TOEFL requirement varies between Universities. Most prestigious Universities ask for 250 with a 5 for the Essay.

I took it three years ago and got 264 with 4.5 for the Essay. When I started to preparing for this, I realized that the listening part is going to be the most difficult section than others, so I practiced a lot on it. There are some free resources available in the TOEFL website. There isn’t lots of material but it closely resembles the actual exam and a great tool for preparation.

Personally I didn’t take any courses for that.I prepared myself by doing the listening section over and over again with the Free CD and I also practiced the Essays many times as well. For those who don’t read much in English start the habit early as possible. In my point of view reading section may take much time in the test. Practice makes perfect. It will be helpful if start earlier practicing to read. Here is the link for the official TOEFL website.If you ask for the free CD while registration they will send it for you.

Related posts:
TOEFL preparation material

Many people I have seen in Canada who drive Taxi or work as labours have either medical or Engineering degrees from their own country. When they apply for jobs, employers ask for the Canadian work experience in Canada. This is the reason why they do not get respectable profession in their own field of interest. How would employers expect a new immigrant to have work experience in Canada when no one gives them a first job? People.com give some insights with some statistics in this article. They are not promising….!
*Low-income rates among immigrants during their first full year in Canada were 3.5 times higher than those of Canadian-born citizens
*Two years later, the low-income rates were 3.2 times higher. Both numbers are higher than that in the 1990s.
*Nearly 50 percent of visible minority respondents with foreign educational credentials felt their employers did not recognize their credentials as being on par with Canadian equivalent degrees, diplomas or certificates.
*New immigrants continue to be one of the poorest groups of the country, whose low-income rates have risen to more than 3 times higher than local-born Canadians after 2000.

On the bright side it also says that the government would invest 3 million Canadian dollars (2.5 million U.S. dollars), just to find out the reason why skilled immigrants have trouble finding the right jobs.