Types of student loans

Types of student loans

There are several types of loans available to students. The simplest categorization is into federal student loans and private loans. Federally funded loans are administered initially through the US Department of Education's Federal Student Aid programs, and are usually the easiest to get student loan consolidation services for. These federal programs disburse about $60 billion a year in loans, work-study support and grants. Stafford loans are the most common form of federal loans for students, but there are a variety of other federal payment plans - among them military / ROTC plans to pay for college.

Private student loans are administered by standard lending institutions. Among the most common are Citibank student loans and the Sallie Mae Signature student loans. These lenders are basically providing unsecured (or in some cases secured) loans to you as a student, and will most often charge higher interest rates than their federal counterparts.

Private and federal loans, along with scholarships, can be combined to fund your education. However, it's important that when it comes time to consolidate student loans, you do not mix the two types together. You should always consolidate your federal loans first, then separately consolidate private student loan debt. The benefits of consolidating your federal loans include: a lower interest rate (usually, but keep in mind that interest rates change every July 1), increasing the time for loan repayment to 30 years which reduces your monthly costs, and reducing the number of lending institutions you send checks to every month. For a more complete discussion of this topic and consolidation eligibility criteria, visit our page on how to consolidate student loans. Medical student loans fall into a special class, and are discussed on our medical school loans page.

Trends for student loans

Nearly 50% of recent college graduates took out student loans, with an average borrowed around $10,000 (1). Until recently, student loan interest rates ran between 6-8%. Recently, though, rates have fallen very low. As of fall 2003, Stafford loan interest rates were in 3-4% range (2).

Students who currently have loans, either a single loan or multiple loans, have a variety of options for reducing their payments and indebtedness. Because interest rates have fallen, loans can be consolidated or in some cases refinanced. When you're considering refinancing student loans or student loan consolidation, you need to compare interest rates before you consolidate federal student loans.

Effects of student debt

Like any debt, student loans can influence your credit and your future decisions. Students who borrowed a substantial amount for college (more than $5000) are less likely to pursue higher education (1). In addition, student loan debt that exceed 8% of your income can be seen negatively when your credit gets assessed for future loans (this is especially true if you have one or more defaulted student loans).

The beneficial effects of games on language learning

Games can help to learn a foreign language
(The beneficial effects of games on language learning)

Games have long been used in foreign language teaching but some teachers and students may still view them with suspicion. They may think that games are just a waste of time or just a means of filling in, for example, the last fifteen or ten minutes of a class period. However, a thorough understanding of the relative merits and uses of language games will dispel such misconceptions. In fact, the use of games proves to be a good idea because of its following major contributions to the teaching and learning of foreign languages.

First, games can increase the amount of student practice and participation. As games are often played in pairs or teams they create favorable conditions for pair work or group work to take place. Since these two forms of student grouping provide students with more opportunity to use the language (with students initiating their turns-at-talk instead of waiting for them to be nominated by the teacher) it is right to say that games intended for groups of two or more than two students can increase student talking time. As far as second or foreign language acquisition is concerned, any increase in student talking time, big or small, is significant because it will help develop students’ language competence.

Second, games can generate and increase motivation, a vital factor to students’ success in language learning. A common reason for the use of games in language teaching is that they are an effective ways to interest students. Indeed, games are capable of involving students if they are entertaining, intriguing and challenging. And nearly all learners enjoy playing games or want to have fun while studying regardless of their age or level. To play games students have to rely on themselves and cooperate among themselves. It is the principle of self-reliance, cooperation and joint learning that awakes and maintains students’ interest in the lesson. As interest is a main ingredient of motivation it can be concluded that games contribute much to providing motivation to students. And of course, once students are highly motivated, they will likely study better.

Most importantly, games give meaningful practice in any of the four skills at any level of ability or in any stage of the teaching process. It is true that a library search will yield a great number of games that have been designed for students at different levels from elementary to advanced. More over, these games are intended for the practice of the four skills, namely reading, speaking, listening and writing. In addition, games can be used at any stage in language teaching and learning as warm-up activities or activities aimed at accurate reproduction and controlled or free practice. Some well-known or commonly used books of games are Communication Games series compiled by Jill Hadfield for three different levels: elementary, intermediate and advanced; Reading Games and Writing Games, both by Charles and Jill Hadfield directed at intermediate to advanced learners of Eglish; Play Games with English Henemann series including games, puzzles and quizzes for beginners and pre-intermediate learners. What is more important, games create meaningful contexts for language practice. Initially, students have to make sure that they understand the rules of the game. This requires reading or listening comprehension of the instructions as set out in the book or explained by the teacher. Subsequently, students have to discuss with their friends to solve the problem presented by the game. They have to use the language they are learning to express their opinions and to exchange ideas to reach their goal. Most of the time, their communication is based on an information gap or opinion gap, thus replicating real life communication. Games are therefore said to provide meaningful practice as students have to read, listen, speak and write for a clear purpose.

In conclusion, the analysis above shows that language games make significant contributions to students’ learning a foreign language. The value of language games lies not only in the great number of games that have been invented or in the variety of levels they serve but in the useful and purposeful language practice they provide. That is why teachers should make optimal use of games in their language teaching to increase students’ work and motivation and to offer them meaningful practice. Provided that teachers can select or design and organize good games in terms of language and type of participation, they will achieve these worthy aims.

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How can a teacher help students enlarge their vocabulary?

Ways to help students enlarge their vocabulary

It is a self-evident truth that a good command of a language requires a knowledge of both its grammar and vocabulary as structural patterns serve as building blocks that hold lexical items together. Therefore, in addition to teaching grammatical rules, English teachers must help their students enlarge their vocabulary. This will not come as a daunting task to language teachers if they know that they can offer assistance to their students in their vocabulary learning and vocabulary expansion in the following ways.

Teachers can first help by raising students’ awareness of the importance of vocabulary learning and expansion. As can be seen, not all students are fully conscious of the necessity of having a wide vocabulary of English. Some students may emphasize the acquisition of linguistic structures over that of vocabulary because the former, in their opinion, can help them operate effectively inn English. However, it is not difficult to find cases in which it is words, not grammatical structures that help one get his message across. For example, a speaker can still make himself understood even though he produces a grammatically incorrect sentence like ‘Yesterday I meet mine old friend’. Therefore, language teachers should give priority to making students aware of the important role that vocabulary plays in language learning. Only when students realize the significance of knowing the lexis of a language will they make effort to learn words and increase their vocabulary.

Second, teachers can help students enrich their vocabulary by teaching words in context. The reasons for this technique are not difficult to understand. For one thing, the environment in which a word occurs with other words that will decide which meaning of the word is intended. Lexical items should thus not be presented to student in isolation; they should be presented in clear and meaningful contexts so that students can work out which sense of the word concerned in used. For another thing, students will get into the habit of guessing the meaning of new or unknown words form context, a badly needed skill for their vocabulary expansion. It is because when they first encounter new vocabulary items students will rely on the context as a clue to their intended meaning. In this way the meaning or use of the word will be retained longer in their mind.

Moreover, teachers can promote students’ vocabulary learning and expansion by teaching words in relation to other words. It is highly recommended that specific words such as red, blue, yellow should be related to the generic term color, that words like happy should compared with happily, happiness, unhappy, unhappily and unhappiness, that words like book should be extended to notebook, textbook and handbook and that acceptable combinations like headache, earache, stomachache should be identified as opposed to illegitimate ones like eye ache or throat ache. In other words, teachers do not simply teach certain words as discrete lexical items; teachers have to present words in a network established by such language phenomena as sense relations word formation and collocation. An additional teaching tip is that teachers can present vocabulary in categories of words depending on topics. Teachers can ask students to keep a notebook to record words in different sections for different themes or topics so that they can develop their vocabulary systematically. In this sense, students not only learn, for example, a single word happy but several connected forms like happily, happiness, unhappy, unhappily and unhappiness and other words referring to human emotional states like glad, pleased, sad, and depressed. This will certainly lead to a massive increase in the number of words students learn and acquire.

One more thing that teachers can do to help their students to widen their vocabulary is to train them in dictionary using skills. Naturally, teachers cannot provide students with all the words they need. So dictionaries will serve as their best source of reference outside class time. And that is the reason why students should be given practice in using dictionaries. Teachers can start by recommending a good bilingual dictionary such as an Oxford or Cambridge or Longman learners’ dictionary. Certainly, a monolingual dictionary has a role to play but an English – English dictionary would expose learners more to the language. As learners’ dictionaries often define more complex words by means of simpler words, students can get at the meaning without switching back to their mother tongue. What is more, as easy and familiar words are used to explain new words, the former are recycled, thus facilitating students’ comprehension and acquisition of the latter. Then teachers can spend some of their class time showing students how to use the dictionary they have recommended. For example, they can set exercises in which students have to look up some new words from their reading or listening texts. This will force them to get to know the symbols and abbreviations used in the dictionary and to choose the most appropriate meaning of the words from a range of meanings listed in the dictionary.

In conclusion, there are just a few ways in which teachers can help their students enlarge their vocabulary. It is hoped that with the help and guidance from the teacher, students can first discover the value of vocabulary learning and expansion in language learning and then develop strategies to increase their vocabulary.

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Women between career and family life

Women between career and family life

Many decades ago, women rarely went to work outside their house. Instead, they usually stayed at home and did the housework. Nowadays, women still play the role of a housewife but more and more women, especially the young ones, attend a school, get some training and become a member of the national work force. There is no doubt that it is not easy for any of them to have ‘two jobs’ at the same time – one at work and one at home. In other words, it is almost impossible for them to be an ideal wife, s devoted mother and a competent employee at the same time. Therefore, it is quite often that they have to choose between their career and their family life. The paper/this essay is about the problems facing today’s women. These problems are not easy to solve at all.

The women of the first type I would like to mention here usually stay single. In other words, they may be successful at work and earn enough money to support themselves and even their relatives; however, they are considered as the ones who lose, not win at all, in the battles for love, for marriage and for the so-called ‘common’ life. They lead an unusual life – the life of ‘a spinster’. Their society accepts them for humanitarian reasons; but, to tell the truth, these ‘never-married’ women have never been accepted emotionally. And this is my own destiny.

Those of the second type face their own problems: they have to depend on their husband financially, and almost certainly they suffer from the lack of up-to-date pieces of information on social life, competition at work, recent changes and reforms in community, etc. All of these prevent them from being a hearty friend, an attractive lover or a reliable comrade. In other words, in spite of their devotion to bringing up their children, taking great care of their husband and doing almost all of the housework, these ideal housewives are still in danger of failing to go along with their husband and of being betrayed emotionally and even sexually. Some of my former friends at high school are nothing but the second-class citizens both in the society and right in their household.

The women of the third type are both lucky and unlucky in their own ways. On the one hand, they are lucky enough to get married and to be able to give birth to at least one child. In addition, they do not belong to the ‘unemployed’ or the so-called ‘housekeepers’. Together with their husband and child(ren), they can build up a common life that all human beings have ever been aiming at and dreaming of. On the other hand, they suffer from doing two jobs simultaneously. It is extremely painful for any woman to combine her successful married life to her established professional career. My elder sister is a typical example of the third type of women. She has almost no time even to sleep! And sometimes I wonder whether it is worth it.

The eighth of March is famous as a day for all the women in the world in general and in Vietnam in particular. That special day contributes to reminding anybody of the real problems facing today’s women. Although we, as women, have been trying our best with what we have in life, we do need some more help and great sympathy form you – those who belong to ‘the fraternal world.’

Qualities of a good teacher

Qualities of a good teacher
(What makes an ideal teacher)

Teachers play an important part in training children, teenagers and even people in their early maturity. Some qualities of a good teacher that are crucial for determining one as a good teacher are the teacher’s sound knowledge in his/her major and its related fields, certain devotion to and great love for his/her students and his/her ability to inspire the students’ passion for studying either in or out of class.

There is no doubt that knowledge is a quality/must for a good teacher. In addition to his/her professional knowledge, the teacher need to enlarge his/her general knowledge on culture, society, humanity, psychology, methodology, politics, history, etc. to provide his/her students with what they need to know, satisfy their curiosity and meet their requirements in any case.

Another quality that a good teacher should have is his/her devotion to and great love for those who call him ‘sir’ or her ‘madam’ in class. Generally speaking, the students are not mature enough to behave properly. They are sometimes really stubborn. Consequently, the teacher has to learn how to handle the students’ troubles in a gentle and affectionate manner. He/she should pay adequate attention to the students and know how to keep calm in any situation so that he/she can give the students some advice when they are in need or help them distinguish the right from the wrong.

Last but not least, a good teacher always succeeds in inspiring his/her students’ passion for studying both under his/her guidance in class and out of class by themselves. I highly appreciate this third quality of a good teacher because of its undeniable value. It is not always easy to provide his/her students with all the required knowledge in class; therefore, a good teacher can manage to make the students motivated enough to carry on their active and successful self-study at home. Obviously, teaching his/her students how to study independently, creatively and effectively is what a good teacher must do in any academic setting.

In conclusion, to be a good teacher, anyone who devotes himself/herself to the “coinage” of a succession of young generations must keep on working really hard to enlarge his/her skill and general as well as professional knowledge, to accumulate experience in how to deal with his/her students properly and to be able to inspire in the students the true love, the increasing hope and the ever-lasting enthusiasm to reach higher and higher levels of education in their life. Those are important qualities of a good teacher.

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Reducing traffic accidents

Reducing traffic accidents

It is believed that the number of the people who have died in traffic accidents is much higher than that of the people who have died of cancer or any other disease. In Ho Chi Minh City, the problem of traffic accidents is really serious. The following measures should be taken to reduce the seriousness/to minimize the consequences of this problem.

Firstly, the system of the main streets in Ho Chi Minh City must be improved or upgraded. It is awful to move along the streets of Ho chi Minh City because most of them are in bad condition and some are full of holes, either big or small. In addition, during the rainy season many streets are flooded with water after a heavy rain. If we are not careful enough, we easily hit other people or fall off our bike or motorbike.

Secondly, law-breaking and drunken riders/drivers should be punished strictly. These law-breaking and drunken riders/drivers are the “devils” of the streets: they operate their motor vehicles at a high speed and sway from one side/curb of the street to the other whenever they feel excited. There is no doubt that one of the main reasons of serious traffic accidents is the riders’ or drivers’ carelessness and lack of self-control.

Last but not least, calling for every citizen’s obeying traffic laws is crucial. The cit dwellers’ awareness of the necessity to obey traffic law is quite low; consequently, they travel along the streets without paying close attention to traffic lights and other signals. Quite often, motor-cyclists occupy the lanes for cars and other four-wheel motor vehicles while taxi drivers speed up, forcing the riders/drivers of other vehicles to give way to them. It takes a lot of time and energy to draw the attention of anyone who does travel along the streets in Ho Chi Minh City to the well-established traffic laws here in particular and to make each of the city dwellers a law-abiding citizen in general. But it is worth it!

In conclusion, we are all overwhelmed by the increasing number of the traffic accidents in Ho Chi Minh City nowadays. It is time to upgrade the whole system of the main streets in this city and apply strong efficient measures both to punish those who break traffic laws and to call for every citizen’s consciousness of obeying these laws strictly whenever he/she travels along the street in this city. The sooner these suggestions will be taken into account, the less serious the traffic accidents happening in Ho Chi Minh City will be.

Fashions

Fashions

Nowadays the general standard of living in Vietnam is improved considerably; therefore, Vietnamese people especially young ladies, begin to take care of their looks. That is why fashions play a much/far more significant role in our life today. Living in the center of the south of Vietnam, the ladies from Ho Chi Minh City have a wide range of clothes to select from: aodais, jeans and T-shirts, blouses and skirts, dresses, trouser-suits, etc.

Generally speaking, pieces of aodai are highly appreciated on special and/or formal occasions such as celebrations of national holidays, academic conferences, professionally artistic contests, the traditional Vietnamese Tet, wedding receptions, etc.

On less formal but more common occasions, today’s women may choose western stylish clothes such as suits, trouser-suits or dresses. In a trouser-suit, a lady may look business-like at work. And she seems really charming to entertain her guests at home, being decorated by a fashionable dress or by a lovely blouse and a well-formed skirt. Her feminine features are really strengthened by the western style of selecting clothes.

On informal occasions, young ladies often appear in jeans and a comfortable T-shirt. It is much/far more convenient for them to move around in a (super)market or any kind of shops. Light and neat clothes are also suitable for picnics, barbecues or other friendly social outdoor gatherings. These clothes really make all the members of the sex of “beauty” lively and attractive.

There is no doubt that fashions do contribute to making our today’s life more beautiful and meaningful. All women, especially young ladies, have a wide range of clothes to choose from. They may choose whatever is the most suitable on a particular occasion or for a particular purpose. In addition to their general knowledge, professional training, unique personality, working experience, etc., their clothes play a significant role in leading today’s women to success both at work and at home.

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