Live and Learn English with Jean Lee

LIVE, LEARN, & LOVE Do you take delight in watching films, listening to pop music, or reading books? For English learners, movies, songs, and books are one of the most wonderful sources to explore the language! You can indulge in your favorite pastime and still learn some expressions, words of wisdom, and oftentimes good lessons while you’re at it.   #42. To Leslie (film, 2022) This film (based on the true story of the screenwriter, Ryan Binaco’s) follows a woman from West Texas who, a few years earlier, won enough money in the lottery to improve life for herself and her son, James. However, she struggles with alcohol and addiction, and the money quickly disappears. When we meet her, she has left both her town and her son behind, living and scraping by on the fringes of society. Her situation worsens, and she soon becomes homeless. Throughout the film, she is pushed to seek help from the people she once abandoned, eventually returning to the small town she left—where sh...

  LIVE, LEARN, & LOVE Do you take delight in watching films, listening to pop music, or reading books? For English learners, movies, songs, and books are one of the most wonderful sources to explore the language! You can indulge in your favorite pastime and still learn some expressions, words of wisdom, and oftentimes good lessons while you’re at it.   #41. A Late Quartet (film, 2012) This story follows four friends who are members of a renowned string quartet called Fugue in New York. When Peter, the group’s leader, learns he has early-stage Parkinson’s disease, the news brings past tensions to the surface, puts the ensemble’s future at risk, and challenges the strength of their relationships.   (Robert): “Do you really love me? Or am I just convenient?” (Juliet, Robert’s wife): “What is it that you want? I’ve always loved you, but I am just incapable of showing it the way you like me to. I don’t know how I feel.” ð   It captures the central mari...

What It Means to Live as an Adult Immigrant in the U.S.                                                              by Jean J. Lee   The face of demography in North America has been dramatically changing as millions of refugees and legal immigrants have found their way into the U.S. and Canada. Although these people who have come to someone else’s countries started their new life in pursuit of freedom and the American dream, they are imposed multifaced burdens or challenges upon them. These social situations and contexts interact with one another affecting the adult immigrants’ learning of second language (or so-called the “target language”), which is English. As pointed out by scholar...

LIVE, LEARN, & LOVE Do you take delight in watching films, listening to pop music, or reading books? For English learners, movies, songs, and books are one of the most wonderful sources to explore the language! You can indulge in your favorite pastime and still learn some expressions, words of wisdom, and oftentimes good lessons while you’re at it.   #40. The Prophet (authored by Kahlil Gibran, 1923) This book has grown into one of the most cherished classics of our era. Gibran regarded The Prophet as his finest accomplishment. He once shared, “I believe I have never been without The Prophet since I first imagined it in Mount Lebanon. It has always felt like a part of me… I held onto the manuscript for four years before giving it to my publisher because I wanted to be certain—completely certain—that every word represented the very best I could give.” The Chicago Post remarked, “Anyone who can read this book without quietly embracing the wisdom of a great mind and feelin...

Every answer today is a flavor of ice cream or sorbet . What flavor of ice cream ...   1. ... has a two-word name in which each word starts CH-?   2. ... has a two-word name in which each word starts RO-?   3. ... is hidden in this sentence: That's the caravan I'll announce.   4. ... has the string of letters UTTI in its name twice?   5. ... has a silent P as its fourth letter?   6. ... would spell some men's facial hair if you changed its first two letters from PI to MU?   7. ... consists of the names of two trees starting with M and W?   8. ... is a fruit flavor that would become the name of another fruit flavor if you interchanged its first and third letters?   9. ... is an anagram of TEENAGER (2 wds.)?   Answer Keys 1.   Ch ocolate Ch ip 2.   Ro cky Ro ad 3.   cara Van     I’ll a nnounce => Vanilla 4.   Tutti-frutti 5.   Raspberry 6.   P...

WORDS from last week’s World News       1.    proximate : (adjective) close or very near On April 6, NASA’s Artemis II reached its most proximate point to the moon, offering its four astronauts remarkable views. The spacecraft came within 4,067 miles of the lunar surface before traveling out to a maximum distance of 252,756 miles from Earth. From that proximity, the crew was able to capture detailed images of craters and ancient lava formations.   2.    onus : (noun) a formal or sophisticated way to say "responsibility" or "duty" U.S. officials stated that the negotiations fell apart due to what they described as Iran’s unwillingness to agree to give up its nuclear program, while Iranian officials accused the U.S. of causing the breakdown without detailing the specific disagreements. Neither side clarified what might occur once the 14-day ceasefire ends on April 22. Mediators from Pakistan called on all parties to uphold the truce. Bo...