Live and Learn English with Jean Lee

LIVE, LEARN, & LOVE Do you take delight in watching films or listening to pop music? 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.   #20. The Year of Magical Thinking (authored by Joan Didion, 2005) “It was in fact the ordinary nature of everything preceding the event that prevented me from truly believing it had happened, absorbing it, incorporating it, getting past it. I recognize now that there was nothing unusual in this: confronted with sudden disaster we all focus on how unremarkable the circumstances were in which the unthinkable occurred, the clear blue sky from which the plane fell, the routine errand that ended on the shoulder with the car inflames, the swings where the children were playing as usual when the rattlesnake struck from the ivy.”   ð  ...

  The Sea by 白石 (Baek Seok, 1912-1996) (from Poems of the North)   Despite escaping to the sea’s side The sea it seems comes only with thoughts of you It seems the sea and I want only for love of you   Ascending the curved body of the sandy plain You seem to walk before me And emerge again behind   And letting lapping thoughts wear my walk of water’s edge As if only in your words impression As if only in your words halt   This side of the sea, A Morning Glory devoid of morning With white sunshine on shiny scales glaring cold , Somehow seeming lonesome, somehow seeming sorrowful     ð   This is a sad, romantic piece of poem about unavoidable longing, in which the poet could hardly ever find comfort in nature because memories of a loved one continually intrude. The poet imagines the loved one walking both ahead of and behind them, creating the sense of a ghostly or haunting presence that fills the surroun...

Human beings instead of AI for Language Education How many of you are currently studying a foreign language? Have you ever become completely immersed in the process of learning one? More than thirty years ago, Maley, A. and Duff, A. observed in the field of language education that many foreign language syllabi were designed based on the assumption that language teaching and learning should mainly consist of vocabulary and key grammatical structures. Throughout my years of teaching English, I have strongly agreed with these scholars that language education involves far more than just intellectual components like grammar, vocabulary, and structural rules. Beyond these cognitive elements, greater attention should be given to developing sociocultural competence in the classroom. In language classes—particularly in ESL environments where students from diverse ethnic backgrounds learn together—we encounter individuals of different ages and life experiences, each with unique interests, be...

LIVE, LEARN, & LOVE Do you take delight in watching films or listening to pop music? 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.   #18. To Live ( 活着 / Huózhe) (film, 1994) “Town Chief: You participated in the revolution. Xu Fugui: I just dragged a cannon and sang opera. Town Chief: That's taking part.” ð   This conversation highlights that during the early Communist period, survival often required individuals to align themselves with the prevailing political ideology. By acknowledging that he “participated,” Fugui validates his identity as a loyal citizen, which helps shield him and his family from being labeled as political enemies.   It illustrates how ordinary individuals were swept up in large-scale political movements, such as the revolution, ...

LIVE, LEARN, & LOVE Do you take delight in watching films or listening to pop music? 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.   #17. RITE (film, 2011) Journalist: “Which do you believe in? Aliens or God?” Michael (Seminary Student): “The jury’s out on both. I’m not a priest yet.” Journalist: “So you’re having a final fling with atheism?” Michael (Seminary Student): “Well, I guess it’s more like an ex-girlfriend who keeps coming around.”    ð   This brief dialogue takes place between an inquisitive journalist and a doubtful seminary student who previously worked as a mortician. The journalist is looking into reported exorcism cases in Rome, Italy. Her role acts as an important, realistic counterbalance to the skeptical seminarian, Michael, as ...

  On the Way to Find Me by Jean Jiyoung Lee   Sometimes I wonder if I can read my mind clearly If I have someone in my life who sees it better than I do, I would ask him what it can be seemingly and tell me if that is about what and who   Some may say I’m getting closer to my inner voice too gingerly to live out my heart so true.                                                                Some others think it’d be gnarly If I really meant to coo   On the day I step forward audaciously, I'll have found the long-lost clue. Hoping that I understand the answer perspicaciously I dream of the missing piece that I pursue.   ...