Live and Learn English with Jean Lee

Today's puzzle is BAD! Every answer is a familiar two-word phrase in which the first word starts BA- and the second word starts D-. Ex. Where you leave your luggage after checking in for a flight   -->   BA GGAGE D ROPOFF   1. Where a pitcher and catcher play   2. Waltz, tango, or foxtrot   3. Rear entrance to a house   4. Total of 13 items, as doughnuts   5. July 14, as celebrated in France   6. New Year's Eve event at Times Square   7. One who gives instructions from the rear of a car   8. Frozen cocktail made with rum and a yellow-skinned fruit   9. What you might prepare a casserole in   10. If you've already paid $15 on a $20 invoice, then $5 would be this   11. Term of endearment similar to "sweetums" or "honeybunch"   ANSWER KEYS       1.   BA SEBALL D IAMOND     2.   BA LLROOM D ANCE     3.   BA CK...

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.   #22. Blind (film, 2007) The story is about a solitary and emotionally fragile young man named Ruben who lost his vision as a child. Ruben’s mother has been doing her best taking care of her son. She has hired book readers for Ruben multiple times, but they weren’t able to stand his uncontrollable behavior. Then, one day a book reader named Marie came. She has a lovely voice and deep appreciation for books and storytelling. One thing that makes Marie self-conscious, withdrawn, and insecure is her skin disease called Albinism. It is a rare inherited genetic disorder marked by a major reduction or complete lack of the pigment melanin in the sk...

LIVE, LEARN, & LOVE Do you tak 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.   #21. My Lobotomy (Memoir by Howard Dully)  This memoir tells the story of Howard Dully. In 1960, when he was just twelve years old, he underwent a lobotomy—an outdated and controversial neurosurgical procedure that cuts the nerve connections between the frontal lobes and the rest of the brain to treat mental illness. First introduced in 1936, the procedure was intended to calm patients by damaging brain connections, but it often resulted in emotional dullness, serious cognitive impairment, and lasting changes in personality. The medical doctor who performed the surgery was the man who invented the “ice pick” lobotomy. The author of thi...

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...