Live and Learn English with Jean Lee

There is nothing more fearful to the ones who are living far away from their aging parents with oceans apart than to get an emergency call in the middle of the night. To me, having a shallow night’s sleep in a regular bed of nails has just felt like normal for all those years.  The vaguely devastating time came into being as a harsh reality on the night of January 6 th . Mom’s voice from the other side of the phone sounded like a candle in the wind. “Jean, it’s about time we all needed to get together for dad….” I flew right the next day with my husband and our son Hans. What was waiting for us was my struggling dad connected to multitudinous needles and tubes in the ICU . When we arrived there, six hopeless eyes – of mom, older sister, and brother-in-law – welled up with tears were staring at dad lying almost lifeless in his narrow hospital bed. Since dad was a COPD patient, his doctors have warned all along that there will come the moment of acute exacerbation due to hyp...

What comes to your mind first when you hear or think of the word Science ? Would it be one of those boring school subjects? Would it be no more than a closed book of information or facts? One of the characteristic features of Science classes from K through 12 in the US  is that students are provided with a variety of hands-on activities , which would boost the students’ interest in “doing” Science rather than simple “reading and memorizing” the contents in their books. Through participating in various firsthand experiences by means of conducting experiments in the science class, students can be more self-empowered learners and develop more intrinsic motivation to become a real scientist. For instance, I have seen quite arresting Science projects in junior high schools and high schools around my local area. Those Science classes were not providing students with boring platitudes from lectures, but rather exciting and challenging tasks to complete. What I have seen includ...

This is a little piece of poem that I wrote a while ago when I visited Cleveland, Ohio.  There I had a chance to visit the Native American Indian museum and Cuyahoga valley where those Native American Indian tribes used to inhabit long, long time ago.  I had such a sad feeling touring the areas imagining how the people of the land might have felt when they were confronted with strangers from the other side of the world. Today, we still witness a lot of heartbreaking and perplexing incidents where one ethnic group hates and maltreats the others just because of difference in skin color, faith, culture, and groundless misconception or prejudice against them.  It is so absurd for one race not to tolerate the existence or prosperity of the others in this country, which was established and developed by the invaders from the outside. Since when has it percolated through to us that such and such type of people with different ideas or ethnicities are inferior to the so-called...

The year of 2008 would be remembered and cherished by many American people in that the first African American president was elected as their commander in chief in the U.S. history. As might have been expected, the past eight years have been peppered with political logjam and economic turbulence. Mr. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign promises have been viewed and examined from different angles. Some may argue that his plans and commitments were disappointing and have fallen short of people’s expectation as one could see in the gun control getting out of hand and the technically botched health care system. Others may still be pulling for Obama administration’s achievement by claiming that he has kept his words when it comes to the 2008 catchphrase “CHANGE” just by the fact that they had a black President. With all the excitement, anger, disappointment, kudos, and things that leave much to be desired about his presidency on the wane and running out of steam , President Obama...

Teen years are normally described as the period of “ storm and stress ”. For some reason that other age groups do not easily understand, teen-aged boys and girls get cranky, uptight, and very impressionable . With all things considered about the adolescent period, parents of teenagers need to take a deep breath, get ready to face all different kinds of unexpected incidents – which are often emotionally charged – throughout their kids’ junior-high and high school years. The most terrifying incident that could happen on high school campus would be gun violence or bully. Both gun violence and bullying against random children are mind-boggling, heartrending, and traumatic not only to children but also to their family in every way.  Today, I would like to talk about school bully, which is surreptitiously killing so many of our children both in and out of classrooms. With innumerable ways of contacting – Facebook, Twitter, Snap chat, Instagram, Cell phone Texting, etc- with one ano...

Throughout the years of teaching English, one of the most frequently asked questions from students was “Is it okay to use outdated or dead English words that are not in use today?” Hmm…..good question! I said to myself ‘How old is considered TOO antiquated when it comes to English expressions?’ Some of my colleagues in the foreign language institute (back in Seoul, Korea) said he even felt challenged by a ton of newly coined idioms and phrases. Well, in this fast-paced world where lots of new chopped or abbreviated forms of words are replacing the existing ones, it is hard to tell the old from the new. The point is as long as you do not use broken English or vernacular style of English, you can still make yourselves effectively understood in the language. Yes! English is a widely used medium of communication in the world today. If you wish to get your ideas across clearly in English, the first thing you need to think about is how to use expressions accurately instead of worrying...

In any group or organization, we need someone in the middle who leads the entire body. Success or failure of group projects at school or work often depends on how their leaders orchestrate things that could have led to a smash hit or a debacle. My morning partner on the way to the gym early at dawn is always the news updates by Dan Damon on BBC World Updates from NPR (National Public Radio). One of the frequent world reports these days is from the Republic of Korea, regarding the unprecedented political scandal of the president Park, Keun-hye and her personal close friend who was the influence peddler . Now that people are waiting for the verdict of the Constitutional Court on the impeachment of President Park, she is urged to grab her final opportunity to show true leadership as the nation’s commander-in-chief. That is to say, it is incumbent on the president to take the responsibility for her wrongdoings along with the current chaos in Korean society and decide to step down on ...

The biggest and culminating events in most high schools in the U.S. are the commencement ceremony or the national honors society ceremony. On these days, the auditorium or the outdoor football field is filled with teachers of senior students, parents, and graduating students with a great big smile and the sense of achievement on their faces. As students were marching one by one to the stage to receive their official diploma or the national honor society badge, all the eyes present in the audience are following each and every one of the students and become all ears to the principal’s announcement of which colleges they are attending. In the middle of the ceremony, most people feel bored, sleepy, and distracted by text messaging on their cell phones. However, when the principal calls the name of so-called Ivy league colleges where a student is attending, lot of dozing heads in the audience stand up here and there, with their eyes wide-awake and start to scan the student from top to bo...