Live and Learn English with Jean Lee

Each time I see people who look incredibly fresh and young for their age, I start my guesswork like ‘She must be taking some kind of elixir plants ’ or ‘Does he sleep in an Oxygen chamber or what?!’. In most cases, their ‘younger-than-physical age’ lineaments can be attributed to their active life style. As a recreational but dedicated runner, I know why so many people drag themselves out of bed in the wee hours and head out to the gym or take to the streets. Exercises pump up their days and stay upbeat throughout their lives. *Expressions elixir plants : herbs/ plants that would give you immortality lineaments : a distinctive feature or characteristic, especially of the face attribute A to B : regard A as being caused by B. Let us take a look at some gym terms this week. (Source from http://www.coachmag.co.uk/lifestyle/4234/28-gym-slang-terms-explained ) 1. beasting it up : intensity training, anything involving intense effort and mentality e.g.  “Tha...

(source from www.dictionary.com ) The Chinese letter 人 means “human being”. The letter is from the hieroglyph of two humans leaning on each other. Figuratively and literally, humans can hardly live alone. Living in this incredibly connected world of instant messaging, emailing, and social networking, we might feel more lonesome than those in the old days when people were happy with snail mail and seeing one another only in the offline world. However, we can make the best use of today’s super fast-paced ways of contacting and greeting, can’t we? Even though it might not seem to have the old day’s romanticism, we can let our precious friends know how much we think of them at any time. Instant messaging does not have to mean instant love. This week, I would like to share many heartwarming quotes about true friendship. 1.    "What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies." ...Aristotle 2.    "The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just g...

I still remember the day like yesterday when my son Hans felt so frustrated at the news that his 8 th grade English teacher (i.e., final year in the middle school) had not recommended him for an honor’s English class in high school. FYI, Hans’s grade in English subject had been A+ throughout the four years of middle school.  His participation in class activities and extra credit projects had always been praised by his teachers. Since we were not able to find a clue behind the teacher’s decision, Hans and I talked with her over the matter. What she said about the reason why she did not recommend Hans for the honors English course left us all dumbfounded. She said as follows: "Hans is a great student who always goes all out in preparing for class, class participation, writing assignments, quizzes and tests, and always gains perfectly wonderful grades in them all. However, I believe that honor’s English course in high school is for students who are inherently talented and still d...

As an avid runner with a firm belief in all the positive effects of taking multivitamins and probiotic, I have NEVER expected that I’d be attacked someday by this weirdly named disease “SHINGLES”. Each time I saw the advertisements or heard about the warnings/ preventions regarding this disease, I was like “Shi…what?!”, thinking that it was completely not my business at all. I have been quietly taking pride in myself being health-savvy , doing all the well-known good things for body and soul. Daily running, eating smart and healthy, reading and writing, daily meditation, participating local running races from time to time, being a good wife and mother, ….etc, etc, etc. However, I was way too focused on abiding by all the strict guideposts that I set for myself to realize that I was too tired by my own limited rule of thumb . Shingles came to me abruptly like a huge bomb dropped on a placcid land. Pain from a child delivery, severe low back pain, and this burning sensation caused...

As noted by Gumperz (1972, as cited in Wardhaugh, 2002), “communicative competence describes speakers’ ability to select from the totality of grammatically correct expressions available to them, forms which appropriately reflect the social norms governing behavior in specific encounters” (p. 249). In this sense, it can be concluded that teachers must give consideration to combining those two different types of communicative activities in the EFL conversation class. Such an attempt can be realized through the syllables designed to encourage students to participate both in “planned discourse” (e.g., eacher-directed situation drills) and “unplanned discourse” (e.g., free discussions) throughout the classroom activities. In other words, adopting the different “teacher roles” from each type of activities (i.e., authentic vs. non-authentic communicative activities) in classroom will be effective to help students achieve improved communicative competence in the target language. According...