Live and Learn English with Jean Lee

Lots of you might be tired of the winter doldrums by now. Waiting for ourselves to wake up from hibernating, let us enjoy word scramble with signs of Spring! Suppose you are going on a field trip with your students to a park. You give the class a list of things to look for in the woods and meadows, but the words got all mixed up. Can you help them unscramble the list of words below?   Example:    OFGR:   _____________       The answer is FROG                  1.    FEUYRBTLT    ____________________________      2.    SRSGA:   _________________________      3.    ORMHTARWE: ___________________________      4.    SNTGLHUI: _______________________      5.    UDB: _________________________      6.    DDNLIAENO: _______...

Love is in the air on Valentine’s day this week. What comes to your mind first when you think of love and care? Candlelight dinner with a bunch of roses? Sweet chocolate for your loved ones? Otherwise, staying active at the gym working out together? All is good as long as you can reach your loved ones’ heart. 😊 This week, let us go over some interesting idiomatic expressions related to love. (source from https://7esl.com/love-idioms/ ) 1.    to hang the Moon : to idealize someone; to think someone is capable of enormously difficult acts/ to think that somebody is extremely wonderful, amazing, or good 2.    to carry a torch for someone : to continue to be in love with someone even after the relationship is over or has ended 3.    to have the hots for someone : to be attracted to someone 4.    to fall for something/someone hook, line, and sinker : a phrase stated after something or someone has been easily fooled or deceive...

Elsewhere When the funeral director and his staff wrapped up the somber process of washing and shrouding my father’s lifeless body, they said “Now, the deceased is ending all his ties with this world.” It was the saddest and unbelievably coldest bunch of words that I had ever heard in my life. Even though what I saw right in front of me was my dad without soul anymore, I wasn’t ready at all to accept the funeral director’s temerity to say those bitter, heartless words. Those words sounded and felt so frustrating like nefarious accumulations of beta-amyloid protein in my dad’s brain in his final days. Some religion might argue that you would be completely out of the memory of the deceased in “elsewhere”, the place one belongs to after death. Either a believer of God or an atheist, most of us tend to believe there is some higher ground we will leave for when life here in this world is over. What makes us all keep the faith in living in some place of the unbeknown after we ar...

This week, let’s solve fun word quiz (using rhyme) provided by NPR. I'm going to give you two words. Rearrange the letters in each of them to make two new words that rhyme. Example: SHOT ASCOT:     HOST, COAST                  1.   LAZE EQUALS:         2.   GINS NILE:         3.   FIBER FLEA:     4. TROUT RETUNE:      5. WRONG HORNET:      6. LUBE WEST:      7. EIGHTH ITEM: Answer Keys: 1. zeal, squeal 2. sign, line 3. brief, leaf 4. tutor, neuter 5. grown, throne 6. blue, stew 7. height, mite

Do you feel from time to time that you have been way outdated or being weeded out in the field of your work or business? Feeling dull, malfunctioning, and tragically unhip like a caveman. Nobody would be thrilled to die out in their realms. Let us go over some buzzwords that have often been used in the business world. ( http://americasbusinessguide.com/9-overused-buzzwords/7/ ) 1.    to drink the kool-aid : completely buy into an idea or system, whether good or bad / to embrace a particular philosophy or perspective without a doubt 2.    millenials : “millennials” is not a new word or concept, but has become a buzzword today, because “millennials will make up more than one in three of your workforce by 2020 and by 2025 they’ll reach 75%. It’s safe to say millennials will be who you’ll employ, groom, develop, retain and rely on to do business. But that’s not the only place you’ll be dealing with millennials. From a consumer perspective, millennials s...

Are you tired of being in the winter doldrums now? Why don’t we think about Summer time by unscrambling the following words that relate to Summer?!! 😊 Example:   msmuer  turns into  "summer"    1.    oth  _________________    2.    waets  _______________    3.    polo  __________________    4.    gismnimw  _____________________    5.    rperlnski  ________________________    6.    cmriceae _________________________    7.    seihnnsu ________________________    8.    lmneaoertw  _________________________    9.    iccinp _____________________________   10.                gtoshdo  ___________________________   11.    ...