Come and join us at English corner

2012.12.26

Hi all,

How are you doing? Merry post-Christmas and happy upcoming New year!!

I wish you had a good one this year.

Our one week one time English corner is coming back! Are you excited to hear that. I know that you cannot wait to join us. Yeah, I beg you did.

 

The English corner will be host by Fang and me at 4:00pm every Friday. The rule is still the same: Speak English and that is the only language you can use when step into the room.

Otherwise, you will be punished even though I haven't think about the way you got punished.

Alright, the topic for this week is about Christmas. Have you guys ever watched the British movie <<Love actually>>(<<真爱至上>>)which is a 2003 British Christmas themed romantic comedy directed by Richard Curtis. Set primarily in London, the film showed different aspects of love through ten separate stories. We'll learn some words and slang by following up some of the dialogue. Then free discussion about Christmas and the movie.

 

We'll make an introduction at the beginning. You will introduce yourself to someone around, pretending you guys never met and then let the other person discribe how you were like.

 

We would like to offer some snacks only if you guys are willing to pay 5 yuan per person.

 

To all PM,

Please inform your team member about the schedule.

 

Thanks,

 

 

2013.01.04

Hi guys,

 

How is your New year's Eve going? Any special moments that you want to share with us?

 

We will have our second English corner tomorrow at 4:00pm, same place.

 

We've learned how to introduce yourselves to someone you never met last week.  For the first 30 mins of the coming course, Fang will give a lecture of English grammar focusing on tense such as -ed, had + -ed， have/has+ -ed,

has/have been+ -ing, etc. We will then go through the dialogue we learned from the movie <<Love Actually>> and might learn another piece of dialogue if we got time.

 

Thanks so much to Otis for bringing us snacks and fruits last time. We really enjoyed them and appreciate the support. In order to keep our snacks supply and have more fun, Fang and me propose that each of you guys donate 5 yuan (Non-obligatory, which means you are not forced to do that). We will collect the money and buy some food for the weekly English corner.

 

Review:

 

snacks [snæks] n. 小吃；快餐；零嘴（snack的复数）

sibling ['sɪblɪŋ]  n. 兄弟姊妹；民族成员

 

He/She has been working in CSI for 2 years.

 

 

The original lines from the first clip of the movie is showing below:

 

“Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion's starting to make out that we live in a

 

world of hatred and greed, but I don't see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often it's not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it's always there -

 

fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know none of the

 

phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge - they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I've got a sneaky feeling you'll find that

 

love actually is all around.”                      —— Love Actually

 

Check out new words:

                                                                                   

gloomy ['gluːmɪ]   adj. 黑暗的；沮丧的；阴郁的

the state of...   .......的状态

arrivals [ə'raɪvl]  n. 到达（arrival的复数形式）；进站，进港

hatred ['heɪtrɪd]  n. 憎恨；怨恨；敌意

greed [griːd]  n. 贪婪，贪心

particularly [pə'tɪkjʊləlɪ]  adv. 特别地，独特地；详细地，具体地；明确地，细致地

dignified ['dɪgnɪfaɪd]  adj. 庄严的；有尊严的；高贵的 v. 使高贵（dignify的过去式）

newsworthy ['njuːzwɜːðɪ]  adj. 有报导价值的

revenge [rɪ'ven(d)ʒ]  n. 报复；复仇 vt. 报复；替…报仇

sneaky ['sniːkɪ]  adj. 鬼鬼祟祟的；暗中的，卑鄙的

 

 2013.01.13

Hi all,

 

Do you want to see how the British Prime Minister David take a stand against the bullying policies from U.S by arguing with the U.S. President on the Press Conference? And David got this gutsy move because he found that the U.S. President is attempting to seduce Natalie, the girl whom he secretly fall in love with. Yes, love gives man the courage to fight it back.

 

We will learn those actor’s line from this clip. Oh, don't forget to review and recite what we’ve learned last two weeks, the dialog from the first clip of the movie. I will randomly pick up someone to recite all of it or single line of it. If you are not able to do that, please bring us candy next weekJ

 

Fang will go through the grammar tense we’ve learned from last week and carry on with other tenses such as simple past, present perfect and Past Progressive. We made a list of examples for a better understanding of tense and you guys have to figure out what tense you will use for each example. If you made a right answer, candy would be served.

 

Movies and PPTs have been shared at server 26, in a public folder “English Corner”.

 

Thanks

 

2013.01.18

Hi there,

How are you?/ How are you doing?/ How’s everything going?/ What’s up?/ What’s going on?

I just used several ways for greeting.

 

English corner will be hosted at 4:00 pm today as usual. Fang is not able to attend this time. I will first go through the examples of the past progressive and past perfect. And then carry on with the study of dialogues from the movie. I’d like to make more conversation so I may do more random talk with you guys to make the course more interactive. Get yourself preparedJ

 

Movie has been shared in a share folder “English corner” at server 26. You can get it downloaded.

Come and join us at today’s English corner, fruits will be served.

 

Thanks

 

2013.01.31

Hi,

 

How are you doing? Our last English corner this year is going to be hosted at 4:00 pm tomorrow. As you guys requested, we will choose a topic to discuss each week so that we got more chance to communicate. The first 45 mins will be freelance discussion and the last 45 mins will still be sort of “learn from the movie”time.

 

The attached is a list of topics provided by Fang, please find 2-5 your favorite topics and send them to me. I will collect them and make a schedule for the first top 10 topics. You guys had better get prepared before attending to the class. “No words to say” is forbidden at English corner.

 

Oh, can you do me a favor? I’m helping my friend, Keiara, collecting fashion words frequently used by Chinese young people nowadays. For example, some words like “靠谱”, “坑爹”,”神马都是浮云” which will never been taught in textbook. She want to make a video and upload it on Youtube to show how these two languages connected in terms of slang. I may also play in that video, hope the video will got a huge hits and then I may get famous in America. Get my signature before I get famous. Hahahah.. I will collect the words in the class tmr.

 

I have two movies with both English and Chinese subtitles <<Nottinghill>> (an English movie in which a normal English guy fall in love and get married with an American actress who is an super Hollywood star) and <<The devil wears Prada>> (an American movie showing how a new graduate, Andy ,survived in fashion area, worked as assistant of the Chief editor of the most predominant fashion magazine <<Runway>>). Which one would you prefer?

 

Looking forward to your reply.

 

Thanks

 

2013.01.31

 

Hi again,

 

Sorry, no more time for thinking. Fang and I choose “Family” as tomorrow’s topic. Please prepare what the idea and  family stories you wanna share with us.

 

10.27.09 English Club Topic: Family
1. Describe your family, and tell your group a story about your family from your childhood.
2. Who do you think should have the highest authority in the home- the husband, the wife, or both equally share authority? If you think both should have equal authority, how should they make decisions on where to work or live if they don’t agree with each other?
3. What do you expect to do to take care of your parents when they grow old? What do you expect your child to do for you when you get old?
4. Do you think the Chinese tradition of children taking care of elderly parents will change in the future because of the One Child Policy? How can only children cope with the pressure of taking care of their parents when they are old?

 

Please send me the fashion words by email if you are interested and wanna help.

Movie <<The devil wears Prada>> is shared at server 26. We will focus on the clip of the beginning of the movie when Andy met her partner Emily and had the interview with her future boss Miranda.

 

Regards