NanchangEnglish: March 2007

Monday, March 19, 2007

Choices

Students' opinions on six questions:

Do you prefer KFC or McDonalds?

If you could study abroad, would you choose to study in London or New York?

Would you pay 26334 Yuan to have lunch with michael Jackson

Do you prefer noodles or rice?

What is the best movie you have ever seen?

What is your favorite movie?

SmoothMan goes to college

Recently, my friend and student Ding, Liming visited the Journalism 2 class to talk to them about the role Oral English will play in their future careers

Thursday, March 15, 2007

If you ever travel to the "West" you will find that we have many different ways to say, "Hello!"

In the U. K. someone might say "Cheerio!"
In Australia "G'Day, Mate!"

In the U. S., we have many ways to say, "Hello," often depending on where you are in the U. S.

In the north and Midwest people usually say, "Hi!" or "How are you?"
In the Southwest they say "Howdy!"
In the South "Hey!"

Slang
There are also many "slang" words for hello, like

"Wazzup?"
"Yo"
"How YOU doin'?"
"What's Happ' nin?" (no 'g')

So don't be surprised if you hear someone say "hello" to you in a way you did not expect.

"Power Builders" are lessons that will help you improve your vocabulary and familiarize you with things about English you may not get in your other classes.

Here we can also cover material we do not have time to cover in class.

Today we will begin with words that siund alike or are spelled alike, but have dfferent meanings, and so are often confused. There is also a link to a list of the most common English words:

Top 1000 http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pfik8a9qU6i2NHxCkhzsRPA
Notorious Confusables http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dgxmpvf7_0cs2xrr

Person http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dgxmpvf7_44hgwbxr
“To Be” http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dgxmpvf7_46hffgzb
Idioms and Expressions:
All http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dgxmpvf7_47rk5q48
Around http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dgxmpvf7_516dkw79
Get http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dgxmpvf7_53dkzpr8
Put http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dgxmpvf7_55hnzmcp
Work http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dgxmpvf7_57f4vhn6
26 Short Stories http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dgxmpvf7_59dzr673

Monday, March 5, 2007