Do you want to learn the English language?This blog is a collection of English lesson plans for all levels of ESL/EFL students. This will help the viewers in reading, writing, listening, grammar, speaking, and pronunciation skills.
I'm Teacher Jet,an English Online Tutor. My Skype ID is imteacherjet.
AJA AJA English!
Today is November 11.( 11.11 ) Korea is celebrating Pepero day.Pepero (빼빼로) is a cookie stick, dipped in chocolate syrup that started in the year 1983.November 11 ( or 11.11 ) resembles four sticks of Pepero. This is a day wherein people buy Pepero chocolate sticks to give to their families, friends,teachers and loved ones.
Happy Pepero day to all Koreans out there!
Vocabulary words:
1.dip - to put something into a liquid for a short time and quickly take it out.
2. resemble- to be like or similar to.
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"Without a strong reason or purpose, anything in life is hard."- Robert Kiyosaki
You have to know your ultimate reason why do you study English.You might wake up early in the morning to hit the books or burn the midnight oil, but do you really know in your heart why are you doing that?
I suggest that you reflect on your reasons why do you study English, put it into writing and read it daily.That way, you could focus on your goals and you won't consider things as difficult. Your motivator, Teacher Jet
Phrases/ Words to study :
ultimate - adj. If something is ultimate, it's the most important. hit the books - If you hit the books, you study or read hard. burn the midnight oil - If you stay up very late working or studying, you burn the midnight oil. reflect on - If you think seriously about something, you reflect on it.
Last Saturday, I and my friend went to a China town here in our country. We were up for some adventure and wanted to look for some authentic Chinese food.
Here's what we liked the most - fresh spring rolls and a chicken filled steamed bun!
Food is a very common topic that you can use to ask your fellow ESL learners. Some of these conversation questions are in this video.Enjoy!
To cook up a storm is an Australian slang which means to cook an amazing meal.
Watch this video and learn how does Kylie Kwong cook up a storm.
Read this CNN news and study some vocabulary words.
(CNN) -- Family, food and faith have guided Kylie Kwong to where she is today.
The 41-year-old chef has been cooking up a storm with her TV shows and restaurant for over a decade, adding a dash of color and flavor to Australia's cultural life.
A third generation Chinese who grew up in the suburbs of Sydney in the 1970s, Kwong left High School to work for an advertising agency. She soon realized, however, that making people feel bad in order to make them buy things they didn't want wasn't for her. Making people happy through good food was much more appealing.
After leaving the advertising industry she worked part-time for a caterer where she saw a way to combine the love of cooking she inherited from her mother with a growing interest in creating her own business.
She opened her first restaurant "Billy Kwong" 10 years ago and it has since become a fixture on the Sydney restaurant scene.
"When I opened the goal was very simple. I wanted to fill it every night and serve really fantastic, amazing, fresh Chinese food out of this funny little arty place," she told CNN.
"And I love running a business. It's so challenging. And I love what it brings out of you. You find these hidden strengths you find that you didn't know you had."
Since then Kwong has developed a larger profile through her cooking shows and recipe books.
She also let cameras follow her to southern China and the village where her great grandfather once lived; the first time a member of Kwong's immediate family had been there in 90 years.
It was a world apart from the suburban Australia that Kwong knew. Coming from the only Chinese family in her suburb, Kwong says she always felt different from other children.
"I certainly felt different when I'd go to school and open the lunch box and there I'd have last night's rice and soy sauce chicken wings and my friend had the Vegemite sandwiches," she told CNN.
"And that point it was very good to be different because our food was so much more interesting. Yes, I felt different, yes, my brothers felt different. But it really didn't affect us negatively at all."
In touch with her roots and a vast extended family (family reunions number in the hundreds) Kwong is also a practicing Buddhist who cooked for the Dalai Lama when he visited Australia in 2009.
"It was one of the great weeks of my life. I still can't believe that it actually happened. We spent all week with him backstage in Sydney," she said.
"His practice just really encouraged me to keep practicing and doing what we're doing, and to always try harder and harder in everything we do. And to know every single thing that we feel, or think, or do, makes a really big difference."
New Words To Study :
1. over a decade - A decade means a period of ten years. Over a decade means more than ten years.
2 appealing - attractive
3.inherit - to get or acquire/receive the same quality. This means that Kylie Kwong loves cooking like her mother does.
4. fixture - a person or thing long established in the same place or position. Kylie Kwong restaurant has been in Australia for a long time now.
5. arty - popular
6. brings out of you- develop (a quality, for example) to best advantage
7. immediate family -
spouse, parents and grand parents, children and grand children, brothers and sisters, mother in law and father in law, brothers in law and sisters in law, daughters in law and sons in law
8. suburb - a residential area around a major city
9. Vegemite - a kind of food in Australia made from yeast and usually spread on bread
10. In touch with one's roots -Roots mean ancestors or one's great grandparents. Kylie Kwong is now connected with her ancestors/origin.
This video lesson is from Start Reading III.The title is Alex's Diamonds.I hope that children would read with me.
Enjoy!
P.S. I'm using a special tool which is an effective way to teach online because I could share various contents directly such as page files, and drawings to my students.
If you want your children to experience this, you may add my Skype ID imteacherjet and let's have fun learning English!
This card was from my previous student,Joshua Park.He used to speak slowly because he wanted to have perfect grammatical structures in his sentences.
He memorized Steve Jobs' speech ( Actually,it was not the whole 15 minutes.He only did the 8 minutes and 43 seconds in the video below)
For him,to memorize the speech was a piece of cake; to say it like Steve Jobs did was tough.
In training him,I focused on the field of Accent Neutralization,with the goals of changing speech patterns,intonation and rhythm, and reduction of some syllables.
One would learn a great deal when there's hardship. The card above is a proof that what he had experienced was worthwhile.
Who wants to be Steve Jobs For 15 Minutes? Play this video, read the speech , and enjoy!
Thank you.
I'm honored to be with you today for your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. Truth be told, I never graduated from college, and this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today, I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.
The first story is about connecting the dots. I dropped out of Reed College after the first six months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife -- except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl.
So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking, "We've got an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said, "Of course." My biological mother found out later that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would go to college. This was the start in my life.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life.
So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out okay. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked far more interesting.
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms. I returned coke bottles for the five cent deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the "Mac" would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on that calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards 10 years later.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something -- your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever -- because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference.
My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky -- I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz¹ and I started Apple in my parents' garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a two billion dollar company with over 4000 employees. We'd just released our finest creation -- the Macintosh -- a year earlier, and I had just turned 30.
And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. And so at 30, I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down -- that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me: I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the world's first computer-animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, and I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometime life -- Sometimes life's going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did.
You've got to find what you love.
And that is as true for work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking -- and don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking -- don't settle.
My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I've looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything -- all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure -- these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for "prepare to die." It means to try and tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and, thankfully, I'm fine now.
This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept: No one wants to die.
Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It's Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it's quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma -- which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the "bibles" of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 60s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and Polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along. It was idealistic, overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I've always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Thank you all very much.
Just like what Steve Jobs said , "Don't settle!" Don't settle on the easy lessons. After you have learned something, go up one level and try to study other areas in English.
P.S. To Inchae, wherever you are in the world, I had an unforgettable time teaching you!Advanced happy birthday on October 14th ^^ I'm not just quite sure if you still remember some lines in The Sixth Sense.Haha!
Some ESL students don't want to start studying English because they feel that they're not good in English.
You read that right.Ironic, huh? This thinking applies not just in studying English but life in general. Usually, we limit ourselves to what we are familiar with.When we see others to be more efficient in something, we pull ourselves down and we tell ourselves that we can't do the things that they do.
Do you dream to improve your English skills? Gravity might be unavoidable, but I challenge you to defy it.
Who wants to defy gravity? Email me at ajaajaenglish@gmail.com
ESL learners, I challenge you to have this short test in listening.
What did she say here?It's only one sentence.
Write your answers on the comments below.
By the way, I Bet means " I'm sure .."
Aja, aja English!
Teacher Jejette Sign up here for a free English lesson: Click Me! Add my Skype ID – imteacherjet Email address : ajaajaenglish@gmail.com You may also check these blog and have a free trial lesson with my friends http://eslonlinetutors.blogspot.com/
There's a young girl that I want you to meet. Her name is Charice Pempengco from the Philippines. She was featured in Oprah Winfrey Show and was dubbed by Oprah as the Most Talented Girl In The World.
Study These: Bring down the house- To win overwhelming approval from an audience Standing Ovation- Ovation means an enthusiastic clapping of the hands.( The audience stood, cried and applauded after Charice sang.)
She was also featured in The Ellen DeGeneres Show around three years ago.Sing with her here :
Idiom: You are gonna be blown away - You would greatly admire. ( In the show,Ellen suggests that Charice's voice would definitely impress you)
Charice has now joined Glee, a popular American musical comedy-drama TV series.
Watch this interview clip as she discusses her experience on the show.
In this scene, Rachel(Lea Michele) encourages Sunshine(Charice) to join the glee club .As soon as Rachel(Lea) heard Sunshine (Charice) sang " Telephone", she immediately recognized her as her rival.
P.S. Charice became popular because of Youtube. Anyone here who wants to be popular? I'm looking for gutsy ESL learners who would like to be a video guest blogger. Email me at ajaajaenglish@gmail.com
Aja, aja English!
Teacher Jejette Sign up here: Click Me! Add my Skype ID – imteacherjet Email address : ajaajaenglish@gmail.com You may also check these blog and have a free trial lesson with my friends http://eslonlinetutors.blogspot.com/
I once had a student from Cambodia who was very talkative in English.Everything was perfect except one big problem- I couldn't understand what he was trying to say most of the time. Enunciation plays a big part in speaking.You have to clearly say the words so that people would understand you. After watching this short video clip from Friends, an American sitcom,you would understand more about enunciation. I suggest that you imitate the way they say their lines. Enunciate and have fun in studying English! Some tips on how to enunciate: 1.Speak slowly. 2. Open your mouth and say the words a little louder. 3. Practice with tongue twisters. Here's a previous article that you can use - Click These Tongue Twisters 4.Practice,practice and practice. Aja, aja English! Teacher Jejettte Who wants a free trial lesson? Sign up here: Click Me! Add my Skype ID – imteacherjet Email address : ajaajaenglish@gmail.com You may also check these blog and have a free trial lesson with my friends http://eslonlinetutors.blogspot.com/
.. teach ESL learners because sharing what I know is my passion. ^^
ESL learners can learn a lot from reading tweets, news, and songs. Example is the phrase "I can't help but.."
Can't help - can't avoid, resist, or stop doing something
.
Can’t help but phrase comes from two other phrases can’t help —ing(This means - "I can't keep myself from —ing") andcan't but (This means - "I can't do anything except"). Socan't help but means "I can't keep myself from doing anything except,___
Can you think of a useful expression to say to a family member or a friend who has just gotten a promotion at work or has accomplished something? This one scene from the movie, You Again, would teach us one useful expression.
Listen carefully on this short conversation!
Didn't you catch the words? Here's a BIG TIP! Replay the movie clip.Write down as many words as you can.Repeat this process until you have completed the dialog. Good luck!
Did you get it? ESL learners, I'm so proud of you!
Do you want to practice more useful English expressions?
Add my Skype ID - imteacherjet
Where are you from?
Do you ever get confused if you would put the definite article " the " before the name of your country,or not ? This short video will help us! Enjoy studying!
I'm from the Philippines. What about you? Where are you from?
.. tropical storm to hit Seoul,Korea in 15 years is Typhoon Kompasu.
The above pictures were snapshots taken outside my student's window at 6:30 in the morning today.
Typhoon Kompasu lashes South Korea
Typhoon Kompasu struck South Korea early Thursday, killing three people while it knocked over streetlights and scaffolding in what was called the strongest tropical storm to hit the Seoul area in 15 years. Powerful gusts knocked over power lines, cutting off power to tens of thousands of homes and forcing airports to cancel or delay dozens of international flights, the National Emergency Management Agency said. Streets of Seoul, the capital, were littered with tree leaves and branches and toppled construction. Some parked cars were wrecked by scaffolding knocked over by the typhoon. More than 60 international flights were delayed or cancelled, mostly to and from China, officials at Incheon and Gimpo airports said. Service on two Seoul subway lines and five railway routes was suspended ,the emergency management agency said. An 80-year-old man died after being hit by a roof tile and a 37-year-old businessman was killed on his way to work by a falling tree branch, the agency said. A 75-year-old man was electrocuted while examining a transformer, and four people were injured by broken glass. Elementary and middle schools Seoul were ordered to delay the start of the school day by two hours, while all public and private kindergartens were closed for the day, the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education said. The storm caused at least $8.3 million US in damage to a soccer stadium in Incheon, west of Seoul, stadium officials said. Power was out at more than 60,000 homes along South Korea's west coast, officials said. Kompasu, the Japanese word for "compass," landed on Ganghwa Island, about 70 kilometres west of Seoul, early Thursday morning, officials said.
Heavy rain hits North Korea
The typhoon also caused torrential rains and heavy gusts throughout North Korea, the country's state media reported Thursday. It didn't say whether the typhoon caused any casualties or damage. Last month, floods swamped farmland, houses and public buildings in the North's northwestern city of Sinuiju and adjacent areas and displaced more than 23,000 people, according to figures by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. Earlier this week, South Korea's Red Cross offered the North relief aid worth $8.3 million US.
Carolyn Bigda, a reporter for Money Magazine , gives us some job interview tips.
She says that the first 10 minutes of the interview is crucial and you need to use that wisely to make a good impression. She also gives us some practical tips on how to dress, what to say and what not to say in a job interview.
Student Sue is preparing for a job interview. I got this from youtube.com to help her . Career consultant Maggie Mistal of Martha Stewart Living Radio has excellent advice for anybody looking to ace a job interview.
New Words To Study:
1. Ace a job interview - to pass the interview
2.Stay tune -to hang on or wait more news on a subject
3. Evaluative- based on the act of judging carefully
4. Nerve-racking or Nerve -wrecking - very distressing, stressful
5. Ice- breaker- something that you say in the beginning that relaxes a formal atmosphere
6. Overqualified - educated or skilled beyond what is necessary for a particular job
7. Downshift - a change from a financially rewarding but stressful career to a less well paid but more fulfilling one 8. Negotiate-to arrange or settle by discussion and mutual agreement 9. Vice versa- the other way around
Here's what we liked the most - fresh spring rolls and a chicken filled steamed bun! 
