Sunday, December 15, 2024

Our Last Week of Classes and Meetings This Year

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Happy Holidays, Friends! This first "half" of our school year is drawing to a close. This year we are concentrating on telling our stories. Personal stories drive our vocabulary. As you celebrate the holidays with your family and friends, think about how you can add these memories and experiences to your story. Safe travels! Send pictures!

We are looking forward to the shortest day of the year (the Winter Solstice) in the Northern Hemisphere on December 21. Read more in the Farmer's Almanac.

American Culture

Christmas is a special time in the United States. While this holiday has roots in Christianity, there are many traditions revolve around coming home, family, and friends. Seasonal songs are an important part of the traditions and every artist and songwriter has a song about Christmas in their band's repertoire. Holiday shows cram all the favorites in an hour or so. These favorites are only played between Thanksgiving and Christmas day. Sing along with these favorites and brush up on pronunciation and enunciation. 

xkcd is a funny take on science and American Culture

American English Tricks and Techniques: Do You Hear What I Hear?

Our names are very personal. As we introduced ourselves to new friends this Thursday, we talked about our names and the difficulties people have saying them across the board. This is because they are unfamiliar in sound, style and in form both linguistically and culturally. Our names often have easy and common sounds to our language (otherwise how could our parents call us or call us out) but these sounds and combinations can be uniquely combined, formed, and voiced. This is a great way to start to understand and learn the differences between a home language and a new language. On the other hand, you may not hear or be able to easily pronounce a friend's name (or your children's friend's names). 

International Friends Meeting Notes

Join us! Click here to register.

International Bible Study: Monday, 8-9:00 PM, Zoom

December 4: Celebrate the coming Messiah! We are listening to Handel's Messiah and reading along as our study. 

American English and Culture: Thursday, 9-11:00 AM, Zoom

We enjoyed each other's "I'm from..." poems. This is a great exercise in practicing how to "talk around" something because sometimes there just is not one word for something and a description is necessary. Some people simply look up and around and fill in the blanks with the first thing that comes to mind. Others are more thoughtful. In some scenarios, people are just given a list of prompts (without the connecting words and phrases). Then, after they plug in the words they get a surprise!

Here is a recipe for Kimbap. We also talked about the last name of Park; you can click to learn more about the history. A rationalization for the spelling can be found here. I would have to take exception to saying that the Americanized pronunciation of the name is ineptitude. My name is consistently mispronounced. I have r, l, ll, w, and y in my name all of which can be problematic only because these letters and sounds do not exist in a language, exist in a different way or sound. Do people choose an "easier" name/pronunciation for where they live, or do they insist on and retain their original pronunciation? In the United States it does not matter. We are a nation of immigrants and have names originating from many countries. American parents choose names from other cultures because they like the sentiment or sound. Parents choose unusual spellings that can lead to unintended pronunciations. This Huggies link has a list unique, interesting, and unusual of names.

December 19: We meet on Zoom for our last meeting of the year. Will we sing? Will we dance? We will do a Mad Lib and craft holiday greetings.

Here's the list:

  1. verb
  2. person
  3. noun
  4. person
  5. noun
  6. noun
  7. room in house
  8. adjective
  9. adjective
  10. adjective
  11. scent
  12. verb
  13. noun
  14. noun
  15. person
  16. transportation
  17. animal
  18. adjective

American English and Culture: Thursday, 7-8:00 PM, CLC, Carmel, room 102

The weather outside was frightful, but the meeting was so delightful! Let It Snow! We had a small and mighty group show up to practice our American English. When a small group meets together, we tend to get into some deep discussions in the realm of politics. This week talked about immigration status (and did some work on grammar; particularly in the context of prepositions in this topic). We are experts about the immigration process in the United States (since we live the life) and as experts

December 19: Maybe we will work on singing and song writing. Maybe we will do our poetry. We will do the Christmas Mad Libs.

American English for Kids: Thursday, 4:30-5:00 PM, private Zoom

We talked about museums and memories. We worked on and read our "I'm from..." poems. Poetry is a good way to build vocabulary and to understand how to use words to explain what we mean when we do not have a particular or specific word or phrase to explain what we want to say.

December 20: Let's end the year by finishing reading our "I'm from..." poems and playing Monopoly. 

Words and Phrases

across the board: affecting all categories
call someone out: criticize someone or ask them to explain their actions
cram: stuff, fill
ineptitude: incompetent
insist on: say or show something is very important
jazzy: fancy with snappy music
just given: simply given
linguistically: pertaining to or dealing with language
(an amount) or so: about or approximately
problematic: something difficult to explain; open to debate
rationalization: a way of describing or interpreting something to make it more acceptable or attractive
realm: subject area of interest
repertoire: a list or supply of skills or devices
sentiment: an emotional feel
show up: go to a place
take: understanding, position
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