Assignment4

Assignment 4 My notes on episode 1150: Avoiding topics in conversation.

NOTES
1. settle down
to get married, to find a home, to start a family.

2. Speaking of      ( =talking of)
is an expression we use to introduce the topic that is related to what the other person said, but isn't exactly the same.

3. leg man
a man who might be attracted to women who have long beautiful legs.

4. And now for something completely different
one of the famous phrases in the show. It means people do something very funny they follow.

5. shed pounds
to lose weight.

6. cut out
to stop using something or to stop doing something.
e.g. cut out sweets→ to stop eating sweets.

7. My sentiments exactly     (=That's exactly how I feel.)
to agree completely with the other person.

8. get back at 
If you get back at someone or get them back, you do something unpleasant to them in order to have revenge for something unpleasant that they did to you.

My opinion
People are too easily offended these day. In the podcast, I think Lila said"you’re not getting any younger" is too impolite and she continually asking question about George's love life is definitely disrespectful. I always be aware of what I said when I talk because I really afraid of someone would be hurt by my words. I would avoid topics like people's physical appearance, politics, money, ages...for example, if someone looks plump, I would avoid the topics like fat or lose weight with him.
I think I can accept any topics when I chat with other people. I don't take it too seriously when people make offenses comments to me. Every time my friends play trick on me I just diffuse the situation with humor or agreeing with them.

Assignment3

Assignment 3 My thoughts and new findings on ESL Cyber Listening Lab

ESL Cyber Listening Lab is perfect for me!
I always try hard to remember the new words but forgot them easily. I found it is not only a good place to enhance my listening skills but also can memorize vocabulary words. When I listening, I can follow the speaker, thinking about what the speaker is saying and what is going on in the mind of the speaker, guessing the speaker’s opinion and attitude and catching the true meaning of the speaker’s words. Now I plan to spend an hours every day to listening the audio files, practice exercise for each conversation and read aloud and repeat it until I can recite it. I hope it can make my pronunciation more accurate and develop my language sense so I can choose the right answer when I exam without thinking too much of English grammar.

This week’s class we have learned the "schwa sound", it's quite fun! I don't know it before. I just took my English magazine and try some sentences but it heard really weird. XD

Assignment2

Assignment:Look up 5 words that you don’t quite understand in the monolingual dictionary.
1. decent
e.g. Are there any decent restaurants around here?

2. butcher
e.g. Many western countries raise and butcher a large number of beef cattle.

3. trim
e.g. It is possible to trim off any blank area after printing .

4. voila
e.g. Come back to your seat , put your glasses back on and voila.

5. prank
e.g. I got a phone call this afternoon . l think it was a prank call.

Greetings!

Hello everyone, my name is Joy and this is my first English blog.
I will post some assignments here and I hope it can improve my poor English.XD
Welcome to my blog !