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December 25, 2021 (Saturday)

Merry Christmas – 메리 크리스마스

Merry Christmas – 메리 크리스마스

November 27, 2021 (Saturday)

  • Blinkist Subscription
    • St**Sm***
  • Baby Girls to Outnumber Boys Soon
    • Outnumber
    • “Indeed, there now seems to be a slight preference for girl children.”
      • Did you have a preference for a son or a daughter?
      • Why did Korean culture have a preference for boys?
  • Name Changing Fad Grows
    • “fad” vs. “trend”
      • Do you think that the name-changing phenomenon a “fad” or a “trend”?
      • Have you ever wanted a different name?
    • Children Need No Longer Take Father’s Surname
      • What do you think?
      • My children have my wife’s surname in Korea because Korean gov’t said my children had to be on a family register.
  • Three reasons you don’t have good style
    • Do you have good style?
    • What is your style?
    • What is your best style tip, your best “do”
    • What is your best style “don’t”?
    • 3 reasons you don’t have anything to wear and how to solve it
      1. Buy fewer trendy and statement pieces
        • 80% basics / 20% trendy
      2. Your basics need to anchor your wardrobe
        • What is an “anchor”?
        • Dress with basics but pepper with trendy
      3. Get shoes that are both stylish and comfortable
        • “Don’t underestimate sneakers”
        • How many pairs of shoes do you own?
  • “My Fault as a Father who Failed to Raise His Child Properly” Chang Je-won Steps down from Yoon Seok-youl’s Election Campaign
    • “On September 28, People Power Party lawmaker Chang Je-won apologized for his son, Chang Yong-jun, also known as the rapper Noel, who assaulted a police officer, and said, “I deeply regret my fault as a father who failed to raise his child properly, and I will take time to reflect on myself.” He also announced that he was stepping down as head of former prosecutor general Yoon Seok-youl’s presidential campaign.”

      Chang’s son, Yong-jun was arrested for assaulting a police officer who tried to test him to see if he was drinking and driving on September 18. At the time, the rapper was driving without a license. In 2019, he received a suspended sentence in court for trying to switch the driver after crashing into a motorcycle while driving under the influence.”
    • Would you have resigned?
    • How much responsibility would you feel for your adult son’s behavior?
  • Baby essentials
    • Silicone bib with food catcher
    • Bumbo seat
    • (Don’t get crazy with the stroller)

November 20, 2021 (Saturday)

No class meeting

November 13, 2021 (Saturday)

  • Blinkist: Help Me!
    • “First, she realized that all the time she’d been reading self-help books, she’d never acted on the advice they gave her. This, she thought, was why her life hadn’t changed. Then the second lightbulb went on: if she started doing self-help instead of simply reading it, then she wouldn’t be unhappy. Far from it – she’d be perfect! 

      And so Marianne decided to read one self-help book a month for a year and implement everything she learned.”
    • My favorite – how she faced her fears
      • My November resolution – rejection:

        “When was the last time you went out looking for rejection? Chances are, it’s never crossed your mind to do this. In fact, you’re probably wondering why anyone would do such a thing.

        But, as Marianne learned from the book Rejection Therapy, if you keep facing rejection, you become desensitized to it. You stop seeing it as something to avoid. As a result, you become more willing to try new things.

        With this in mind, Marianne aimed for one rejection a day. But just as she was gearing up for a rejection that terrified her, something stopped her in her tracks.

        The key message here is: A family tragedy made Marianne question her entire project, but seeking rejection led to significant wins.

        …Weeks later, she came across a quote: “Comfort is highly overrated for individuals who want to progress in life.” And just like that, she was back in the rejection game.

        Except rejection wasn’t all she got. There were unexpected yeses, too. A musician let her play his instrument, and a group of women welcomed her into their conversation. These interactions made her feel like the world was full of possibilities. But then her sister pointed out that Marianne wasn’t trying to do things that could actually change her life.

        As much as she didn’t want to admit it, Marianne knew this was true. And so she took things up a few notches. She pitched articles to publications she wanted to write for and approached a man she’d been admiring in a coffee shop. 

        The results were completely unexpected. One of her pitches turned into a weekly column. And the man in the coffee shop? He immediately asked her on a date. These rewarding attempts at rejection taught Marianne that she’d been playing it safe in far too many areas of her life.”

November 6, 2021 (Saturday)

No class

October 31, 2021 (Sunday)

  • Halloween
    • Why is Halloween called “Halloween”?
      • All words have histories and even reasons.
      • Marathon
      • So, why is Halloween called “Halloween”?
    • What is the important lesson?
  • Blinkist: Help Me!
    • “First, she realized that all the time she’d been reading self-help books, she’d never acted on the advice they gave her. This, she thought, was why her life hadn’t changed. Then the second lightbulb went on: if she started doing self-help instead of simply reading it, then she wouldn’t be unhappy. Far from it – she’d be perfect! 

      And so Marianne decided to read one self-help book a month for a year and implement everything she learned.”
    • My favorite – how she faced her fears

October 24, 2021 (Sunday)

  • “Statistics for Poets” – Margins of Error (CNN) podcast
    • Stats 101
      • Do you remember 101?
        • The other use of 101 – Room 101
        • 1984
    • Do you listen to any podcasts?
      • While driving to and from Buan yesterday, I listened to Malcolm Gladwell’s.
    • “Few rules dominate the dating world as much as ‘divide by two and add seven.’ But where did that rule even come from, and does it hold up today? Harry looks at the history of the age gaps in relationships and tries to find out whether the math actually works out for couples.”
      • Is the “divide by two and add seven” rule reasonable?
      • I used to use a “in the same stage of life” guideline.
  • Squid Game (오징어 게임)
    • Choseun Ilbo: Korea’s ‘Squid Game’ Sweeps Global Netflix Charts
    • Have you seen 오징어 게임?
      • Do you want to see it?
    • Did you play any of the Squid Game games when you were a child?
    • Why do you think that 오징어 게임 has become such a worldwide phenomenon?
      • Korea Bizwire: ‘Squid Game’ Exposes Social Realities, Much Like ‘Parasite’
      • Korea Herald: From childhood games to iconic track suits, Netflix ‘Squid Game’ syndrome grips the world
        • “The show’s childhood games may have evoked nostalgia among many South Korean viewers, but global audiences seem to be addicted to other details of the show.”
        • “‘Squid Game’ seems very dramatic, but the show is a great metaphor for Korea‘s highly competitive society. Surprisingly, South Korea is not the only country experiencing intense competition. Unlike many drama series offering message of hopes and suggesting what to do, ‘Squid Game’ provides a sharp insight to our harsh reality. I think this is the reason why many viewers find it to be an emotional catharsis,” culture critic Jung Duk-hyun said in a phone interview with The Korea Herald on Tuesday.
  • What would you do? How do you decide?
  • S. Koreans to get cash back on card spending in latest COVID-19 relief fund
    • “From October to the last day of this November, those who spend more than usual will get a sliver of their card spending added back to their bank accounts.

      The Finance Ministry announced on Monday that anybody in South Korea who spends at least three percent more than their average monthly spending in the second quarter, will get ten percent of their extra expenses back, up to a maximum of (W100,000).”
    • Can you, in English (or maybe falling back into a little Korean), figure out what this means and how this would work?
    • Will this affect your spending?
    • Will you be able to benefit from this?
  • Air Quality Best on Record in September
    • Idiom: “on record”
    • Idiom: “on the record” vs. “off the record”
    • Have you noticed better air quality recently?
    • “The air quality in the Seoul area was at the best on record in September partly thanks to reduced operation of coal-fired power plants in China.”
  • How do you like your eggs?

October 16, 2021 (Saturday)

No Class

October 9, 2021 (Saturday)

Sophie & you

  • The Monkey’s Paw (Text)
    • The Simpson’s Treehouse of Horrors – The Monkey’s Paw
      • satire vs homage (pronounced oh-mahj)
  • How to Think More Effectively
    • “The School of Life”
  • Hamlet

October 2, 2021 (Saturday)

  • Chuseok, 2021
    • Do you have a post-Chuseok letdown?
    • Are you glad or sad it’s over?

September 25, 2021 (Saturday)

Thank you

  • [Korea Bizwire] Two-thirds of Unmarried Couples Feel Satisfaction in Their Relationship: Survey
    • Among the respondents, 63 percent said that they were satisfied with the relationship with their unmarried partner.
    • This figure is 6 percentage points higher than the result of another satisfaction survey on the relationship with spouses that was conducted in the same year. The satisfaction rate for the relationship with spouses stood at 57 percent.
    • Are you surprised?
    • [Had you lived |Did you live] live together before you [got | had gotten] married?
    • Do you think that couples living together before marriage is a good idea or bad idea?

Socializing Trumps Exercise in Combating Aging

September 18, 2021 (Saturday)

  • Do you remember P.R.E.P.?
  • One has to go….
    • What if you could only live in one?
  • New Lockdown Rules for Chuseok
    • Do you have Chuseok plans?
    • What do you usually do?
    • Have coronavirus restrictions affected your Chuseok plans?
      • affected vs. effected
    • Are the Chuseok restrictions reasonable?

September 11, 2021 (Saturday)

  • September 11, 2001, 20 years later
    • Where were you?
    • Does Korea have similar “where were you?” moments?
    • Moments in the American psyche:
      • Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941
      • FDR’ death
      • JFK’s assassination
      • MLK assassination
      • John Lennon’s murder
      • September 11
  • Blinkist
  • Wondrium
  • The Temptations (movie)
  • Beatles Anthology (mini-series)

September 4, 2021 (Saturday)

  • The Temptations
    • My Girl (The Temptations Sing Smokey, 1965)
    • Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone (All Directions, 1972)
    • Ain’t Too Proud to Beg (Gettin’ Ready, 1966)
    • The Way You Do the Things You Do ( Meet the Temptations & The Temptations Sing Smokey , 1964)
      • The Temptations first big hit
    • I Wish It Would Rain (The Temptations Wish It Would Rain, 1968)
    • (I Know) I’m Losing You (The Temptations with a Lot o’ Soul, 1967)
      • Rod Stewart’s cover version
    • Treat Her Like a Lady (Truly for You, 1984)
    • Get Ready (Gettin’ Ready, 1966)
    • Ball of Confusion (That’s What the World is Today)
  • It’s September, so it’s microresolutions time!
  • We still do “no TV” during weekdays, from Sunday night to Friday night. My family has kept this since May’s microresolution.
  • September micro-resolutions
    • How did your July micro-resolutions go?
      • Minsun ->
      • Oppa ->
      • Joseph -> family bedtime 11:30
        • (I should study Korean for 10 minutes / day)

August 28, 2021 (Saturday)

  • Household Debt Still Soars 2.7 Times Faster Than Income
    • “Disposable household income therefore inched up only 1.2 percent to W47.3 million, which was also a record low.”
      • “Disposable household income therefore inched up only 1.2 percent, which was also a record low, to W47.3 million.”
    • What was “a record low”?
    • Does Koreans’ increase in household debt make you nervous about the future?
      • “Does Koreans’ increase in household debt…” OR “Do Koreans’ increase in household debt…”?

Blinkist – “What Are You Doing With Your Life?”

  • Rising Prices Add to Mom-and-Pop Stores’ Woes
    • What do you think “woes” means?
    • What part of speech is it?
    • “Price inflation is hitting mom-and-pop businesses particularly hard after they were already battered by the coronavirus pandemic.”
    • ‘Lee Sang-bong, who has run a bar in Daechi-dong for six years, is one example. “Sales have now plummeted from W30 million to W7 million a month,” Lee said (US$1=W1,149). But Lee has to repay a W90 million loan he took out when he started it. “I should’ve closed it earlier” before losses have snowballed, he admits.’
      • Mom-and-pops
      • hitting (them) hard
      • Has the pandemic hit your business hard?
      • Snowballed
        • ‘”I should’ve closed it earlier” before losses have snowballed, he admits.’
      • How about personally? Has the pandemic hit you hard?
    • “…many are taking out even more loans to stay afloat. Loans to mom-and-pop business owners surged from W700 trillion in the first quarter of last year to W841 trillion in the second quarter this year, and the amount is probably much higher if loan sharks are included.”
      • Do you know how much W700 trillion is in terms of Korea’s GDP?
      • Are you nervous for Korea’s economy?
    • Are you surprised?
  • Every Region of Korea Now Aging
  • Pandemic Shoppers Stick with Tried and Tested
    • tried and tested
      • “Lockdown-addled consumers are favoring shops and restaurants they are familiar with instead of being tempted by novelty, credit card data suggest.”
        • Data suggest or suggests?
      • What do you think “tried and tested” means?
      • Do you stick with tried and tested or do you go for new and different?
      • “The main reason is that lockdown offered fewer opportunities for window shopping and leisurely exploration. The coronavirus pandemic also reduced the distances consumers traveled.”
      • “Korea Credit Data analyzed the plastic transactions of 700,000 businesses and found that spending at newly opened stores declined 27.7 percent in the first quarter of this year compared to the carefree first quarter of 2019. But in stores they had already visited in the past year, purchases declined only 8.7 percent.”
        • Who are they?
        • Does such credit card purchase tracking make you nervous?
        • Do you use cash or credit cards for your purchases?
        • Are you mindful of what you purchase with your credit card?
  • Sleeping longer hours correlates with IQ: study
    • The good news: “It showed that, the longer hours children sleep, the higher their IQ scores.”
    • The not so good news: “This was especially the case with boys. Boys who sleep more than 10 hours a night score 10 points higher than those who sleep less than 8 hours a night. However, the correlation was not found among girls.”
    • Did you sleep a lot, more than average, when you were a teen?
    • What did your parents think?
    • What did you think?
      • Did you want to sleep more or less?
    • Do you sleep a lot now?
      • Do you want to sleep more, less, or are you perfectly happy with your sleep schedule?
    • Do you wish that you could wake up earlier or go to bed earlier?
  • Women Still Spend More Time Than Men on Household Chores
    • Idiom: “spend time”
      • We have many idioms that use the same words for time and money.
        • We even say “time is money”.
      • Spend time / spend money
      • Waste time / waste money
    • How much time do you spend on household chores?
    • How much time did your father spend on household chores?
    • How much time did your mother spend on household chores?
    • Do you think that how much time you spend on household chores is fair?
    • Do you think that how much time your father spent on household chores was fair?
  • School Teachers Angered by Mandatory Drug Screening
    • Is this policy fair or unfair?
    • Are you for or against it?
    • “It was unpleasant, being treated like a potential drug addict,” she told The Korea Times. She also experienced frustration due to a lack of guidance from the education authorities on the procedure.
      • How would you feel?
    • “I was only told to hand in the test results by July 17, without proper guidance on where I should take the test or whether I would be able to take a leave of absence.” She had to pay for the test, which cost around 40,000 won ($35), herself after being told that it wouldn’t be covered by the government.
      • Do you think that the employer or the employee should pay for the drug test?
    • Have you ever taken a drug test, a drug screening?
  • Tesla’s Sales Volume Continues to Increase
    • Do you have Tesla envy?
    • Do you want to buy an electric car?
    • What would be the necessary conditions for you to buy an electric car?
  • Chosun Ilbo: Things You Don’t Know
    • Writing with an accent
    • The pronoun problem in business writing
      • How to fix it? (What is “it”)?
        1. Prefer nouns to pronouns
        2. Edit
        3. Get a second set of eyes

August 21, 2021 (Saturday)

August 14, 2021 (Saturday)

  • Discussion

August 7, 2021 (Saturday)

  • Jade Cave – Chungchungbukdo

July 31, 2021 (Saturday)

  • When You Trap a Tiger
    • by Tae Keller.

July 24, 2021 (Saturday)

  • The Daily Stoic
  • Epictetus on (Love and) Loss
    • The Broken Pot:
      • “When you are delighted with anything, be delighted as with a thing which is not one of those which cannot be taken away, but as something of such a kind, as an earthen pot is, or a glass cup, that, when it has been broken, you may remember what it was and may not be troubled… What you love is nothing of your own: it has been given to you for the present, not that it should not be taken from you, nor has it been given to you for all time, but as a fig is given to you or a bunch of grapes at the appointed season of the year. But if you wish for these things in winter, you are a fool. So if you wish for your son or friend when it is not allowed to you, you must know that you are wishing for a fig in winter.”
    • July 23 – “Receive without pride, let go without attachment.”
      • In the midst of the breakdown of the Roman Republic, during the civil war between Pompey and Caesar, Pompey made the decision to give control of the military fleet to Cato. It was a massive honor and hugely powerful position. But then a few days later, responding to the protests of his jealous inner circle, Pompey reversed his decision and took the command away.
      • It could have been seen as an enormous public humiliation—to be given a promotion and then have it taken away. The record shows that Cato’s reaction was basically nothing. He responded to the honor and the dishonor the same way: with indifference and acceptance. He certainly didn’t let it affect his support for the cause. In fact, after the snub, he worked to rally the soldiers before battle with inspirational speeches—the very men who should have been under his command.
      • That’s what Marcus is saying. Do not take the slights of the day personally—or the exciting rewards and recognitions either, especially when duty has assigned you an important cause. Trivial details like the rise and fall of your position say nothing about you as a person. Only your behavior—as Cato’s did— will.
    • July 24 – “Whenever disturbing news is delivered to you, bear in mind that no news can ever be relevant to your reasoned choice. Can anyone break news to you that your assumptions or desires are wrong? No way! But they can tell you someone died—even so, what is that to you?”
      —EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 3.18.1–2
      • A well-meaning friend might ask you today: “What do you think about [insert tragedy from the other side of the world]?” You, in your equally well-meaning concern, might say, “I just feel awful about it.”

        In this scenario, both of you have put aside your reasoned choice without doing a single thing for the victims suffering from the actual tragedy. It can be so easy to get distracted by, even consumed by, horrible news from all over the world. The proper response of the Stoic to these events is not to not care, but mindless, meaningless sympathy does very little either (and comes at the cost of one’s own serenity, in most cases). If there is something you can actually do to help these suffering people, then, yes, the disturbing news (and your reaction to it) has relevance to your reasoned choice. If emoting is the end of your participation, then you ought to get back to your own individual duty—to yourself, to your family, to your country.
      • The four virtues
      • The obstacle is the way.
      • How I use this wisdom to stop worrying.

July 17, 2021 (Saturday)

July 10, 2021 (Saturday)

  • Husband’s new job
  • New job stress

July 2, 2021 (Saturday)

  • TEDxEast – Nancy Duarte uncovers common structure of greatest communicators 11/11/2010
  • Amanda Gorman Inauguration Poem
    • Note how slowly she speaks.
    • Note how slow her hand gestures are.
    • Note how she aspirates the ending sounds, especially on ‘t’ , ‘d’ , ‘k’, and ‘s’ sounds
    • Note how loudly and clearly she speaks
  • June / July micro-resolutions
    • How did your June micro-resolutions go?
      • Minsun ->
      • Joseph -> 1 set of Push-ups and 1 set of Wim Hof Method breathing
    • How did you do with your resolutions?
  • July micro-resolutions suggestions for…
    • Minsun ->
    • Joseph -> Read When You Trap a Tiger to Joey and Sophie 10 mins / day before their bedtime. My goal is to finish the novel in one month.
  • Dong-A-Ilbo (Op-ed): One’s mother tongue is his country
    • I thought “this is an illogical comparison”
      • …then I read the article
    • Is English teaching a form of cultural colonization?
  • When You Trap a Tiger
    • by Tae Keller.

June 26, 2021 (Saturday)

(No Class)

June 19, 2021 (Saturday)

  • Bangtan Boys Lyrics to Be Used as Language Teaching Material
    • “There are barely any Korean textbooks for youngsters overseas despite surging demand for language lessons,” an Education Ministry spokesman said Wednesday. “Some 60 experts will develop a curriculum for primary and secondary schools and create textbooks based on it.” They will include plenty of K-pop content like BTS lyrics and videos.
    • Are BTS songs good material to learn Korean?
    • Which songs do you recommend for Korean learners?
    • Which English songs would you like to learn?

Song: Row, Row, Row Your Boat

June 12, 2021 (Saturday)

Song: Row, Row, Row Your Boat

  • Suffixes (review)
    • Do you remember …
      • -mania?
      • -holic?
      • -gate?
      • pseudo- (prefix)?
    • Discussion
      • Do you “invest” in Bitcoin?
        • quotes, “scare quotes”
        • Do you know the story of the Dutch and tulipmania?
        • Are we living in a time of Bitcoinmania?

June 5, 2021 (Saturday)

May 29, 2021 (Saturday)

  • What did you do last week?
  • Young Couples Woo Each Other with Samsung, Tesla Stocks
    • OPIc / speaking test question: “On your background survey you stated that you were married. How has your life changed since you’ve been married? What was your single life like? Do you miss your single life or parts of your single life?”
      • How many questions is this question asking?
        • How will you remember all the questions?
      • What speaking pattern will you use to organize your answer?
      • How will the tester evaluate your answer?
        • What are the measurables?
        • How will the tester measure the communication, “beauty contest”, part?
          • Do you have the vocabulary to express what you want to communicate?

May 22, 2021 (Saturday)

(“Not today!“)

May 15, 2021 (Saturday)

  • Young Couples Woo Each Other with Samsung, Tesla Stocks
    • Did you give your boyfriends gifts while you were dating?
    • Did your boyfriends give you gifts while you were dating?
      • What kind of gifts?
    • Do you give your spouse gifts now?
    • Does your spouse give you gifts now?
      • What kind of gifts?
    • Have you heard of the book The 5 Love Languages?
      1. Words of affirmation: 23 percent
      2. Quality time: 20 percent
      3. Acts of service: 20 percent
      4. Physical touch: 19 percent
      5. Gift giving: 18 percent
    • I think I’m a little sparse on the words:
    • OPIc / speaking test question: “On your background survey you stated that you were married. How has your life changed since you’ve been married? What was your single life like? Do you miss your single life or parts of your single life?”
      • How many questions is this question asking?
        • How will you remember all the questions?
      • What speaking pattern will you use to organize your answer?
      • How will the tester evaluate your answer?
        • What are the measurables?
        • How will the tester measure the communication, “beauty contest”, part?
          • Do you have the vocabulary to express what you want to communicate?

May 8, 2021 (Saturday)

  • When You Trap a Tiger
    • by Tae Keller.
  • Speaking Skill – Speaking from Notes
    • Did your school have a dress code?
    • Did your schools require school uniforms?
    • Does your work have a dress code?
    • How do you typically dress for your job?
    • Have you ever worked at a job that had a uniform?
    • Can you speak from bullet points?
    • Can you make a presentation only from bullet points / talking points?
    • Remember PREP / PREOP ?
      • Is “Remember PREP / PREOP ?” a question or imperative?
      • What does “Remember PREP / PREOP ?” mean?
    • OPIc test drill: Some people, mostly parents, are in favor of their children’s schools having mandatory school uniforms. Others, mostly students, are against mandatory school uniforms, thinking that school uniforms are outdated.
      • What do you notice about the prompt above?
      • What do the commas mean?
      • How would you structure your answer?

May 1, 2021 (Saturday)

  • Ginger or Marianne
    • Stacy or Becky
  • That vs Which
    • restrictive vs non-restrictive
    • defining vs extra detail
    • essential vs. non-essential information
    • no comma separator vs comma separators
    • Standard written English vs. usage
      • “In today’s usage which and that are both used to introduce restrictive clauses, those which cannot be removed from the context of the sentence, and which is also used to introduce nonrestrictive clauses, those which provide additional information but can be removed without the sentence falling apart.”
  • Discussion
    • “MAY DAY! …MAY DAY! …MAY DAY!”
    • May resolutions
  • Joey’s Birthday – 12 years ago
    • Me: “I think that today is the happiest day of my life”
    • Eunseon: _____________
  • What was the happiest day of your life?
  • When You Trap a Tiger
    • by Tae Keller.
  • SLE – Chapter 02 – “The More the Better”
    • review
      • Hindsight is 20/20.
        • What does “hindsight is 20/20” mean?
        • Why do we say “hindsight is 20/20”?
      • Devil’s advocate (Activity C)
        • What does “devil’s advocate” mean?
        • Why do we say “devil’s advocate”?
    • Reminiscing about our School Days
      • What does reminiscing means?
      • 12) Did you ever feel burned out from studying too many hours?
        -What does burned out mean?

April 24, 2021 (Saturday)

  • SLE – Chapter 02 – “The More the Better”
    • Activity B p. 13 – Hindsight is 20/20.
      • What does “hindsight is 20/20” mean?
      • Why do we say “hindsight is 20/20”?
      • Can you think of a business situation that you would use “hindsight is 20/20”?
    • Activity C p. 14 – Devil’s advocate
      • What does “devil’s advocate” mean?
      • Why do we say “devil’s advocate”?
      • Can you think of a business situation that you would use “devil’s advocate”?
    • Reminiscing about our School Days
      • What do you think reminiscing means?
        1) How would you describe your social circle in high school? What types of classmates did you associate with? What types of classmates did you dislike?
        • What do you think social circle means?
      • 2) Usually the most popular boys in North American high schools are good athletes, and the most popular girls are pretty, stylish, and sociable. What kinds of people were the most popular in your school? What kinds of people were considered “losers”? Were you popular in your class?
      • 4) Did you get involved in extracurricular activities?
        • What does extracurricular mean?
      • 5)
      • 6) Have you ever had a reunion with your former classmates?
        • What does reunion mean?
          • etymology
          • context
        • Do you think that they have changed much? Do you think that you have changed much? How?
      • 8) Did you have boyfriends or girlfriends in high school?
        • What does boyfriend mean?
        • What does girlfriend mean?
      • 9) Did you ever have a crush on one of your teachers?
      • 11) If your high school classmates had voted for you in one of the following categories, which one would they have chosen? Who among your coworkers or social circle fits these categories now?
        • Best looking
        • Funniest
        • Craziest
          • What do you think “craziest” means in this context?
        • Most likely to succeed
        • Smartest
        • Most athletic
        • Friendliest
        • Most popular
        • Toughest
        • Laziest
      • 12) Did you ever feel burned out from studying too many hours?
        -What does burned out mean? How do you know?
        -Do you think that you could have gotten better results by studying less but more intensely, with higher intensity?
        -Do you ever feel burned out?
        –What is the verb tense?
  • The Education System and Classroom Learning

April 18, 2021 (Sunday)

  • Pronunciation Clinic
    • ‘th’ – sounds: “voiced” and “voiceless”
      • ð – the voiced dental fricative (as in “this”)
      • θ – the voiceless dental fricative (as in “thing”)
  1. th at the beginning of a word:
    • th is voiceless /θ/ in most cases
      • threat, thought, think, throw,
    • th is voiceless /θ/ when followed by consonants
      • three, threat
    • Function words usually begin with the voiced /ð/
      • as in the pronouns they, them, their, the, this, that, these, those 
      • and as in the adverbs and conjunctions then, there, than, thus, though, therefore, thereby, thereafter, ….
  2. th in the middle of a word:
    • Most (pure) English words have a voiced /ð/ in the middle (when there is a th)
      • as in either, father, mother, brother, rather, further, together, weather, whether, ….
    • Most loan (“foreign” English) words have a voiceless /θ/ in the middle when there is a th,
      • as in cathedral, enthusiasm, ethics, mathematics, lethal, method, mythical, …
  3. th at the end of a word:
    • Nouns and adjectives usually end in a voiceless /θ/
      • as in bath, cloth, breath, tooth, teeth, ….
    • Verbs usually end in a voiced /ð/ when there is a th
      • as in breathe, loathe, soothe, writhe, ….
  • When You Trap a Tiger
  • by Tae Keller was a child author and daughter of Nora Okja Keller.
  • “…the story of Lily and her relationship with her aging and ill Korean grandmother, wrapped around the Korean folktales her grandmother tells her at bedtime.”
  • First lines
    • Do you know any first lines of books?
    • Have you ever thought about writing a novel or short story?
      • How would you begin?
    • Famous first lines
      • 100 Best First Lines from Novels – American Book Review
      • 15 of the best first lines in fiction – Penguin Books
      • “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” ~ Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
      • “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.” ~ Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
        • parallelism
        • juxtaposition
        • thesis & antithesis
      • “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.” ~ Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
    • Famously bad first line: “It was a dark and stormy night.”
  • “I can turn invisible.” (first line, When You Trap a Tiger)
    • What does this first line tell us?
    • Ask yourself “do I want to continue?”

The 5 Parts of a story – Exposition, Rising Action, CLIMAX, Falling Action, Resolution

April 10, 2021 (Saturday)

  • Micro-resolutions
  • April micro-resolutions suggestions for…
    • Minsun ->
    • Oppa ->
    • Joseph ->
  • One of my best micro-resolutions was to work on my client outreach & development for 30 minutes every day.
  • Gerunds
    • What are gerunds?
    • Do you understand how to use gerunds?
    • Do you understand where we use gerunds?
  • World’s Best Cities – a Ranking
    • Which are the best cities you’ve been to?
    • If you could live in any city, which cities would be on your top-3 list?
    • What criteria, judging reasons, do you use for best cities?
    • Seoul is on the list. Where do you think Seoul ranks?
    • View the complete report from Resonance Consultancy.

April 3, 2021 (Saturday)

April Fool’s Day

  • “April is the cruelest month” ~ T.S. Eliot
    • Is April the cruelest month?
  • Do certain months have certain feelings for you?
  • Song: Watermelon Sugar

    Tastes like strawberries
    On a Summer evening
    And it sounds just like a song
    ….
    Strawberries
    On Summer evening
    Baby, you’re the end of June
    • “September of My Years” ~ Frank Sinatra
  • Easter
    • The Ten Commandments (Film – 1956)
    • Jesus Christ, Superstar
      • Original concept recording (1970)
      • Film (1973)
    • The Last Temptation of Christ
    • The Passion of the Christ (film – 2005)
  • My Easter photo
  • What are some minor Korean holidays, holidays that are not red days but Koreans have some kinds of customs, traditions, or activities?
    • April 1, April Fool’s Day
    • Which do you like?
    • Which can you do without, dislike?

March 27, 2021 (Saturday)

  • YouTube Videos Shift to Cooking as Pandemic Drags On
    • Has your coronavirus TV / YouTube viewing changed during the coronavirus?
    • Article: “With the coronavirus pandemic showing no signs of a letup, YouTube videos are shifting from ‘mukbang’ (a portmanteau in Korean of ‘eating’ and ‘broadcast’) to ‘cookbang’ (‘cooking’ and ‘broadcast’).’
      • What does “portmanteau” mean?
        • What does “port” mean?
        • Etymology, word origin (in this context) :
          • Lewis Carroll used “portmanteau”, which was a type of luggage, in “Through the Looking-Glass”. Humpty Dumpty explained to Alice the coinage of unusual words used in “Jabberwocky”. “Slithy” meant “slimy and lithe” and mimsy meant “miserable and flimsy”. Humpty Dumpty explained to Alice combining words in various ways: “You see it’s like a portmanteau—there are two meanings packed up into one word.”
    • Do you know any portmanteaus?
      • smog
      • motel
      • brunch
      • Microsoft
      • dramady / sitcom / romcom
      • frenemy
        • (Note: none of the above results in a red squiggly line underneath it.)
    • Portmanteaus vs. compound words
      • watermelon
      • starfish
    • Why are Koreans particularly keen on portmanteaus?
    • What are your favorite portmanteaus?
    • Where is Korea’s list of portmanteaus?
      • French, Hebrew, Spanish, and Japanese have their own Wikipedia sections.
      • Do you want to write our own list for Wikipedia’s Korean section?
        • What words should we include?
    • List of portmanteaus (English)
  • S-V-O – Subject-Verb-Object. Right?

March 20, 2021 (Saturday)

  • OPIc Test memories
    • What went right?
    • What would you have done differently?
      • “What would you do differently?” (What’s the difference?)
    • What are your future plans?
  • The first day of Spring
    • Spring Equinox
      • equi + nox
    • Do you like Spring?
      • What’s to like?
      • What’s to dislike?
    • What are your spring activities?
  • St. Patrick’s Day (March 17)
    • St. Joseph’s Day (March 19)

March 13, 2021 (Saturday)

  • What’s your flight plan
    • Remember “I want to be here. I want this.”
  • Today’s practice theme: “depth, not breadth”
    • Our focus today is not on content, but on the key indicators of fluency.

March 6, 2021 (Saturday)

  • Homework:
    • Remember an introductory statement, the first P, for your answers.
    • PREP / PREOP & STAR / STARR
    • Improving Fluency
      • ‘Ah’-counter -‘um’, ‘ah’, other filler sounds
      • Word fillers – “like”, “how do I say”, repeated fillers
    • Practice speaking, recording, listening to, and fixing the same question several times.
      • Do you play chess?

February 28, 2021 (Sunday)

  • Review:
    • Speaking test question:
      • Tell me about an important holiday in your country
      • How is the way people celebrate the holiday today different from the way they celebrated in the past?
    • Ask yourself
      • What is the main topic?
      • What is the question testing?
      • What speaking pattern should I use?
When You Trap a Tiger, a Newbery Award, “the Noble prize of children’s literature”, winner.
  • by Tae Keller was a child author and daughter of Nora Okja Keller.
  • “…the story of Lily and her relationship with her aging and ill Korean grandmother, wrapped around the Korean folktales her grandmother tells her at bedtime.”
  • Have you heard of this book, When You Trap a Tiger?
  • Which Korean folktales do you know?
    • Do you tell your children?
    • Why do we tell our children of such folktales?
      • Culture
        • Which stories and folk tales are most important in and to Korean culture?
      • Cultural literacy
        • What is cultural literacy?
        • Are you culturally literate?
        • Are your children / family culturally literate?
        • What should Koreans know to be culturally literate?
      • Moral teaching
        • What stories are part of Korean moral teaching?
        • American children’s stories:
          • The Little Engine That Could
          • Aesop’s Fables
            • The Ant and the Grasshopper
            • The Boy Who Cried Wolf
            • (What are the moral lessons?)
          • Rip Van Winkel
  • Improving Fluency
    • ‘Ah’-counter
      • ‘um’, ‘ah’, other filler sounds
    • Word – fillers
      • “like”, “how do I say”, repeated fillers
OPIc Test Prep

February 20, 2021 (Saturday)

(No class)

February 14, 2021 (Sunday)

New Year’s Celebrations
  • Do Koreans do something special for Seollal, lunar new year?
  • Do you or your family have special or different observations, way of celebrating or “observing”, the lunar new year?
  • What do you do for solar new year, New Year’s Day?
  • Speaking test question:
    • Tell me about an important holiday in your country
    • How is the way people celebrate the holiday today different from the way they celebrated in the past?
OPIc Test Prep

February 6, 2021 (Saturday)

  • gyn- word part
    • comes from Greek and means “wife; woman ”
      • gynecology, gynecologist
      • androgyny, androgynous (andro- man, male + gyn)
      • misogyny, misogynist (miso- hater, hatred + gyn)
      • gynarchy (gyn + archy, “rule by”)
  • How well did you do with your January micro-resolutions?
OPIc Test Prep

January 30, 2021 (Saturday)

  • Song: Norwegian Wood
  • What’s your favorite song?
  • Dangling Modifiers
    • Question:
      1. “He introduced me around the Senate chambers, insisted that his staff share credit with us on various Illinois projects, and maintained his patience and good humor.”
        • “He introduced ___, insisted ___, and maintained ___….”
      2. “He introduced me around the Senate chambers, insisting that his staff share credit with us on various Illinois projects, and maintained his patience and good humor.””
        • He introduced ___, insisting ___, and maintained ___….”
      3. “Insisting that his staff share credit with us on various Illinois projects, he introduced me around the Senate chambers and maintained his patience and good humor.”
        • “Insisting ___, he introduced ___ and maintained ___….”

OPIc Test Prep

January 23, 2021 (Saturday)

OPIc Test Prep

Background Survey Questions

Discussion

  • Jesus Christ, Superstar
  • How do you telecommute?
    • What do you use for meetings?
    • What are the advantages?
    • What are the disadvantages?
    • How familiar are you with the technologies?

January 16, 2021 (Saturday)

OPIc Test Prep

January 9, 2021 (Saturday)

  • OPIc Test Prep – The beginning
    • Goal: IH – AL
    • Target OPIc Test Date: mid-March
  • Epicurus Trilemma ~ The Problem of Evil
    • Tri / lemma
      • “Choose two”
      • Engineers’ trilemma
        • “Fast, good, cheap”
        • “Cheap” vs “inexpensive”
    • The problem of evil is the question of how to reconcile the existence of evil and suffering with an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient God.
      • omni / present
      • omni / potent
      • omni / scient
      • omni / bene / volent
    • “Is he [God] willing to prevent evil, but not able? then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? whence then is evil?”

January 2, 2021 (Saturday)

Happy New Year !

  • What did you do for New Year’s Eve?
  • What did you do at midnight?
  • What did you do for New Year’s Day?
  • Did you make a New Year’s resolution?
  • Do you have goals for this year?
    • personal?
    • professional?
    • relationship / social?

December 28, 2020 (Monday)

  • Top 10 social topics by keyword on Korean Twitter in 2020:
    • 1) COVID-19
    • 2) Nth Room
    • 3) Self-quarantine
    • 4) Social distancing
    • 5) Feminism
    • 6) Sewol
    • 7) Emergency relief funding
    • 8) Prosecution reform
    • 9) Sarang Jaeil Church
    • 10) Illegal abortion
      • Do you have a Twitter account?
        • Do you tweet?
        • Are you active on Twitter?
      • Do you know these Top-10 in Korea terms?
      • Do you have other social media accounts?
        • Are you active on those social media accounts?

Happy New Year !

  • What do Koreans do on January 1, at the New Year?
  • What are you going to do?
  • Why is January called “January”?

Janus, the god for whom January is named, was an important god in the Roman pantheon (pan +theos). Janus was the Roman “god of doors”, and nearly all Roman households had an altar to Janus.

What? A god of doors?

…and Endings. Every ending is a beginning, and every beginning is an ending.

Janus is often depicted (de+pict+ed) as a two-faced god with the younger boyish face looking forward to the future and the older bearded face looking back at the past.

MERRY CREEPY CHRISTMAS

Elf on a shelf – friend or foe?

December 19, 2020 (Saturday)

MERRY CREEPY CHRISTMAS

Elf on a shelf – friend or foe?

December 12, 2020 (Saturday)

  • Stump the teacher
    • What word stories did you like?
    • What words did you find interesting?What does interesting mean in this context?
  • Christmas Around the World

December 5, 2020 (Saturday)

  • Song: Are you sleeping?
  • Suneung Day
    • How did you study for your suneung?
    • What do you remember?
    • How did you feel?
  • Merriam-Webster’s WOTY – “Pandemic”
    • Original article: Merriam-Webster’s WOTY 2020 “not a shocker”
    • Greek roots pan, dem, ic
      • pan means “all” or “every”
      • dēmos means “people”
      • ic is an adjective suffix
      • pandemic’s literal meaning is “(describing) all the people.”
    • Latin roots omni, pop, ous
      • omni means “all” or “every”
      • popul means “people”
        • Can you guess where the English word “people” comes from?
      • ous is an adjective suffix
      • What does omnipopulous mean?
  • – one of my favorite books
  • Ikigai – Finding Your Sense of Purpose
  • Song: Do, Re, Mi

November 29, 2020 (Sunday)

  • MEL Science chemistry sets
  • Happy (American) Thanksgiving !!!
  • Did you create, add to, or change your morning routine this week?
    • What did you do differently?
    • Do you feel different?
      • What is the difference between “differently” and “different”?
      • (Hint: what do “differently” and “different” describe?)
      • What do the following mean?
        1. What did you do differently?
        2. What did you do different?
        3. Do you feel different?
        4. Do you feel differently?
      • (Is this overthinking the English? Does it matter?)
    • “The Miracle Morning” – Hal Elrod
    • S.A.V.E.R.S. – 1 hour
      • Silence
      • Affirmations
      • Visualization
      • Exercise
      • Reading
      • Scribing
    • S.A.V.E.R.S. – 6 minutes!
      • The 80/20 rule
  • Graphics Discussion

November 21, 2020 (Saturday)

  • Are you a morning person?
    • “early riser” vs. “late riser”
    • “I’m an early riser.”
    • “I like to sleep late” or “I like to sleep in.”
  • Reflexive pronouns
    • ———-Singular ……………. Plural
    • 1st person: myself ……………… ourselves
    • 2nd person: yourself …………… yourselves
    • 3rd person: himself, ……………themselves
    • ……………………herself, itself
    • ……………………oneself
    • If father wakes you up in the morning and mother wakes up father, then who wakes up mother?
    • What do people in your life do for themselves?
    • What do you do for yourself?
    • Self-service – “help yourself”.
  • Song: Are you sleeping?
  • Do you have a morning routine?
    • “The Miracle Morning” – Hal Elrod
    • S.A.V.E.R.S. – 1 hour
      • Silence
      • Affirmations
      • Visualization
      • Exercise
      • Reading
      • Scribing
    • S.A.V.E.R.S. – 6 minutes!
      • The 80/20 rule
  • Collin’s Dictionary 2020 Word of the Year

November 14, 2020 (Saturday)

November 7, 2020 (Saturday)

  • Pronunciation practice ‘r’ and ‘l’
  • Ipdong – Yay or nay?
  • “That” vs. “which”
    • “That” is defining or “restrictive”
      • Do NOT set that relative clauses between commas:
        • My motorcycle that is in the garage is broken.
    • “Which” is non-defining or non-restrictive.
      • Use “which” when you set the clause between commas:
        • My motorcycle, which is in the garage, is broken.
    • I think of “that” as necessary for identification and “which” as adding an extra detail.
  • Numb3rs – “Billions and Billions”
  • Numb3rs: Fractions and Decimals

November 1, 2020 (Sunday)

  • Halloween
    • Why do we call it “Halloween”?
    • Do you like Halloween?
    • Did you go trick or treating when you were a child?
    • Do you think that Koreans will pick up Halloween?
    • What do you think of Korea borrowing other western or American holidays?
      • Valentine’s Day
      • Christmas
      • (Solar) New Year’s Day
    • Do you do anything special on those new Korean holidays?
  • Halloween 2020’s Blue Moon – “Once in a blue moon”
  • Elevator Pitch
  • Pronunciation practice ‘r’ and ‘l’

October 24, 2020

April Fool’s Day

Idioms, Vocabulary, and Expressions

  • April Fool’s Day – 만우절
  • prank, pranks – 장난
  • “I should have known better!”
    • “You should have known better.”

What are some minor Korean holidays, holidays that are not red days but Koreans have some kinds of customs, traditions, or activities?

  • Which do you like?
  • Which can you do without, dislike?
  • April 1, April Fool’s Day
    • Ireland
      • An April Fool’s tradition entrusted the victim with an “important letter” to be given to a named person. That person would read the letter, then ask the victim to take the letter to someone else, and so on. The letter when opened contained the words “send the fool further”.
    • U.S.
      • Americans play small pranks on each other, trying to trick their friends.
        • Who or what does “trying to trick their friends” describe?
        • What is the rule?

Is this funny or not funny?

  • Funny or not funny?
  • What makes for good April Fool’s Day pranks?
  • Lotto Prank
  • Google’s Gmail with 2GB of storage on April 1 at a time when Microsoft’s Hotmail and Yahoo’s mail had 2 MB.

Song: Norwegian Wood

Vocabulary, Expressions, and Idioms

  • Norwegian wood – wood that is grown and harvested in Norway. Pine wood (소나무) is a cheap softer wood used in interior floors and for making furniture. Hard woods, such as maple and oak, are used in higher quality construction.
    • Scandinavian design, characterized by simplicity and minimalism, became popular in the late 1950s.
    • Norwegian wood is a subtle pun (see below) or double entendre (see below) for “knowin’ she would“.
  • “I once had a girl”
    • had a girl – had a girlfriend
    • (have – in some contexts can also have a sexual connotation, “had a girl” – had physical relations with.)
  • “she once had me”
    • “to be had” – idiom for had a trick, prank, or scam pulled on
      • “I’ve been had” means that “I’ve been scammed”.
  • “biding my time”
    • bide – to wait for
    • bide your time – to wait patiently for a good opportunity to do something
      • The cat sat silently in front of the mousehole, biding its time.
  • “It’s time for bed”
    • a place to sleep
    • a place to sleep together, have physical relations with.
  • “this bird had flown”
    • bird is 1960’s British slang for “young woman”
      • American slang uses “chick“, which literally means “young bird”.
      • Used in referring to women, both bird and chick sound sexist today.
    • “had flown” is past perfect for “fly (away)”
  • pun – a “play on words”, a form of word play, that uses multiple meanings of a word or term or of similar-sounding words for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect.
    • puns have at least two meanings.
    • “That’s very punny”
  • double entendre (/ˈdʌ.bəl ɒnˈtɒnd(.rə)/ DUH-bəl on-TOND-(rə))- word play with intended double meaning, of which one is typically obvious while the other conveys a message too socially awkward, sexually suggestive, or offensive to state directly.
    • Sometimes listeners hear and acknowledge double entendres by punctuating with the following:
      • “Said the actress to the bishop” (European)
      • “that’s what she said” (American) – used as a remark on a sentence with an unintended double entendre that could be interpreted with a double meaning, one of them sexual and said by another . (popularized by the American sitcom “The Office”.)
      • triple entendre, quadruple entendre, etc.

Questions

  1. What Korean puns do you know?
    • Some American puns I learned in middle school:
      • “We eat what we can but what we can’t we can.”
      • (Spoken) “The more dough you have the more dough you knead.”
        • dough is slang for money
        • knead is a homophone for need.
          • what do you think homophone (homo + phone) means?
  2. What Korean double entendres do you know?
    • I know several:
      • 18
      • <<child>> “Where did I come from?”
        <<parent>> “We found you under a bridge”

Written mainly by John Lennon and credited to the Lennon and Paul McCartney, “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)” is a Beatles song from their 1965 album Rubber Soul. Rolling Stone magazine ranked “Norwegian Wood” number 83 on its list of “The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time”, and I rank “Norwegian Wood” as my all-time favorite song.

.

Norwegian Wood
by Lennon-McCartney

I once had a girl
Or should I say she once had me
She showed me her room
Isn’t it good, Norwegian wood?

She asked me to stay
And she told me to sit anywhere
So I looked around
And I noticed there wasn’t a chair

I sat on a rug biding my time
Drinking her wine
We talked until two and then she said
“It’s time for bed“

She told me she worked
In the morning and started to laugh
I told her I didn’t
And crawled off to sleep in the bath

And when I awoke I was alone
This bird had flown
So I lit a fire
Isn’t it good, Norwegian wood?

Norwegian Wood sounds great, but I specifically rank Norwegian Wood as my all-time favorite song for its role in my intellectual development. I remember while listening to Norwegian Wood that specific moment when something clicked, that this song told a salacious story. I was 13.

She told me she worked
In the morning and started to laugh
I told her I didn’t
And crawled off to sleep in the bath

It was the laugh. He torched her apartment.

Poetry Terms

  • Consonance – the repetition of identical or similar consonants in neighboring words whose vowel sounds are different.

    “Or should I say she once had me
    She showed me her room”

    “We talked untiltwo….”
    (note the repeated ‘t’-sounds, even the ‘d’-sound in talked, and ‘l’-sounds.)
    • alliteration – a special case of consonance where the repeated consonant sound is at the stressed syllable.

      “…And when I awoke
      I was alone….
      • (Alliteration is usually distinguished from other types of consonance in poetic analysis and has different uses and effects.)
    • sibilance – another special case of consonance, the use of several sibilant sounds such as /s/ and /sh/.
      • (The word sibilance is an example of sibilant consonance.)
    • Consonance is an element of half-rhyme (also called “slant rhyme”) and is not uncommon (note the litotes) in hip-hop music

      “Rap rejects my tape deck, ejects projectile
      Whether Jew or gentile I rank top percentile.”
      (from Zealots by the Fugees)
    • (Consonance may be regarded as the counterpart to assonance, vowel-sound repetition.)
  • Assonance – a resemblance in the sounds of words or syllables between their vowels.

    “…biding my time
    Drinking her wine”

    “And when I awoke I was alone
    This bird had flown”
    • (Assonance may be regarded as the counterpart to consonance, consonant-sound repetition.)
  • Onomatopoeia – words that sound like the noises that the words make. Languages make ample use of such words: knock-knock, tick-tock, bang, pop.
    • Matching its subtle message, Norwegian Wood uses words more subtly for an onomatopoeic effect. Long-‘o’ and long-‘i’ sounds sound like pain, “ohhh” and “ai-ee”.
      • “…biding my time” (…ai, iiii, iiiii) sound like long pain filled time
      • “awoke”, “alone”, “flown” ….oh, moan, groan
      • “Isn’t it good, Norwegian Wood”, the ‘oo'(ʊ)-sounds in “good” and “wood” sound like the physical release of his sexual tension that he had so desperately sought.
Poetry term questions
  • Find examples of the following in Norwegian Wood :
    1. Puns
    2. Double-entendres
    3. Consonance
      • alliteration
      • sibilance
    4. Assonance
  • Do you know any examples of puns, double-entendres, consonance (alliteration, sibilance, slant rhyme)
  • Here’s my visual allusion in the featured image:

OPIc Test – First Considerations

  • First Considerations
    • What is your goal? (IH – AL)
    • When will you take the test? (mid-March)
    • Have you signed up for a testing date?
    • What do you want from me?
      • How can I best help you?
    • Have you taken an OPIc test before?
    • What was your strategy?
      • What were you taught to do?
      • What were you taught NOT to do?
      • What was your game plan?
    • What have you learned from taking those English speaking tests?
      • What do you know to do?
      • What do you know NOT to do?
      • What would you do or not do differently?
    • Immediately after taking the test, did you write down everything you learned from the experience of taking an OPIc or other speaking test?
      • No?
        • Then do it now and from now on.
        • When you think of something write it down immediately. You think that you will remember, but you won’t.
        • Write it down. Immediately.
      • What is “everything”?
        • What were the questions?
        • What did you experience?
          • Room noise level
          • Talking to a computer
          • Dealing with nervousness
        • How well did you think that you did on the test?
          • How did your self-assessment match your result?

Speaking Patterns

Collins Dictionary’s word of the year for 2020

  • The word of the year, sometimes abbreviated as “WOTY“, refers to the most important word or expression in the public sphere during a specific year.
  • What word(s) would you consider for word of the year for 2020?
  • What word(s) would you consider for Korean word of the year for 2020?

In case there was any doubt about what we’d remember 2020 for, Collins English Dictionary has helpfully reminded us — opting to name “lockdown” its word of the year.

“Lockdown”, a once-obscure noun that has wormed its way into many of our conversations recently, was recognized by the linguistic authority after its meaning evolved globally due to public health measures against the coronavirus pandemic.

“(We) chose ‘lockdown’ as Word of the Year because it is a unifying experience for billions of people across the world, who have had, collectively, to play their part in combating the spread of COVID-19,” Collins wrote after announcing the award.

“It’s not a shock to remember that lockdown was originally a piece of prison vocabulary: it’s when inmates are confined to their cells because of some disturbance on the wing,” it added.

“2020 is year that the meaning of the word shifted irrevocably: in most people’s minds, lockdown is now a public health measure — its use having increased exponentially since 2019.”

The dictionary said it registered over a quarter of a million usages of “lockdown” during 2020, up from only 4,000 the previous year.

The pandemic unsurprisingly influenced many of the shortlisted words that Collins considered. “Coronavirus,” “key worker,” “furlough” and “social distancing” were all mentioned as the dictionary unveiled its annual choice.

But this year’s choice was an easy one. “It’s no surprise that quite a few of the words on Collins Word of the Year 2020 shortlist have one big thing in common: the pandemic,” the dictionary wrote.”

Something that changed everyone’s lives so profoundly — leaving no country or continent untouched — was bound to have a significant impact on our language.”

Collins Dictionary WOTY and Runners-up (#10 might surprise you!)

#1 – Lockdown

#2 – Coronavirus

#3 – BLM

#4 – Key worker

#5 – Furlough

#6 – Self-isolate

#7 – Social distancing

#8 – MEGxit

#9 – TikToker

#10 – Mukbang

  • Master writing clinic:
    • (Original text) ‘The dictionary said it registered over a quarter of a million usages of “lockdown” during 2020, up from only 4,000 the previous year.’
      • What verb tense is “said”?
      • What verb tense is “registered”?
      • How would you have written the above:
        1. “The dictionary said it registered ….” (original text)
        2. “The dictionary said that it registered ….”
        3. “The dictionary said it had registered ….”
        4. “The dictionary said that it had registered ….”

(Full article) Collins Dictionary’s word of the year for 2020 is pandemic-related (obviously)

London (CNN) In case there was any doubt about what we’d remember 2020 for, Collins English Dictionary has helpfully reminded us — opting to name “lockdown” its word of the year.

The term, a once-obscure noun that has wormed its way into many of our conversations recently, was recognized by the linguistic authority after its meaning evolved globally due to public health measures against the coronavirus pandemic.

“Our lexicographers chose ‘lockdown’ as Word of the Year because it is a unifying experience for billions of people across the world, who have had, collectively, to play their part in combating the spread of COVID-19,” Collins wrote after announcing the award.

“It’s not a shock to remember that lockdown was originally a piece of prison vocabulary: it’s when inmates are confined to their cells because of some disturbance on the wing,” it added.”2020 is year that the meaning of the word shifted irrevocably: in most people’s minds, lockdown is now a public health measure — its use having increased exponentially since 2019.”

The dictionary said it registered over a quarter of a million usages of “lockdown” during 2020, up from only 4,000 the previous year.

The term first started appearing in news reports in January, when the Chinese city of Wuhan put strict travel restrictions in place to fight a spreading virus.Since then, virtually every major country has enacted some form of lockdown — with unprecedented social restrictions limiting human interaction and making 2020 a year unlike any other in modern history.

The pandemic unsurprisingly influenced many of the shortlisted words that Collins considered. “Coronavirus,” “key worker,” “furlough” and “social distancing” were all mentioned as the dictionary unveiled its annual choice.

“BLM,” an abbreviation for the Black Lives Matter movement, also made the shortlist, as did “Megxit” — the term used by parts of the media to refer to Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex’s withdrawal from the British royal family.

The Collins English Dictionary is currently in its 13th edition, and its publishers highlight words each year that dominated contemporary news events. Last year, “climate strike” was chosen, and in 2018 they opted for “single-use.”

But this year’s choice was an easy one. “It’s no surprise that quite a few of the words on Collins Word of the Year 2020 shortlist have one big thing in common: the pandemic,” the dictionary wrote.”

Something that changed everyone’s lives so profoundly — leaving no country or continent untouched — was bound to have a significant impact on our language.”

What Taking a Multivitamin Every Day Does To Your Body

  • Summary: What Taking a Multivitamin Every Day Does To Your Body
    1. Multivitamins Could Prevent Vitamin Deficiencies
    2. Multivitamins May Counteract Prescription Medication
    3. Overdosing on Multivitamins Can Lead to Strokes
    4. Multivitamins Can Cause You to Eat an Unhealthy Diet
    5. Overdosing on Multivitamins May Affect Your Blood Sugar Levels
    6. Overdosing on Multivitamins Can Lead to Nerve Damage
    7. Overdosing on Multivitamins Can Lead to Kidney Stones
    8. Multivitamins Could Make You Feel Healthier Than You Are
  • Healthy & healthily and healthful & healthfully
    • Do you eat healthy?
    • Do you eat healthily?
    • Do you eat healthful?
    • Do you eat healthfully?
      • Healthy & healthily and healthful & healthfully
      • What’s the difference?
      • Does the difference matter?
  • Do you take vitamins or supplements?
  • What do you know about vitamins and supplements?
  • Do you get the proper nutrition from the foods you eat?
  • What should you eat more of?
  • What should you eat less of?

What Taking a Multivitamin Every Day Does To Your Body

You may take a multivitamin every day but do you know what taking a multivitamin every day does to your body? “One third of adults and half of the population aging more than 55 years report taking at least one supplement per day,” according to a study published in the Advanced Pharmaceutical Bulletin. Find out more about what taking multivitamin every day could do to your body before you continue with your supplement regimen. As always, consult with your doctor about multivitamins, supplements, and medications. Read on, and to ensure your health and the health of others, don’t miss these Sure Signs You’ve Already Had Coronavirus.

1 – Multivitamins Could Prevent Vitamin Deficiencies

“Taking a multivitamin may increase daily quality of life through increased energy, often from the B vitamin combinations, along with other protective measures,” says Dr. Danielle Plummer, PharmD. However, “It’s important to choose a vitamin that has the nutrients in which you are deficient and meets your nutritional needs,” she warns.

2 – Multivitamins May Counteract Prescription Medication

woman with medicine jars at home

“Some dietary supplements may increase the effect of your medication, and other dietary supplements may decrease it,” says Robert Mozersky from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).”You may be getting either too much or too little of a medication you need,” he warns.

3 – Overdosing on Multivitamins Can Lead to Strokes

CT scan of the brain of a patient with intracranial hemorrhage

“Most vitamins are water soluble with Vitamins A, D, E and K being fat soluble. Taking too much of a fat soluble vitamin can be dangerous. Vitamin A and E are known to be dangerous at high levels,” says Dr. Plummer.

Getting too much Vitamin E or beta carotene in particular may be extremely dangerous. “Vitamin E (dl-alpha tocopherol) supplementation increased the incidence and mortality due to subarachnoid hemorrhage…whereas beta carotene supplementation increased the incidence of intracerebral hemorrhage,” according to a study from JAMA Neurology.

4 – Multivitamins Can Cause You to Eat an Unhealthy Diet

Couple having fast food on the couch

When you take a multivitamin every day, you may get the false sense of security that you’re healthy and don’t need to focus on your diet.

“The 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the leading nutritional and dietary information for the general public, does not have a recommendation for taking a daily multivitamin. Why? Because the guidelines focus on healthy eating patterns,” says Michelle Zive, RD, Ph.D., and co-author of the NASM-CNC.

5 – Overdosing on Multivitamins May Affect Your Blood Sugar Levels

diabetes

Gummy and chewable vitamins have become all the rage, even with adults. However, it’s important to “use caution taking chewables if you are diabetic,” according to Dr. Plummer. These vitamins usually contain added sugar or other unhealthy fillers.

“Look at filler ingredients if you have food sensitivities, allergies or other dietary requirements. For example, if you are gluten free, vegan or Kosher, make sure it says this on the label,” she warns.

6 – Overdosing on Multivitamins Can Lead to Nerve Damage

Physiotherapy.

Too much Vitamin B6 can lead to toxicity, which may cause nerve damage. Supplementation is usually to blame for an overdose of B6.

“All cases of vitamin B6 toxicity are from supratherapeutic dosing, either iatrogenic or laypersons self-treating with over-the-counter supplements. Daily dietary intake will not provide enough pyridoxine to cause toxicity,” according to a study from StatPearls.

“Take a look at other supplements you’re taking and what nutrients they contain. This is to ensure that you’re not overdosing on any vitamin or mineral,” says Amy Gorin, MS, RDN, “If you are taking another supplement that contains vitamins or minerals, it may be best to hand pick your supplements and forgo the multivitamin in that case.”

7 – Overdosing on Multivitamins Can Lead to Kidney Stones

Woman sitting on the bed and touching her left side in pain at home

Before choosing a supplement, it’s crucial to check the dose, especially if it’s calcium or vitamin D. “Vitamin D, and especially its active metabolite calcitriol, increases digestive calcium absorption—as urinary calcium excretion is directly correlated with digestive calcium absorption, vitamin D metabolites could theoretically increase calciuria and promote urinary stone formation,” according to a study published in Nutrients.

“Since our bodies can only absorb about 500 mg of calcium in a dose, if a vitamin offers more than this, you will not get the added benefit. In this case, choose a vitamin with 500 mg per tablet that is taken twice daily,” says Dr. Plummer.

8 – Multivitamins Could Make You Feel Healthier Than You Are

Happy woman eating healthy salad sitting on the table with green fresh ingredients indoors

“Supplements are never a substitute for a balanced, healthful diet,” says Dr. JoAnn Manson in an interview with Harvard Health. “And they can be a distraction from healthy lifestyle practices that confer much greater benefits.”

As for yourself, protect yourself during this COVID-19 outbreak: Wear a face mask, practice social distancing, and to get through this pandemic at your healthiest, don’t miss these 35 Places You’re Most Likely to Catch COVID.

Once In a Blue Moon

We have an expression in English for something we do rarely, “once in a blue moon”. Most native English speakers know the idiom, but many don’t know the reason for the idiom, why we say “once in a blue moon”.

A blue moon is the second full moon in a calendar month. Before the Julian (named for Julius Caesar) Calendar, which is a solar calendar, people named the 12 months after the 12 moons of the year in folklore.

One lunation, an average lunar cycle, is 29.53 days. There are about 365.24 days in a year. Therefore, about 12.37 lunations (365.24 days divided by 29.53 days) occur in a year. Our modern solar calendar has 12 months (the word month is derived from moon) in a year, and each month typically has one full moon, with the date of the full moon falling back by nearly one day every calendar month. Each calendar year contains roughly 11 days more than the number of days in 12 lunar cycles.

Each season (winter, spring, summer, and autumn/fall) had three months and three moons. Every once in a blue moon, a season had four full moons. The third full moon in a season with four moons was the blue moon. Although we still call months for moons, the seasons are solar, not lunar, based.

(tl;dr – “once in a blue moon” is an English expression for “rarely”. The expression comes from our term for the second full moon in a calendar month. A second full moon in a calendar month occurs on average about once every 2 1/2 years.)

“Once in a blue moon” is for actions or events we do more than once and repeatedly but very rarely.

  • I go bowling once in a blue moon.
  • I go out with my friends for a night of drinking once in a blue moon.
  1. What do you do once in a blue moon?
  2. What idioms do Koreans use for rarely, once in blue moon?

We have expressions for things we would never do:

  • when pigs fly –
    • My son will do the recycling without me having to hound him when pigs fly.
  • (It’ll be) a cold day in hell (before) –
    • It’ll be a cold day in hell before I vote for Trump.
  • when hell freezes over –
    • She will admit she made a mistake when hell freezes over.
  • don’t hold your breath –
    • If you’re waiting for him to apologize, don’t hold your breath.
  1. What idioms do Koreans use for never, when pigs fly or a cold day in hell?
  2. What will be a cold day in hell before you ever do?
    1. “It will be a cold day in hell before….”
    2. “It is a cold day in hell when ….”
    3. “… when hell freezes over.”
  3. What idioms do Koreans use for don’t bother waiting (for something to happen), don’t hold your breath?
  1. Traditional Korean culture has a stronger connection with the moon than (modern) western culture….
    1. Do you know your lunar birthday?
    2. Do Koreans think that lunar birthdays influence people’s personalities?
    3. Does the Korean language have words (vocabulary) or expressions that have the moon as their origins?
  2. In western culture we used to think that the full moon made people a little crazy. On busy nights, police would say “there must be a full moon”. Werewolves came out during the full moon, and our word “lunatic”, meaning a crazy person or a person acting crazily, comes from “luna”, Latin for moon.
    1. Does Korean culture have any similar folklore stories relating to full moons or lunar phases?

The 80/20 Rule, a.k.a. The Paretto Principle

  1. Do you have a stack of books that you have been meaning to get to?
  2. How much free time do you have?
  3. How much enjoyment do you get from your free time?
  4. Do you notice the 80/20 rule in your life?

The Pareto principle, also known as the 80/20 rule says that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects (results) come from 20% of the causes (inputs).

The principle was inspired by and named after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto. Pareto noticed that in his garden 20% of his plants produced 80% of his good peas. He then saw the 80/20 connection all around him. In his first academic paper, Pareto showed that approximately 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population.

The following is a summary of The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Achieving More with Less, By Richard Koch.

The 80/20 Principle (1997) was named one of GQ’s Top 25 Business Books of the Twentieth Century. The 80/20 principle says that 80% of results are generated by just 20% of effort. This principle has implications, by identifying the most important factors in any situation, for every area of life.

The 80/20 Principle applies to people who want

– efficiency, to better balance results against time
– more free time and to lead a happier life
– to increase their profitability in their business

Learn how to use your time in the most effective way possible.

In today’s fast paced world, we have long to-do lists every day. We arrive at work determined to finish the first task on the list quickly and then find that two new tasks have appeared in the meantime.

Companies find the same at an organizational level.

In our “always more to do world”, both individuals and organizations need to know what is truly essential. Understand the deceptively simple yet still powerful 80/20 principle, the counter-intuitive way to do more by doing less.

You can even apply the principle to your personal life to increase your happiness and satisfaction in your relationships.

Often, most of the results (output) come from a small part of the work (input).

Imbalances between work and reward can be seen in many different settings.

Many businesses have found that 20% of their products account for 80% of their profits.

20% of motorists cause 80% of accidents. Most motorists drive carefully, while a small minority is careless and causes the majority of accidents.

This phenomenon, something we observe, is called the 80/20 principle: about 80% of results (output) come from 20% of the work effort (input).

Why is this ratio not more balanced? If we are efficient, then 100% of results come from 1oo% of inputs, but not every cause has the same impact on results.

Causes can be roughly divided into two categories: a minority that has a great impact on results and a majority that has only a small impact. This results in an 80/20 split.

The 80/20 principle is of course a simplification. Reality can differ. Sometimes we see 70/30, 60/40 or 9o/10. For example, a 1997 study demonstrated that of 300 movies, just four (1.3$) generated 80% of ticket sales.

If you look for it, you can find the 80/20 principle almost everywhere. Finding it can be valuable.

The 80/20 principle doesn’t feel “right” because we expect balance and fairness.

People want the world to be balanced, but balance is not natural; imbalance is.

For example, consider language. Sir Isaac Pitman, a linguist, found that about 700 common English words make up two-thirds of everyday conversation. Including those words derived from those words, this figure rises to 80%. Less than 1% English words make up over 80% of conversation.

Where do these imbalances come from? From feedback loops that multiply and strengthen even small differences.

For example, if you have multiple goldfish of approximately equal size living in the same pond, they will still grow into very differently sized fish.

Why?

Because some of the fish are slightly larger than others, having a tiny advantage. They manage to catch more food and grow faster than the smaller fish. Their advantage further increases their advantage, allowing larger fish to catch even more food. The feedback cycle amplifies with each loop, eventually producing substantial differences in size.

Even though such imbalances are natural, many people consider them unfair. The uneven distribution of income and wealth is another example. We sense social injustice when 20% of the population owns 80% of all wealth. People assume work and reward should be in a 1:1 ratio. The point of the 80/20 principle is that not all work produces the same reward.

Use The 80/20 principle to improve your work processes and get better results.

How can you use the 80/20 principle in your everyday life?

First, look at your professional life. Is the way you work efficient?

Think about this: if you get 80% of your results from just 20% of your efforts, then the remaining 80% of your work produces only 20% of your return.

Creative use of the 80/20 principle can help you increase your efficiency because you will redirect your efforts away from tasks that only have a small impact on your results.

Start by examining and analyzing your work processes to find out which parts of them are inefficient. For example, you might find that in the first phases of a project, you waste time by over-thinking and mulling over every possible mistake you could make..

Use the 80/20 principle to increase business profits.

How you can apply the 80/20 principle to your business?

There are many ways that you can find if you think to look for those ways. Just decide to identify one way and apply the 80/20 principle.

Perhaps the most important is optimizing the product range of your business. Analyze which of your product groups are generating the most profits. Simply rank all your products by profit and sales figures. You will probably find that 20% of products account for 80% of sales or that 20% of sales generates 80% of your profit.

For example, the book’s author conducted a study at a company producing electronics. He found that the top three products accounted for 19.9% of the total sales but brought in a whopping 52.6% of total profits.

Once you have identified the 80/20 split in your company, the second step is to leverage and amplify the potential of that profitable 20%. Prioritize these products and focus your resources on selling more of them.

At the electronics company, the author encouraged management to raise the sales of their top products by telling salespeople that their only goal was to double the sales of those three products and ignore everything else.

Simplify and reduce complexity in your business

Big companies are often complex. But is accepting or even inviting complexity really the best way to become a successful company?

Most managers think that size and a broad product portfolio are advantageous because more products means more profit.

But complexity has huge hidden costs. A broader range of products requires more complicated logistics, more training for salespeople, and more administrative work than a narrow range. These factors increase the overall cost to the company, possibly costing more money than the additional products bring in.

Simplifying your business reduces costs. If you narrow down and focus your product range, everyone in the company will be able to devote more attention to the few products that are sold. Fewer important products allows employees to understand the more important products. This in turn simplifies administrative work and brings economies of scale, savings from size, in areas like production and logistics.

The power of these benefits is clear. For example, a study of 39 medium-sized companies found that the least complex ones were the most successful. They sold a narrower range of products to fewer customers and also had fewer suppliers, which resulted in higher profits.

By simplifying your business, you can reduce costs and thereby increase your profitability.

Use the 80/20 principle in your business, from negotiating to targeting marketing efforts.

The 80/20 principle is so versatile that you can use it in virtually any part of your business to increase the likelihood of success.

For example, negotiations are an important part of any business. Negotiations have many details. An 80/20 analysis would probably reveal that only a few of the points actually really matter to your company. You should focus on winning them rather than trying to argue for all points .

Another example of putting the 80/20 principle to use is in targeting your marketing efforts. If some 20% of your customers generate 80% of your business, you should concentrate on identifying them and convincing these customers to keep buying.

After you’ve identified those 20% of customers, ensure their loyalty by providing outrageously great customer service. Then when you’re developing new products or services, solely target this 20%. This will allow you to increase your market share while selling to these same customers.

Apply the 80/20 principle to your daily life by changing the way you think.

In business, the 80/20 principle is normally applied by analyzing which 20% of inputs generates 80% of outputs. But in your daily life, input/output analysis is difficult to do.

This means you need something else: 80/20 thinking.

Conventional thinking is linear, in a straight line, and assumes that all causes and inputs are equally important. For example, as children we are taught that all of our friends are equally valuable to us.

In this scenario, 80/20 thinking would acknowledge the fact that actually not every relationship is as valuable. Some of our friends are more important than others, and the relationships we have with them are more meaningful.

You could say that 20% of your friendships produce 80% of the “value”, meaning, for example, the feelings of joy and camaraderie that you get out of those relationships.

The key difference between an 80/20 analysis and 80/20 thinking is that the analysis would require you to collect data and analyze it to find out who the most important 20% are, while in 80/20 thinking you merely estimate them.

Here, the value of your relationships clearly can’t really be measured in absolute numbers, but you can always ask yourself: “Of the people in my life, who are the most important to me? How much quality time do I spend with them each week?”

This kind of question will help you understand which are your most important relationships.

80/20 thinking would then recommend that you go for quality, not quantity, and focus on deepening that most valuable, meaningful 20% of relationships.

You can apply 80/20 thinking to many areas of life without the need for solid data.

Spend time on the most important tasks instead of focusing on time management.

Time management (TM) gets promoted in self-help books. TM helps you achieve more in the time you have. TM is a proven technique that increases productivity by 15% to 25%. But there is an even better way to get efficient.

The goal of TM is to increase efficiency by fitting more tasks into a given period of time. TM is aimed at executives who already have a busy schedule, and the first step is to categorize daily activities by priority.

The problem is that most people don’t know which of their tasks are the most important and wind up defining some 60% to 70% of their to-do list as “high priority”. People end up with filled schedules and longer working hours. Forcing even more tasks into full schedules is not a good solution and leads to overwork and burnout.

80/20 TM helps you to first identify the 20% of your tasks that produce 80% of the results and focus on them.

For example, in his job at a consulting firm, the author discovered that his firm was more successful than others but without any extra effort. Normally consultants try to tackle a whole range of issues for their clients, resulting in only superficial work, with the client being responsible for the implementation of any recommendations.

In contrast, the authors’ colleagues focused on the most important 20% of clients’ issues and used the time they saved to support clients in implementing recommendations. This approach helped them outstrip other consulting firms and increase their clients’ profits.

This kind of “time revolution” helps you to free up time without degrading the impact of your work.

Achieve an overall better quality of life through broad use of the 80/20 principle.

Most people define their quality of life by their overall happiness. Interestingly though, very few of us actually try to change our lives to make ourselves happier.

Many people even spend a lot of time doing things that make themselves unhappy. For example, a lot of people have jobs that make them miserable.

How can you fix this? Ask yourself, which 20% of your life gives you 80% of your happiness and which 80% returns only 20% of your happiness?

Once you define the 80% of your life that creates very little happiness, take action. Simply decrease the time you spend doing those things.

For example, if your job makes you unhappy, try to think of ways to change that. You could look at other jobs, try to re-define your existing job, decrease your working hours, and so forth. But whatever you do, you should not resign yourself to working at a job that makes you unhappy for the rest of your life.

Once you’ve managed to cut down on the things that make you unhappy, you’ll find you have more time and energy to spend on things that do make you happy. For example, if you’ve decided to spend less time at work, you’ll have more time to spend with your family and friends.

Think about what 20% of activities in your life produce 80% of your happiness and find ways to spend more time engaged in them. You will have a happier life if you do.

Summary

The 80/20 principle says that in almost any area, 20% of the input or effort produces 80% of the output or reward. This means that almost 80% of efforts are not spent efficiently. If you refocus your efforts on the 20% that produce the most results, you’ll boost your efficiency. The 80/20 principle can be applied to all areas from your business to your friends and quality of life. 

  • Does the 80/20 principle make sense?
  • Is the 80/20 principle recursive, can we apply the 80/20 rule to the 80/20 rule?

Elevator Pitch

  • Who are you?
  • Why are you here?

No, you are not in the wrong class:  this is not Philosophy (philos = platonic love + soph = wisdom:  sophomore (sopho + mor:  mor = dull (moron) 101.

What if the CEO toured your office, came to your desk, and asked you “what do you do here?”  How would you answer?

What if a prospective client asked you, “what does your company do?”  What would you tell her?

What if you found yourself in a chance meeting, say in an elevator, with a decision maker and you had his undivided attention for 45 seconds to one minute, the typical length of an elevator ride, what would you do?   What would you say?  What result would you hope for?

Success occurs when preparation meets opportunity

An elevator speech is a short marketing tool used to quickly and simply define a profession, product, service, organization or event and its value proposition.  The name “elevator speech” reflects the idea that it should be possible to deliver the summary in the time span of an elevator ride, or approximately thirty seconds to two minutes.  The term itself comes from a scenario of an accidental meeting with someone important in the elevator. If the conversation inside the elevator in those few seconds is interesting and value adding, the conversation will continue after the elevator ride or end in exchange of business cards or a scheduled meeting.

A variety of people (including project managers, salespeople, job seekers, policy-makers, and movers and shakers) commonly rehearse and use elevator pitches to get their point across quickly.

Elevator speech Do’s:

  • Make your Elevator Speech sound effortless, conversational, and natural.
  • Make it memorable and sincere. Open a window to your personality.
  • Write and rewrite your speech, sharpening its focus and eliminating unnecessary words and awkward constructions.
  • Include a compelling “hook,” an intriguing aspect that will engage the listener, prompting him or her to ask questions, and keeping the conversation going.
  • Practice your speech.
    • Experts disagree about whether you should memorize it, but you should know your speech well enough so you express your key points without sounding as though the speech was memorized.
    • Let it become an organic part of you. Experts suggest practicing in front of mirrors and role-playing with friends.
  • Project your passion for what you do.
  • Focus on how you can benefit listeners and help them solve their problems.
    • Remember as you deliver your Elevator Speech that the listener may be mentally asking, “What’s in it for me (or my company)?”
    • Suggest that your benefits include how you can save an employer time and money, help people feel good, solve problems, or expand markets.
  • Use action verbs to paint vivid word pictures.
  • End with an action request
    • Ask for a business card or interview appointment.
  • Update your speech as your situation changes.

Remember your audience.  This course is also a course in presentation, and the number one rule of making presentations is REMEMBER YOUR AUDIENCE (aud, audi, audio = hear, listen:  auditorium).  A corollary (co = together) of rule number one is that you should prepare and make several different Elevator Speeches for each of your different audiences:  professional, company’s potential clients, social, personal, employers….

We should have other elevator speeches for different situations:

  • Job
  • New job / prospective clients
  • Company
  • Social

Elevator Speech Don’ts:

  • Miss out during networking opportunities by not having a well-honed elevator speech.
  • Make an Elevator Speech that will leave the listener mentally asking “So what?”
  • Forget to include your competitive advantage, also known as your Unique Selling Proposition (USP), how you perform better than anyone else.
  • Let your speech sound canned or stilted.
  • Ramble.
    • Familiarize yourself with your speech, audience, and objectives to keep yourself on track.
    • (See Ted Kennedy’s response to “why do you want to be president?” below)
  • Rush through the speech.
    • Pause briefly between sentences.
    • Take it slowly.
    • Breathe.
  • Get bogged down with industry jargon or acronyms (acro (high) + nym (name):  acropolis (polis = city), synonym (syn = together, same), antonym (ant, anti = opposite) that your listener may not comprehend.
  • Focus just on yourself, an approach that will almost assure a “so what?” reaction.
    • Rule #1:  Remember your audience.

Here are some infamous fails from those who had not prepared:

Roger Mudd to Ted Kennedy:  “Why do you want to be president?”

Ted Kennedy: “Why do you want to be president?”

Here’s what Ted Kennedy should have said:

“I want to be president because I have a passion for the United States of America and I believe in public service.  Like my brothers Jack and Bobby, I believe that we should ask what we can do for our country.  Less than 20 years ago, my brothers believed that we could solve poverty in the United States, put a man on the moon, explore space, and achieve peace in our time.  I want to put the United States back on track to achieve those goals.”

Dan Quayle at the 1988 Vice-Presidential debates:  “What would you do if the president became incapacitated?”

“I’d say a little prayer.”

(I think we’d all say a little prayer.)

The knock on Dan Quayle was that he was too young, inexperienced, and unprepared for the vice-president’s main job:  to assume the presidency in the event of tragedy to the president.  He should have anticipated the question.  He didn’t.  Dan Quayle spent the next four years as the punch-line to jokes.

Here’s what Dan Quayle should have said:

“In the God-forbidding case of the incapacitation of the President, first I would take the oath of office ‘to solemnly swear that I would faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and would to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.’  Second, I would convene the president’s cabinet to meet with the secretaries of each department to survey the situation that brought about my assuming the presidency.  Third, I would call the presidents and prime ministers of our closest allies such as England, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea, and other powers to assure them that the chain of our government remains unbroken.  Finally, that night I would pray to God for strength and for Him to protect our great country, the United States of America.”

Finally in a historic textbook fail, here’s Dan Quayle at the same Vice-Presidential debate failing to anticipate:

(Trump) “What are your top priority items for a second term?”

“Well, one of the things that will be really great — you know, the word experience is still good. I always say talent is more important than experience, I’ve always said that. But the word experience is a very important word. It’s a very important meaning. I never did this before. I never slept over in Washington. I was in Washington, I think, 17 times, all of a sudden, I’m president of the United States. You know the story, I’m riding down Pennsylvania Avenue with our first lady and I say, this is great. But I didn’t know very many people in Washington. It wasn’t my thing. I was from Manhattan, from New York. Now, I know everybody and I have great people in the administration. You make some mistakes like, you know, an idiot like Bolton. All he wanted to do was drop bombs on everybody. You don’t have to drop bombs on everybody. You don’t have to kill people.”

Song: Row, Row, Row Your Boat

Let’s practice our ‘r’ and ‘l’ sounds.

Remember that you need to teach your mouth, lips, and tongue some new tricks:  how to make sounds that Koreans do not make.  ‘R’ sounds are made with the lips; ‘l’ sounds are made in the mouth with the tongue.

Practice saying “row” and “merrily” slowly.  Repeat s-l-o-w-l-y “row“, “row“, “row” and “mer-ri-ly“, “mer-ri-ly“, “mer-ri-ly“, “mer-ri-ly“.  Listen to how your r’s and l’s sound.


Row, Row, Row Your Boat
(traditional version)

Row, row, row your boat,
    Gently down the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
    Life is but a dream.

For those who want to help their children learn English, I suggest that you try singing these songs with your children.  Don’t forget to sing the lyrics as though you were an actor and “act out” the song.  When you act out the song, you will involve more of your body and make more connections for learning.

Often the best way to learn something for yourself is to teach it to someone else.

(School children, sometimes naughty, will often sing the following versions:  )

See an alligator

 

Row, row, row your boat,
      Gently down the stream.
  If you see an alligator,
      Don’t forget to scream.

–and–

Throw your teacher overboard

 
Row, row, row your boat,
      Gently down the stream.
  Throw your teacher overboard
      And listen to him scream.

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