Teaching English

There is a small convenience store at our local mall that we frequent quite regularly. It's run by a Korean family that up until recently we only shared a passing acquaintance with.  That all changed one day when the husband mentioned to Hilary that he was trying to improve his English, but found it hard because, while he can read English, some of the words are not easily found in an English-Korean dictionary, and he's never sure on how to pronounce things.

Hilary came home and hatched a plan to help him out.  We love listening to audio books, so she figured, what better way to help learn English then to listen to an unabridged audio book while following along with the hard copy.   We even had a little iPod shuffle that didn't sell at our last yard sale that we could download a copy of one of our books onto.

The only problem was that the best book choice that we had in both unabridged audio and hard copy was Twilight.  We also have all the Harry Potter's, but if someone was going to use this to learn English, we figured they didn't need made up words like Quidditch, Daigon Alley or Avada Kedavra.  So Twilight it was.

While not exactly the best subject to keep a 50 year old Korean man interested, he has persevered with it and almost seems to be enjoying it.   Every few days either Hilary or I will go in and sit behind the counter with him and help him out with any words or phrases that have stumped both him and his translator apps.   He bought his own copy of the book because he didn't want to mark up ours and he underlines anything he doesn't understand and makes notes in Korean in the margins once he has the definition or explanation of a word.

Having read Twilight several times myself, I would have characterized it as having fairly simple and easy language to understand.  I realize now that I thought that because I'm a native English speaker/reader.  To someone who is new to the language, there are a lot of colloquial sayings and downright slang that can easily trip you up.  I'm sure we are very comical looking when we are trying to pantomime the description of a word while crammed into the tight space behind the cash register.

Some recent things that we've struggled to explain:

• If someone can drive UP to Forks or DOWN to California, why can you only show UP for work but not show DOWN?
• What is the difference between "every day I....." and "every single day I......"?
• Ditching school has nothing to do with actual ditches. And why is ditching healthy?
• Explaining "hand-eye coordination" nearly had us knocking over displays of gum.
• Trying to  explain "kicked up a tantrum" without using the word fuss, because how do you explain what a FUSS is?
• What exactly is an understatement?
• Trying to explain to someone who has no cultural reference to Spiderman, what a radioactive spider has to do with anything.

This teaching relationship also works both ways.  Both the husband and wife will quiz me on the Korean terms and numbers that I need to learn for Tae Kwon Do.

Win-Win!

Oh Canada!

I first came across this on Facebook during the Olympics back in February. I loved it so much that I knew I would want it for today!



Happy Canada Day!

Aunt Becky Goes to Canada

Aunt Becky over at mommywantsvodka recently posted a contest where she sent out her business cards left over from Blogger and asked people to do something fun with them and then post a blog about what we did with them. Here is my contribution:

Be sure to check out everyone else's entries here.

Singapore fines TV station for gay show

SINGAPORE - A Singapore television station has been fined for
airing a show that depicted a gay couple and their baby in a way that "promotes
a gay lifestyle," the city-state's media regulator said Thursday.

The Media Development Authority fined MediaCorp TV Channel 5 $11,000, it said in a statement on its Web site.

The station aired an episode of a home and decor series called "Find and Design" that featured a gay couple wanting to transform their game room into a new nursery for their adopted baby.

The authority said the episode contained scenes of the gay couple with their baby and the presenter's congratulations and acknowledgment of them as a family unit "in a
way which normalizes their gay lifestyle and unconventional family setup."

The episode was in breach of rules on free-to-air television programming, which disallows content that promotes, justifies or glamorizes gay lifestyles, the statement said.

Earlier this month, the authority fined a Singapore cable television operator, StarHub Cable Vision $7,200 for airing a commercial that showed two lesbians kissing.
Under Singapore law, gay sex is deemed "an act of gross indecency," punishable by a maximum of two years in jail.

Despite the official ban on gay sex, there have been few prosecutions. Authorities have banned gay festivals and censored gay films, saying homosexuality should not be advocated as a lifestyle choice.

Link

Living in Canada, where gay marriage is legal and gay and lesbian couples can adopt children together, I sometimes forget that homophobia is still very prevalent in other parts of the world. We have many gay TV characters here in North America: from gay soap opera’s like The L Word to openly gay characters on drama’s like ER and no one seems to bat an eye. There have been gay TV characters as far back as the ‘70s. Surely you remember Jodie Dallas, played by Billy Crystal on Soap?

I do wonder what the future will hold for GLBT people around the world. Will homophobia one day be obliterated? Will my family be able to travel the globe, openly and freely without fear of persecution? What will life be like for Liam, growing up in a 2 mother household? So far we have not had any issues as a lesbian family. We have run into the occasional problem with forms only having spots for “Mother’s name and Father’s name” but even that is not very common any more as society shifts to “Parent 1 and Parent 2”. His school has several other GLBT families; we belong to a playgroup of GLBT families; we have books that show all kinds of families. So far, at age 5.5, it hasn’t fazed Liam at all.

As he moves through life he may encounter problems, but I’m very glad that we live in a country that will show gay families on TV, allow books in our libraries and where his mothers don’t have to hide their life style at the risk going to jail or worse.

I've got Thrills!!!

They ain't multiplying, but they still taste like soap!




Hilary's Mum picked me up a pack of my favorite gum. They are purple, rosewater flavoured and really do taste like soap! They are the best gum EVER.

Really..... try some!

Feb 21, 2008 ~ Today's the day

That I stay up late!

Sometimes living in the 2nd most easternly time zone of North America can really suck! The biggest problem is that we get all of our American networks out of Boston, which is in EST. I am in AST, or one hour later. So TV shows that are on at 9:00 PM in Boston are on at 10:00 for me.





And that includes Lost tonight.

If I were content to watch Canadian shows I wouldn’t have a problem. Both CTV and CBC (the 2 big Canadian networks) have local feeds, so things are on when they are supposed to be on. I don’t get confused when I see a commercial that advertises a show for Thurday night at 9:00 and have to worry about who’s 9:00 it is or if I should add an hour to it.



The problem is that there aren’t any Canadian shows that I like. Back in the day we had Beachcombers which was good, and Bumper Stumpers was the best game show EVER, but nowadays… Eh, not so much. I’ve never gotten into Trailer Park Boys and Degrassi the Next Generation doesn’t even hold a candle to the first one. Any thing with David Suzuki is worth watching, but I don’t like political humour so Rick Mercer is out. There are a few good kid’s shows on now, like Lunar Jim but I wish Polka dot Door was still on because I really miss Polkaroo.




I could avoid staying up late by taping shows, especially since we have a DVR in the house as a trial for 30 days. But the problem with this is that it is sooo hard to avoid discussion of the show the next day, and in my case login in and going straight to the website or TWOP to read about what happened. So tonight I stay up because I have to know who is the next person to be revealed as an Oceanic 6! I was right last week about Sayid. I think tonight is going to reveal it to be Jin. Let’s see if I’m 2 for 2!