Famous People

Do not forget that everyone has a presentation to do on Wednesday!

I wanted to give you more time to think about and talk about people so Wednesday and Thursday of week 15 were spent talking about people. We started the Wednesday off playing 20 questions. I was first. The person I was thinking of was J.K. Rowling. (I made a mistake–she is married. Sorry.) Next I turned it over to you guys in groups of 4 or 5. I did not expect to let you guys play so long, but everyone seemed to be enjoying it and there was lots and lots of English so I decided I could not stop you.

Some of the questions that I thought were useful were:

Is he black?

Is she a politician?

Is he married?

Is she pretty?

Is he tall?

Is she muscular?

Is he sexy?

Is she beautiful?

Is he famous?

Is she on TV?

Some sentences that we fixed were:

Is he CEO? >>> Is he a CEO?

Is she actress? >>> Is she an actress?

Is he musician? >>> Is he a musician?

Is she golfer? >>> Is she a golfer?

Is he get married? >>>Is he married?
(Did he get married= has he experiences a wedding–not the usual question)

Is she live? >>> Is she alive?

Is he work for ___? >>> Does he work for ____?

Does he have a hair? >>>Does he have hair?/Is he bald?

We also pretended to be different famous people (living or dead).

On Thursday we had a similar topic. The first question was, (other than your parents) “Who has influenced you the most?”

This question also provided a lot of answers. (____ has influenced me the most.) After a discussion about this everyone shared their partner’s answers (____ influenced him/her the most.)

Next we discussed the most influential people in the world. Both groups were pretty similar with both Bill Gates and Georgey Bushi George Bush.

After that, we talked about the TIME 100 (very, very useful site, with profiles and podcasts about the people I highly recommend it) I shared the results of the online poll where Rain was number one. We then had a few minutes to discuss the people in the top 10. Again, I did not expect you to know the people, I just wanted you to think about why they were at the top of the list.

The guy at number 2 is one of my favorite TV personalities from America. His parody of Rain’s music can be seen right here. (skip to 1:53 if you want to just see the music video) What do you think?

Who do you admire?

The question that we started out with on Tuesday was, “Who do you admire?”
There were quite a few answers to this question. I guess the most popular answer was parents. We were able to hear some interesting stories about people’s families. I was really expecting everyone to ask more questions about these stories but it is OK.

Some questions that were useful to talk about who we admire were:

Why do you admire ___?

Why do you love ___? 

What did ___ do? 

Some words that came up during this class were:

scholars  Mike said that King Sejong’s scholars made hangul.

myth     Is that true, or is it just a myth?

legend   Changbo loves the legend of Dang-gun.

affect    My parent’s hardworking style affected me greatly.

effect (usually a noun)  His speech had a powerful effect on me.

influence  My high school teacher influenced me a great deal.

admire  Charles and Anni really admire Warren Buffet.

obstacle Helen Keller overcame many obstacles in her life.

hardly  I hardly ever study these days.

hard  I haven’t been studying very hard these days. I am too lazy.

What do you think about these sentences?

He was study hard. 

What did she said? 

The problem here is with the past tense.
I know everyone loves Top Notch. If you skip ahead to unit 8 you can see some simple examples that might help you.

Corrected versions of the above sentences would be:

He was study hard. >>> He studied hard.

What did she said?>>> What did she say?

We also talked a lot about your assignment. Next Wednesday, almost everyone will give a speech/presentation about a person. I do not know who each person is planning on doing. I just know that Anni is going to teach everyone about a model/actor that the boys did not know. Who is your choice to talk about?

Some questions to consider when you make your presentation are:

What’s his/her name? 

Why did you choose ___? 

What does/did he/she do? 
What did he/she do during his/her life? 

How does/did she affect you? 

What does he/she look like? 

What do you think about ___? 

What is his/her philosophy? 

What is his/her style? 

How do you know about ___?

What do you know about ___? 

What obstacles did he/she overcome?

Do you want to be like her/him? Why/Why not?

Good job with the questions. What else should you consider when making your presentation?

I have one hint. Use ENGLISH websites to help you prepare. Do not, do not, do not using Korean sites. You will see and learn much more English by using English to find the information! Good luck!

Free Monday

We had another Monday without a topic. Again, I was very impressed with how much everyone talked and the variety of topics that were discussed.

Kate was asking about the  phrase  face price. This just means the original price.

Anni asked about canker sores. These are the sores that open up inside our mouth when we are sick.

Jason and Changbo were talking about having a cold/being sick/being stuffed up.

Monica was talking about shopping (I think). I think she likes shopping, but she said that she doesn’t go shopping very much. Many people have problems talking about big numbers in English. I think that this is because they want to count in 10,000. We do not count like this in English. My advice is to learn the numbers for each place and count that way. Totally thinking in English will make this much, much easier.

Some sentences that I would change are:

Yesterday I am happy. >>>  I was happy yesterday./Yesterday, I was happy.

I don’t angry.    >>> I am not angry./I was not angry. 

I am forget. >>> I forgot./I can’t remember. 

Is this mean ____? >>>  Does this mean ____?

I made cook last night. >>>  I cooked (food) last night. 

Very good job. The time really flew by!