英語学習にも役立つ、札幌の外国人英語教師の英語日記 札幌 英会話 [ステップアップ]

More Thoughts on Pronunciation

2017年2月21日 (火)

A student asked me a very good question recently. It was about the difference in pronunciation between “weather” and “whether”. I explained that these two words, though they have completely different meanings and different spellings, are basically pronounced the same in English.

We then got to talking about similar pairs of words: which and witch, know and no, reign and rain, etc.

Most of these are really the same when it comes to pronunciation. There may be some regional differences, and these words probably were pronounced differently in the past, but like the Japanese sounds づ and ず, there is really no difference in modern speech.

My favorite example of this is “close” and “clothes”. These words may have a small difference between them when pronounced by some native speakers, but I don’t think any English learner needs to worry that much about pronunciation. The most important thing, in my opinion, is being understood.

Happy Valentine's Day

2017年2月21日 (火)

The other day, my coworker Joe and I were discussing the merits of Valentine’s Day. Being my usual cynical self, I dismissed it as the original Hallmark holiday (Hallmark is a brand of birthday/ holiday cards in North America.) Even worse than Valentine’s Day, I continued, is White Day, which was clearly created to trap young men into feeling obligated to spend money on their significant others. Both holidays are no more than commercialized celebrations of consumption, said I.

While Joe conceded that I had valid points, he countered that there is value in having a day or two a year (beyond the regular cycle of birthdays and holidays) that asks us to take a moment to recognize who the special people in our life are.

I couldn’t help but agree with him. Sure, giving chocolates and other sweets may be a contrived gesture of appreciation, but it carries meaning all the same. In acknowledging this, my cynicism melted like a Hershey Kiss on a summer afternoon. So thanks very much to those of you who were kind enough to bring gifts to the teachers here at STEP UP. We appreciate it very much!

Cheers,

Jon

Language Study

2017年2月15日 (水)

Hello everyone,

As most of my students already know, I love to study Japanese.  I study Japanese almost every day.  But what exactly do I do?  Well, I basically do two things.  I copy news stories from the Internet into a notebook by hand and then I study the new vocabulary.  After that, I study Japanese grammar from a grammar book.  I use the grammar point and write an original sentence and then my Japanese teacher checks my sentences.  It takes a long time to do these two things, so I have to study hard every week!  Let’s study hard together!!!

Wayne`s world

2017年2月13日 (月)

A very popular comedy show in the U.S. is called Saturday Night Live. It has produced many famous comedians and the occasional movie spinoff. Which brings me to this weeks movie, Wayne`s World, a movie which started life as a Saturday Night Live comedy sketch. It became one of the iconic movies of the 90`s. It features two losers, Wayne and Garth, who love music and broadcast a cable TV show from their basement. They suddenly become successful because of a cynical producer, and head for the big time. Mixing popular culture of the time with a great music soundtrack, it is a fun glimpse into 90`s American teen culture.

I first watched the movie 20 years ago and I was worried that it would be very dated this time around. However, it still remains very funny and a great way to pass a Sunday afternoon. Not the best acted or scripted movie ever, but a great comedy with enough zany humour and laughs to keep most people entertained for a couple of hours.

I would definitely recommend watching it, and I give it 8/10.

Not all coffee is created equally

2017年2月10日 (金)

Hello everyone! Today I want to talk about coffee. I am British and as much as I love tea, I have to admit I also love coffee. Now when it comes to tea, if the tea is bad, add more milk or sugar but with coffee it is completely different. I recently bought some instant coffee because it was on sale at the supermarket (I`m a sucker for anything discounted) anyway, I got probably the biggest jar of instant coffee ever, it will last me like 3 months. However it tastes absolutely terrible. I have added sugar and milk but still it tastes terrible. I fear that I have become a coffee snob. So now I am going to soldier on for another 2 months and try and use up all this coffee. My mother always taught me not to waste anything so I am going to use it for baking, drinking, and any other use I can think of.

English people in general tend to prefer tea to coffee, so I now think I am slightly broken. When I lived in Manchester I averaged about 7 cups of tea a day, now I drink around 7 cups a year. It is pretty sad but I guess the water in Sapporo is too good a quality or something. It is a mystery to me, why have I gone off tea? Perhaps I will bake some scones this weekend and try to get back into it. Anyway, I hope everyone keeps warm and healthy, I think this month is gonna be cold! Like lots of tea and coffee to keep warm and let me know which you prefer.