Learn English with Teacher Joe

In previous discussions, we’ve looked at risk-taking and the importance of doubt. In a similar way, today’s quote is about change. We often think of Charles Darwin when we say “only the strong survive” or when we use the expression “survival of the fittest”. We may think it is strength that wins or intelligence. But Darwin himself said:

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.“

Do we rely on our strength to help us survive? Do we think our intelligence is enough? In our changing world, how we respond may be crucial to our success. In our changing world, Darwin’s idea may be more important than ever. How responsive are you to change? What are you doing now to adapt to the change in your life? What could you be doing differently to respond to change in the world?

I think anybody reading this blog is already responding, at least in a small way, to change. Instead of just learning (or teaching) in the classroom, we are here learning (or teaching) English together online. If you travel, if you live or have lived in another country, if you have changed jobs and learned from the experience, then you have responded successfully and grown.

Please write about your successful past changes in the comments section. Let us know what change you faced, how you responded, and how that response helped you. In that way, we can all learn from each other and continue to use this opportunity to change for the better.

A teacher from the U.S. just left a comment on my previous “Free Rice Update” post. Thanks Nancy! You can see how Nancy’s students have done by clicking below and reading the comments at the bottom:

http://eslblogs.englishclub.com/teacherjoe/2008/06/11/free-rice-update/

It seems my students are a little shy about reporting what they have done. So far, we’re up to 9000 grains of rice. If you’ve been studying vocabulary through www.freerice.com, please tell me how much you’ve earned.

Hello English Learners! 

Several months ago I set up a chat room on my website but never had time to use it.  I am not as busy this week as in past weeks, so I am ready to try some live chat. I hope some students show up. I am going to be in my room (see link below) at the following two times:

Session 1:  Beijing - Sunday 9 am,  Osaka - Sunday 10 am, California - Saturday 6 pm, New York - Saturday 9 pm, Sao Paolo - Saturday 10 pm, Paris - Sunday 3 am, Moscow - Sunday 5:00 am,  Tehran - Sunday 5:30 am,  Delhi - Sunday 6:30 pm.

Session 2:  Beijing - Monday 8 pm, Osaka - Monday 9 pm, California - Monday 5 am, New York - Monday 8 am, Sao Paolo - Monday 9 am, Paris - Monday 2 pm, Moscow - Monday 4:00 pm,  Tehran - Sunday 4:30 pm,  Delhi - Sunday 5:30 pm.

If you’re interested and have the time, click on the link below to go directly to the chat room:

http://www.teacherjoe.us/EnglishChat.html

 If anyone finds any mistakes in my time calculations, please leave a comment here! See you Sunday and / or Monday!

This joke is an example of “black humor” - it is about a dying woman. I thought it was funny, but some people will disagree. If you do not like this kind of humor, please do not watch it!  You will see the joke two times. The first time is straight through with no stopping. The second time the joke is stopped after every sentence and the vocabulary is explained. Let me  know if you find this helpful or not. Also, be sure to give the video a rating and add comments!

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TIO7yr8xvk

For my Chinese readers, here is the blog of the man who beat me (2nd place) in the Shanghai speech contest:  http://peterwan19.blog.sohu.com/  (It’s mostly in Chinese.) You may have seen my speech on You Tube. Well, his speech was better! Remember, if he can do it, so can you. 

Some of you must remember learning from the news story about solving traffic problems. That was a bit difficult because the real meaning of the story was not so obvious. Students had to really listen carefully to get the humor. Here is another news story, but this time the humor seems obvious, maybe TOO obvious. Still, for me this is quite funny. Your job as students is to try identify WHAT, specifically, is funny about what the people say. Click on the link below, watch the video, then come back here with your comments! Try to give specific sentences that you think are funny and explain why.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JUu8sHpH6Y

I went to www.freerice.com again during the weekend. Do you remember Free Rice? It’s the site where you can practice your vocabulary and for each right answer, 20 grains of rice will be donated to poor people around the world. It’s a great site, but laziness has prevented me from using it often.

Now, I plan to go back several times a week. Even though I am an English teacher, I can still learn some new words. I seem to bounce around between levels 35 and 50, which are quite challenging! I hope other teachers try out www.freerice.com too!

Please go to Free Rice today and try the quiz. Use the “Options” button at the top to save your level and to keep track of how many grains of rice have been donated thanks to you. So far, I am up to 2000 grains. I hope everyone will tell me how many grains they have earned, and we can keep a total here. Looking back at old comments, I see Chichi earned 1040 grains before, so our grand total is 3040 right now. As a group, we can do better than that! Go to www.freerice.com. Learn vocabulary, help the poor!

Hi Everybody!

It’s been a while since I had time to post here.  As some of you know, I went to Shanghai this past weekend to participate in Toastmasters’ “District 85P Speech Contest”. There were six contestants, all of whom had previously won three contests to get to this level, so my five competitors were all good.  One of the speakers was clearly better than the rest and the judges correctly chose her as the winner. In my opinion, the rest of us were hard to tell apart. For some reason, the judges chose me for third place. You can see the video by clicking on the link below.  This is the same speech I gave before, only improved, so you may have already seen it.  My goal was to learn how to improve a speech, how to make it as good as it can be. I think this is about as good as that speech can ever be, but you can be the judge…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLQL9139xfE