Learn English with Teacher Joe

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

Hi Everybody!

I am trying to reorganize my website a bit and have put some of my humor pages together on one page. I call it “Laugh and Learn English“.  Besides my jokes (with audio), you can read some funny stories I wrote a long time ago about my experiences while travelling. I’ve also included a variety of funny things I’ve found in newspapers or magazines. Let me know what you think…

http://www.teacherjoe.us/laughandlearnenglish.htm

A week ago, China suffered a devastating earthquake. The generosity of the Chinese people towards the people in Sichuan Province has been amazing.  In the first week after the quake, more than a billion U.S. dollars were donated to the relief effort. I have been very impressed by the hard work, caring, and concern of everyone from the top leaders to the average person, including my students. Seeing this has made me think of the topic ”giving”, and the role that giving plays in our lives. Here is today’s quote:

“We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.”

~  Winston Churchill ~

[Language Note: “a living” means what we get from a job to help us buy food, clothing, etc. Notice that “living” and “a living” are NOT the same!]

I think that giving, in this quote, does not just mean money or physical gifts. It is referring more to giving time, giving our friendship and love, giving of ourselves in a personal way. I give my time and effort to my students, to help them prepare for their futures. I’m not sure that most of them care about their own futures, but some do, and I think they are grateful for what I give. What are some ways that you give to the people around you? What “gifts” do you receive from others? (Not physical gifts, of course!)

As always, I am looking forward to my students’ comments!

Hello Students!

I want to repeat some great information that Nafis left in a comment:

You can go to http://www.freerice.com and play a game that helps you learn vocabulary. Each time you are able to answer a question, you “get” some rice as a prize. That rice will be given to poor people around the world! The more you play and the more you learn, the more rice will be sent. Everyone please give it a try!

Also, go the the Free Rice sister site at http://www.Poverty.com to learn more about world hunger, related problems, and solutions to those problems. Be sure to watch the map on Poverty.com for a few minutes and think about what this really means. (Then go back to Free Rice and improve your vocabulary!)