efl-4-me

The sheriff is shot. But the music is great. [Précis. Language is embedded in culture also. Serious students of a language need to dig deeper to get it, or have the benefit of some help.] I have taught English as a foreign language for over twenty years. This has been both a secondary occupation and sometimes a first. In any event there are two teaching/learning opportunities I do not practice, which in fact weakens my effectiveness. I don't play games and I don't (often) listen to music. Thus, my efforts to help students learn are reduced, for both of these ways of learning a language are proven successful techniques. Recently I asked a student who is passionate about music about the song "Knockin' on Heaven's Door." He said, "Oh, we all know that. It is the first song I learned to play on the guitar." I then asked him what the song was about. He said he didn't know, but that it was something about being dead. I asked dead or dying. He d...

This post is in answer to a question about how to work with advanced (Czech speaking) seniors, who are students of English, and the song, "This Woman's Work." This is the idea for the song. The lyric of 'This Woman's Work' is about being forced to confront an unexpected and frightening crisis during the normal event of childbirth. Used in the movie _She’s Having a Baby_, director John Hughes used the song during the film’s dramatic climax, when Jake (Kevin Bacon) learns that the lives of his wife (Elizabeth McGovern) and their unborn child are in danger. As the song plays, we see a montage sequence of flashbacks showing the couple in happier times, intercut with shots of him waiting for news of Elizabeth and their baby’s condition. Bush wrote the song specifically for the sequence, writing from a man’s (Jake’s) viewpoint and matching the words to the visuals which had already been filmed. The lyrics of the song ask the reader to ask questions of what is ...

My father was born in Shanghai. He was part Chinese. My father and cousin with their Ama (like an au pair). The name Mactavish, sometimes spelled with a capital T, means son of Thomas. My father's biological father was Irish and had the last name of Murphy. My father's mother was Chinese and Scottish, and her last name, maiden name, was Mactavish. Why didn't my father have the name of Murphy? Murphy left my grandmother after one year of marriage. She had my father's last name changed to her maiden name. And that makes me a Mactavish with Irish, Scottish, and Chinese roots, and probably something else. Confused? That's America. My mother? My mother was born in California. She had an Irish background. So that makes me more Irish, but I don't know how much. Now, when people say that real Americans are white and came from Europe, remember that some came from Asia! You know, the USA has a left coast and a right one. I come from the left coast, California. And ...