FREE DAILY ENGLISH LESSONS!
In time, these lessons and "stubs" will be migrated to the Buzzwords site.
Until then, consider them historical.


Mini-Lessons from Saturday, Feb. 25, 2012

These Mini-Lessons are posted on Twitter, and in China on Weibo, throughout the day. You can follow them there!

To get the most from them, you should try to use them in sentences, or discuss them with friends. Writing something on Twitter or Weibo is a great way to practice!
  • Science: acute angle: angle between 0° and 90°. At least two, and usually three, angles in a triangle are acute angles. (Sometimes one is 90°).
  • Language Study: Dewey Decimal System: one system of organizing books on library shelves, using codes (call letters) to keep books together by subject.
  • Business: mediation: attempt by a neutral "third party" to settle a disagreement between two parties instead of their going to court.
  • Literature: Aesop’s fables: stories, many with talking animals, that teach moral lessons. "The Tortoise and the Hare" is one of the most famous.
  • New Words: Fist-bump: knocking fists together, sometimes instead of a handshake, or maybe as a sign of success. "We won! Fist-bump me!"
  • Slang: giving one a hard time: teasing, or making things difficult, for one. Teacher: "Don't give me a hard time! Just sit down and study!"
  • Modern History: forty-niners: about 80,000 men (mostly) who went to California in 1849 and after in the "Gold Rush," to take gold from the earth.

NOTES:
  1. Except for the Slang words, all the words in these Mini-Lessons came from lists either on the Oxford University Press site or in the Dictionary of Cultural Literacy. I wrote the definitions and examples myself.
  2. The Slang words are from my own list, and I wrote the definitions and examples myself.

This lesson is ©2012 by James Baquet. You may share this work freely. Teachers may use it in the classroom, as long as students are told the source (URL). You may not publish this material or sell it. Please write to me if you have any questions about "fair use"

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