Mini-Lessons from Sunday, Apr. 8, 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!

• Tip: Play online games in English. Learning's more fun when you play! Build vocabulary, fluency by playing in English.
  
• Proverb: Blood is thicker than water: Family connections are the most important. "The boss hired his nephew; 'Blood is thicker than water.'"
  
• Academic Vocabulary: authority: power to do something. "The police have the authority to arrest people who break the law."
  
• Literature: forbidden fruit: something we want but can't have; from the story of Adam and Eve in the Bible. "Another's wife is forbidden fruit."
  
• Art: narrator: person telling a story. May be the author's own voice, or the voice of a character in the story. Used in novels, movies, etc.
  
• Slang: Phew!: more a sound than a word, means someone is relieved. A: "You can come out now; my dad's gone." B: "Phew!"
  
• Geography: Okinawa: a group of hundreds of islands in the south of Japan, once an independent kingdom called the Ryukyu Islands.
  

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NOTES:

1. Academic Vocabulary is the Academic Word List from Oxford University Press. This is "a list of words that you are likely to meet if you study at an English-speaking university."
2. The Proverb, and the Literature, Art, and Geography words are from lists in the Dictionary of Cultural Literacy. I wrote the definitions and examples myself.
3. The Tip and Slang words are from my own lists, and I wrote the definitions and examples myself.

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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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