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 Thursday, Apr. 5, 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: Learn parts of speech. Recognize nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc., and build your vocabulary. Analyze, analysis, analytical: like that!
  • Proverb: He who hesitates is lost: Don't wait, or you'll miss an opportunity. "Should I ask her now?" "Yes! 'He who hesitates is lost!'"
  • Academic Vocabulary: scope: area of things to deal with. "This is a marketing company; technical repair is outside of our scope."
  • Literature: Holy Grail: a special object, maybe a cup used by Jesus, that many knights were looking for in the King Arthur stories.
  • Art: American Gothic: painting by American Grant Wood, shows a farmer with unmarried daughter standing in front of an old-fashioned house.
  • Slang: Forget about it!: can be used many ways, to agree or disagree. "I love spicy food. And chilis? Forget about it!" is agreement.
  • Geography: Far West: or Old West, US west of Mississippi River; some say west of the frontier strip (a line of states from N. Dakota to Texas).

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.

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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