English with Lisa Biskup on verbling.con: Listening to song The Black Eyed Peas - Where Is The Love?

We listened to this song in the Lisa's class in the online school verbling.com

This genre, rap music, is challenging for understanding.

Let's try to explore the first verse.

1.)

"What's wrong with the world, mama

People livin' like they ain't got no mamas

I think the whole world addicted to the drama

Only attracted to things that'll bring you trauma

Overseas, yeah, we try to stop terrorism

But we still got terrorists here livin'

In the USA, the big CIA

The Bloods and The Crips and the Ku Klux Klan"

The author wanted to attract attention of the audience to domestic problems of the USA, saying that terrorism is here and it is a racial discrimination. The statement that the world addicted to the drama has being proved by the fact domination of bad news on TV.

2.)

"But if you only have love for your own race

Then you only leave space to discriminate

And to discriminate only generates hate

And when you hate then you're bound to get irate, yeah

Badness is what you demonstrate

And that's exactly how anger works and operates

Nigga, you gotta have love just to set it straight

Take control of your mind and meditate

Let your soul gravitate to the love, y'all, y'all"

Here is the analyze the reasons which generate hates. His is crying "take control and meditate", where is the love, he asks.

3.)

"I feel the weight of the world on my shoulder

As I'm gettin' older, y'all, people gets colder

Most of us only care about money makin'

Selfishness got us followin' in the wrong direction

Wrong information always shown by the media

Negative images is the main criteria

Infecting the young minds faster than bacteria

Kids act like what they see in the cinema"

The author shows his responsibility for society. It reminds me the line from one of the most famous Beatles song "Hey Jude":

"And anytime you feel the pain, hey Jude, refrain

Don't carry the world upon your shoulders"

This song presents a very different attitude to the world.

I like English classes for possibility of receiving new knowledges about other cultures. This class was an excellent example of it thanks our online school verbling.com and great teacher Lisa!

Here is the song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpYeekQkAdc&feature=youtu.be

Anatoly

February 7, 2015. Class with Teacher Cassidy Colgan on linguistiko.com. Thousand and One Nights.

  

Cassidy dedicated this class to reading of the story from the book "Thousand and one nights" and  discussion about it. The discussion was so interesting that I decided to reread this book again.

We made a remarkable comparison of using word "during" and "while". Cassidy suggested us to creat a sentence with "while" in the past simple form. We couldn't, only with during:

"During the class, we learned about grammar". One possible case of using word "while" is the past continues. "While we are listening to this audio, I remember the story."

Tip from Teacher: use while with present past continuous and what is very important: we made this conclusion ourselves, in natural way.

Teacher corrected some mistakes in building of word order.

I said: I read in English two books.

Right sentence : I read two books in English.

I said: He fell love to her.

Right sentence: He fell in love with her.

We had a short pronunciation discussion about words woman and women, photographer.

Thanks our teacher, Cassidy, I recovered in my memory one of the greatest book in human's history   "Thousand and one nights".

Anatoly

February 7, 2015. Class with Teacher Katie Hankins on linguistiko.com. Weddings.

The teacher, Katie, dedicated this class to weddings vocabulary. We saw the pictures on the teacher's screen and tried to answer for Katie's questions.

We discussed if public proposal appropriate way or it need do private.
We discussed about customs in different countries, if it necessary to buy a gold ring for engagement. If we feel nervous, we can call this conditional cold feet. After girl accepts the proposal she becomes fiancee.

After couple decide to get married they become bride and groom. They need to prepare paper invitations for ceremony. Another name for the wedding's party is reception.

Groomsmen are groom's friends which are being invited for wedding's party, and bridesmaids are invited by bride. A best man and maid of honor need to prepare for speeches.

The task of a toast-master is to manage reception.

During the car's riding drivers honk their horn thus they demonstrate how happy new couple.

Typical clothe for bride are wedding gown and veil.

Honeymoon is a month after wedding when new couple enjoy life during vacation for instance.

In the last part of the class we watched fun video clip on youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bToiIihknvs
Friends Ross and Emily's Wedding II

The funny  and embarrassing situation had happened in this scene from serial Friends when they saying their vows.

Thanks out teacher, Katie Hankins, this class brushed up our vocabulary, it was very useful and fun.

Anatoly

English on Verblong Flash Fiction Duplicate

http://flashfictiononline.com/main/article/duplicate/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKR-WqdjhgA#t=147

Don't believe me just watch

"Don't believe me just watch" is the slogan from the song "Uptown funk" which we studied in the Lisa's class in online verbling.com school.

We can use this recourse for analyzing lyrics http://genius.com/4588155/Mark-ronson-uptown-funk/This-hit-that-ice-cold

Understanding lyrics in foreign language would be difficult. It would be much harder for genre of songs which represent list of subcultural movings. Funk style of music belongs to this list.

Let's try to understand the ideas which this song provides.

Title "Uptown Funk":

Uptown is a part of town away from central commercial district. This song dedicated to small area where people can enjoy their life, the singer uses phrasal verb "living it up" and makes a statements "I'm too hot" or "Got kiss myself".

The main idea:

Ice cold is the upgraded level of cool.Michelle Pfeiffer has white skin and golden hair, hence “white gold.” In other words this song is a HIT!

And all girls are masterpieces.

Maybe on a Saturday the singer will be at the “spot” — another name for a bar, club, etc. And girls being there don't believe him, just watch.

Thanks our teacher, Lisa, we were able to understand difficult lyrics of the song and a specific subculture of some social groups became more understandable. Even funk music is not my cup of tea, I enjoyed watching this video clip. My advice for you: don't believe me just watch !

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPf0YbXqDm0&feature=youtu.be

Anatoly

Three grammar classes in linguistiko

January 31, 2015, Stefanie class "Tag Questions"

 

The title of the class was Tags questions. This part of English grammar doesn't look difficult but in fact for me it does. Knowing rules doesn't mean that we can use it naturally. It was the main purpose of the class: using tags questions in everyday conversation.

The core idea of tags questions is to make a statement often for the purpose to be sure if this statement true.

There are two different intonations:

when we don't know the answer (real question);

when we know the answer (just statement).

We need to stress the last part of sentence in the first cases and we don't in the second.

Stefanie demonstrated us some examples and we trained using this expressions a lot. Here is a good resource for practice http://www.perfectenglishgrammar.com/tagquestions.html

I remember my tag question which I asked: We are going to ask tag questions all the class, aren't we? :) And we did. Very good training class.

February 2, 2015, Michelle's class Frequency Adverbs and Expressions

Michelle focused our attention on the Grammar rules.

Here are some basic rules which we studied in the class:

frequency adverbs go after verb to be;

frequency adverbs go before other verbs;

frequency expressions always go at the end of the sentence.

The class was very useful.

February 4, 2015, Michelle's class Phrasal Verbs: Live

I split the phrasal verbs for this categories:

1.) Necessary just remember:

live down

live it up

live up to

2.) Possible to remember using literal translation with imagination and logic:

live off and live on

3.) We can translate it literally:

live with

This famous quote would help us to remember phrasal verb “love it up”

"Nothing lasts forever, so live it up, drink it down, laugh it off, avoid the bullshit, take chances & never have regrets, because at one point everything you did was exactly what you wanted."-Marilyn Monroe

Taking into consideration that studying all phrasal verbs during one hour's class is a tough task, we discussed the proposal of studying one, two or three phrasal verbs.

Thanks for the class, Michelle and ... let's follow this advice.

Anatoly

Cheating As a Defense

This is a controversial topic which we discussed in the Lisa's class in the online school verbling.com . This reading class was dedicate to article from Wired Magazine and had a provocative title: Why I Think Students Should Cheat.

The author put to the paper some arguments why cheating in the school not always bad.

The assessment's paper sometimes would be wrong if creators of it don't have enough qualification. They would have as purpose creating barrier for students, not through knowledge. Cheating sometimes would be the only way for surviving students in hostile environment and way for their adaptation to the future life.

Vocabulary:

Abductor - a person who makes someone go somewhere with them, especially using threats or violence (bad teacher in this case);

What's the catch?- It sounds good, but are there any hidden problems? Sounds too good to be true. What's the catch? (The author describes  ironically an duel between teacher and student during exam);

Cutting pliers -

It is akin to = like

denigrate = to put down

I think that students should  avoid cheating, I didn't use illegal forms of passing exams (almost, for exception when teacher silently allowed it). But I think the author gave powerful arguments for conclusion that: cheating of students is not big deal.

At least it is a good subject for discussion in the conversation class. Here are about 300 comments of this article:

http://www.wired.com/2015/01/think-students-allowed-cheat/#disqus_thread

Anatoly