I love how teaching English is actually, well... helping me learn English... heh heh. It's a bit funny I guess, but, like I keep telling everyone... English was like my worst subject in school. Not only that, but, it was also not my first language... heh heh.
Yeah English is my best language now... but, nobody has to know that part, now do they.
Anyway, I figure I should share what it is that I've been learning.
The difference between "whose" and "who's".
I never knew which one was which... until I recently had to teach my first years about it. It then suddenly clicked.
Whose is for possession.
"Whose pen is this?"
Who's is for "who is".
"Who's looking for him?"
Heh heh... life seems to make sense in a completely new and different way now that I could tell those two apart.
And, today, I learned the difference between hear and listen.
See, in Japanese, the same word is used for both hear and listen... 聞く ---> きく ---> kiku.
When I was privately teaching a student verbs in English, we stumbled across this word. I said it was listen and hear in English... and just left it at that. However, her next question was 音楽を聞く ---> おんがくをきく ---> ongaku o kiku.
According to what I had told her... she could say either "listen to music" or "hear music"... which actually have two completely different meanings (You don't "listen music" nor do you "hear to music").
After about 5 minutes of thinking it through... it occurred to me that when you "listen"... you are actively doing something.
You listen to music. You listen to the ocean. You listen to people laughing.
When you "hear"... you aren't actively doing something.
You hear music. You hear the ocean. You hear people laughing.
Listening to something means you choose to do that... you are in control. You control what you listen.
Hearing something is not something you choose to do... you are not in control. You do not control what you hear.
You just happen to hear stuff.
When I figured this out... I felt rather accomplished... heh heh.
Anyway... I wanted to share a bit of my English insight I had today.
Today, I got to make mochi with my elementary kids.
Man, they are too cute for their own good. They need to contain that shit... someone (like my friend Paola) will die from their cuteness... mark my words.
But, other than that... I was really excited to make mochi. For those who don't know... mochi is basically rice pounded and pounded and pounded away until it becomes a taffy-like substance.
And lets face it... who doesn't like pounding away at shit?
We then got to eat it.
I was introduced to curry mochi... talk about an instant love flourishing right before my very eyes... <3
I don't know if I've been tasting better mochi... or perhaps I'm just getting used to it... but, I'm really liking it as of lately. Seeing that I've had it on several occassions within the past month... I'm going to bet on the latter.
Well... now I need to figure out how to kill an hour and 15 minutes-ish.
Thank jeebuz for having a laptop available at this school!
2 comments:
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"whose joe?"
that never sounded odd to you? I'll admit that I've been called a grammar nazi so I guess I shouldn't be too harsh on you. lol. One that gets to me is ending the sentence with 'at'. b-a-d! actually, ending any sentence with a preposition is supposedly bad. oh well.... at. ^^
pounding mochi is therapeutic with tasty results. so much goodness~~
Wow Victor, you seriously didn't know that difference between whose and who's?
I remember helping Chela with her English homework and I learned things that I was like DAAAMMMNN
Instead of saying Victor said ... It's suppose to be.. Victor had said.
Sounds ghetto to me..but w.e
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