Jack's English Classroom: 2010

2010年12月27日星期一

Skyscrapers

1. reading comprehension questions

What are the top three buildings in the world now? (P1)
What was the problem with the buildings made of stone? (P2)
How could we make skyscrapers possible? (P3)
What are the advantages of buildings with metal beams? (P4)
What were the problems architects and engineers had to solve? (P5-6)
What contributed to the rise of skyscrapers in the United States? (P7)
Name a skyscraper built in the 1931 in New York . (P8)
What was the city plan in Europe after World War II? (P9)
Why did Japan not have tall buildings? / How did they solve their problem? How do dampers work? (P10)
What technologies can be used to build skyscrapers? (P11)
Do we really need skyscrapers? (P12)

2. collocations

The tallest buildings were made of stone. (line 12)
They had to prevent the buildings from moving too much in the wind. (line 42)
plenty of it (line 48)
across the United States (line 49)
over the years (line 51)
connected to (line 51)
throughout the twentieth century (line 56)
Over the years, many problems connected to high-rise buildings wer solved. (line 51)
Throughout the twentieth century, other countries were building skyscrapers too. (line 56)
all over the city (line 86)

3. grammar and usage

The taller the building was, the thicker the low walls had to be. (line 14-15)
..., there were elevators run by electricity, which were fast and light enought to use in skyscrapers. (line 37-38)
..., thousands of immigrants were entering the United States from Europe.
Cith planners rebuilt many of the buildings exactly as they had been, ... (line 59-60)

4. Quizlet

5. Batlyrics: Skyscraper by Eskobar

2010年12月22日星期三

2010年12月15日星期三

Christmas Blessings!

Leave a Christmas message to someone special.

Celebrating Christmas!

Christmas is coming up! Celebrate this special occasion by participating in karaoke contest through KaraokeParty. Have you formed your group and chosen the song you want to sing in class?

2010年12月13日星期一

How to Learn English with the News

2010年12月12日星期日

2010年12月9日星期四

Tips for Exam preparation: A Principal’s Advice to Students

2010年12月8日星期三

Listening practice

1. Changes in the Family on Listen and Write-Dictation.

2. KaraokeParty

2010年12月7日星期二

Phobias

1. pre-reading questions
Which of the following situations would make you most nervous?

seeing a rat in the street
travelling by airplane
travelling by motorcycle
seeing a large spider in the bathroom
making a speech to a large audience
standing on a roof
an important exam
walking home alone late at night
swimming alone in deep water
making a parachute jump

2. reading comprehension questions

How do people feel about flying in an airplane? (P1)
What are the three common phobias? (P2)
Is flying more dangerous than riding in a car? / What are people with a phobia about flying afraid of? (P3-4)
What do older people feel about the noise and people at an airport? (P6)
What are the real reasons for people's phobia about flying in an airplane? (P7-8)
In special classes, how can people learn to overcome the fear of flying ? (P11-12)
Are these classes useful? (P13)

3. collocations

once in a while (line 4)
get on an airplane (line 5)
prevent ... from ... (line 6)
be afraid of ... (line 8)
millions of ... (line 18)
get into a car (line 20)
have no control over anything (line 40)
ride in a plane (line 61)

4. usage and grammar

Riding in a car is thirty times more dangerous than flying, ... (lines 18-19)

5. Quizlet

Language lab sessions

12/9 (Thurs) 第2節: 三組三班

12/21 (Tue) 第1、2節: 三組六班

12/22 (Wed) 第3、4節: 二組四班

Please go to the language lab as scheduled.

2010年11月30日星期二

Changes in the Family

1. Pre-reading questions

How many people are there in your family? Do you live with your grandparents? Does your mother need to work outside the home?

2. Reading comprehension questions

What are a nuclear family, single-parent family, a blended family, and an extended family? (P1-4)
What is the benefit of living in an extended family? (P5)
What change happened in American families in the last century? What reason could explain this change in families? (P6)
Why did mothers no longer stay at home? (P7)
What are explanations for an increase in the number of single-parent families? (P8)

3. Usage and grammar

This was especially important in societies where mothers had to work outside the home, raising crops or gathering food. (lines 26-28)
Mothers could work outside the home while other family members were available to take care of the children ... (lines 29-31)
The growth of industry made it possible for many yound people to leave their families ... (lines 35-37)
Since 1970, the number of ... has increased tremendously. (lines 50-51)

4. Collocations

consist of (line 4)
a quarter of ... (line 7)
raise crops (line 28)
gather food (line 28)
take care of (line 30)
do household tasks (line 31)
one of the biggest changes in families (line 32)
a decrease in the number of extended family (line 33)
a majority of children (line 37)
as long as (line 41)
before long (line 47)
contribute to (line 65)
adapt to (line 69)

5. Quizlet

2010年11月22日星期一

Robert Scott: A Race to the South Pole

1. Cool Antarctica

2. Pre-reading questions

Where is the South Pole?
How is the Antarctica different from the Arctic?
What kind of climate does Antarctica have?
Which animals can be found in the Antarctica?

3. Reading comprehension questions

Who are Roald Amundsen and Robert Scott? (P1)
What was the contribution of Scott's first expedition to the Antarctica? (P2)
What was the goal of Scott's second expedition? (P3)
How is Amundsen's plan different from Scott's? (P4)
What other differences are there between the two expeditions? (P5)
How difficult was Scott's expedition? What mistake did he make during the journey? (P7)
How was Scott's return trip? (P9)
How did Scott record his expedition? Did Scott's team succeed in returning home? (P11)

4. Usage and grammar

..., but he planned to have his men pull the sleds ... (line 25)
..., he sent all but four men back to the base camp. (line 52)
They became exhausted and had more and more difficulty pulling their sleds. (line 70)
Then another became so weak that he knew he was endangering the lives of theothers. (lines 72-73)

5. Collocations

lead an expedition to ... (line 7)
a number of (line 17)
different from (line 21)
a ton of supplies (line 39)
ahead of the others (line 41)
because of blizzards (line 51)
full of supplies (line 64)
They became weak from hunger. (line 66)
..., but he is remembered as one of the great heroes of exploration. (line 94)

6. Quizlet

the lessons covered in final exam

There are four lessons required in final exam.

Unit 1, Lesson 2
Unit 3, Lesson 2
Unit 5, Lesson 2
Unit 6, Lesson 2

2010年11月17日星期三

Reflections on your mid-term exam

Do you think the materials on this website help you do well on your mid-term exam? Your thoughts are appreciated.

2010年11月12日星期五

Language Learning: Why Most Fail and How YOU Can Succeed

2010年11月2日星期二

2010年11月1日星期一

Sleep and Dreams

1. pre-reading

Did you have a good sleep last night?
Have you dreamed lately?
Do you have trouble sleeping? How do you overcome the sleeping problem?

2. reading comprehension

How much do we know about sleep? What do scientists study about sleep? What are REM and NREM? (P1-3)
Why do we have dreams? How do we feel after horrible dreams? What can we benefit from having dreams? (P4-5)
During sleep, when do nightmares usually occur? How can people control their dreams? (P6-7)
What problems may happen for some people during their sleep? (P8-10)
How many hours of sleep are needed for average peopel each day? What can people do to combat sleeping problems? How much time would people spend sleeping in their whole life? (P11-14)

3. Usage and grammar

Each period of dreaming is a little longer, the final one lasting up to an hour. (lines 37-38)
They usually grow out of it by the time they become adolescents. (lines 46-47)
Children do not remember that they were walking in their sleep, ... (line48)
People snore because they have trouble beathing ... (line 57)
They stop breathing up to thirty or forty times an hour ... (line 59)
..., or you may get so interested that you will not want to go to sleep ... (lines 87-88)

4. Collocations

average person (line 1)
..., dreams can have positive effects on our lives. (line 30)
... the brain may concentrate on a problem ... (line 31)
fall asleep (line line 37)
... changing the negative stories or thoughts into positive ones on paper. (line lines 43-44)
Some people have a habit of grinding their teeth ... (line 51)
..., there will be permanent brain damage. (lines 63-64)

5. Mindmap: Sleep and Dreams

6. Quizlet

2010年10月18日星期一

Biosphere in Space

1. pre-reading:

video: See what we can do in biospheres

3. reading comprehension

What are space colonies? (P1)
What are biospheres? (P2)
What is the key to the success of building biospheres? (P2)
What is the first thing for us to do for building a biosphere? (P3)
What is the difference between creating biospheres on the Earth and in space? (P3)
What are the reasons for building biospheres? (P5)
How were things going with the experimental biosphere near the University of Arizona? (P6)
What can we learn from biospheres? (P7)

3. mindmap

4. usage and grammar

... consider it possible that ... (line 5)
... environments where people can be born, ... (line 11)
... except for the sun's heat entering through the glass or plastic. (line 19-20)
Everything must be perfectly balanced, or else the whole system will break down. (line 25-26)
... too expensive to continually send people ... (line 37)
By studying bioshperes, we can understand better ... (line 42)
..., we can understand better what will happen as humans destroy tropical forests, ... (line 43)
So far, only a few experimental biospheres have been built on Earth. (line 47)

5. collocations

experiment with (line 4)
... except for the sun's heat entering through the glass or plastic. (line 19-20)
take care of ... (line 24)
break down (line 26)
reasons for (line 32)
... keep us from destroying our own environment. (line 57)

6. Quizlet

2010年10月5日星期二

Unit 5, Lesson 1: Languages and Language Diversity

1. pre-reading

The 30 most spoken languages of the world

2. reading comprehension

How do deaf people communicate?
In which languages tones are important?
Is the Basque family taken as a large language family?
What can language families be divided into?
How do languages change and evolve?
Do Japanese have many loan words?
What is the world's most common language? What language has the largest number of second language speakers?
Do children and adults learn a second language in the same way?
How fast do languages disappear in the world?

3. usage

... In contrast, ... (line 22)
... a child's brain actually acquires a new language differently than an adult's brain does. (line 62-64)

4. grammar

Some languages are used by millions of people. Others have only a few speakers. (解釋)
The English word "tomorrow" was borrowed from Nahuatl, an American Indian language spoken in Mexico, ... (line 39-40) （解釋）
The world's most common language is Mandarin Chinese, which has more than one billion speakers. (line 53-54) （解釋）

5. preposition

millions of people (line 4)
..., meaning is expressed through a system of characters ... (line 7)
Many hearing-impaired people use sign language, in which gestures do the work of the sound system of spoken languages. (line 10-11)
... at least 500 languages ... (line 21)
..., and are divided into closely related branches. (line 28-29)
For example, the English word "byte" was invented by ... (line 37)
refer to (line 42)
come into contact with (line 47)
People learn languages by listening, reading, and using the language. (line 58)
at a rapid rate (line 73)
on average (line 74)

6. Quizlet

2010年9月27日星期一

Unit 3, Lesson 1: World Population Growth

1. Vocabulary: pronunciation and meaning

2. Comprehension questions
(1) In which year did world population reach five billion people?
(2) Does the Earth have enough natural resources to support the whole world population?
(3) What natural resources are limited?
(4) What problem do we have with water?
(5) What problems do we have with land?
(6) What problem do we have with air?
(7) What problem do we have with nonrenewable energy?

3. usage
(1) by (line 5) vs. by (line 10) (解釋)
(2) while (line 37) vs. while (line 55) (解釋)
(3) As the standard of living goes up in other countries, so will the demand for energy. (line 60) (解釋)

4. grammar
(1) By 196, just thirty years later, the world's population had hit three billion. (line 5)
(2) Most of it comes from burning fossil fuels ... (line 49) (subject-verb agreement)
(3) Three quarters of this commercial energy is used ... (line 59)

5. prepositions: Please find collocations in which prepositions occur. For example, the answer to this question ... (line 15)

By 1960, ... (line 5-6)
... by seven-six million people (line 10)
Unfortunately, the answer to this question ... (line 15-16)
... depends on information ... (line 16)
the removal of salt from salt water (Line 31) / ... remove the salt from ocean water (line 33)
... a solution to the shortage of fresh water. (line 32)
In addition, over-cultivation has already ... (line 40)
an amount of farmland equal to the size of the United States and Canada combined (line 41)
an amount of farmland equal to the size of the United States and Canada combined (line 41)
What effect would three billion more people have on the air ... (line 53)

6. Quizlet

7. assignments:
(1) Find sentences in which some collocations are used.

answer to

(2) Do exercises A, B, C, D, F, G

8. quiz: the first two lessons, right after the second lesson is completed.

2010年9月15日星期三

Unit 1, Lesson 1: Burke and Wills: Across Australia

1. Make sure that you can pronounce all the target words (in red) correctly.

2. Scan the whole article for key information. (Exercise G: Short answer questions)

3. comprehension questions

How is the landscape in the outback of Australia?
Where did the expedition team head for?
What problems did the expedition team have?
Halfway to the destination, what was the team's decision for their partner, Wright?
What happened in their return journey?
Did Burke and Wills complete the jouney in the end?
What reasons could explain the journey that was not so satisfactory?

4. Look up the words in the dictionary for more sentence contexts.

turn ... into ...
supplies
halfway
get along

5. usage: left (line 15) vs. left (line 20)

6. collocations

turn ... into ... (line 4)
leave for (line 15)
follow orders (line 20)
ahead of (line 23)
half crazy from ... (line 45)

7. Grammar
Past perfect tense
The rest of the expedition had left the day before because they thought Burke must be dead.

8. Vocabulary: SpellingCity

9. Assignments:

Complete all exercises (A, B, C, D, F, G)
Use your dictionary to find more sentences for the key words, phrases, collocations shown above.

2010年5月7日星期五

Good luck to you for your final exam and graduation exam

Answer keys to textbook exercises

If you have any question, please drop it here. I'll come up here to answer it.

2010年5月4日星期二

Killer Robots

1. MP3

2.

3.

4. Quizlet

5. Mind map

Robots, part III

2010年4月29日星期四

The Many Loves of Genji

1. MP3

2.

3.

4. Quizlet

2010年4月25日星期日

The World's First Novelist

1.
MP3

2.

3.

4. Quizlet

2010年4月22日星期四

結業考範圍

Unit 1: Are You a Genius ? (two lessons)
Unit 5: You Are What You Eat (two lessons)
Unit 07: Mazes and Labyrinths (lesson one only)
Unit 10: Epidemic (two lessons)
Unit 11: The Tale of Genji (two lessons)
Unit 12: The Robots Are Coming (lesson one only)

without vocabulary of section D.

2010年4月20日星期二

The Spanish Flu

1.

2. mind map

3. Quizlet

4. phrases

typical of (5): This poem is typical of the romantic period.
by air (19): The disease spread by air.
board ships (54)
cross the Atlantic Ocean (54)
hold sale (69)
arrive at a place (92): We arrived at the airport at four.
similar to (106): I have seen many instances similar to this.
mutate into (108): We hope that it will not mutate into a more powerful virus.
leap to (109)
instead of (114): I want a toy instead of a bag of chips.

5. Grammar

Early on, the American government should have done something ... (20)
... between 80 and 90 percept of the population was infected, ... (48)
... because they were too weak to gather and prepare food. (50)
Not even the rich were safe from the disease. (52)
Ironically, although the disease seems to have begun there, ... (78)
In all, a fifth of the world's population was infected ... (85)
... because a pig's anatomy is so similar to a human's.

6. Memorize Now
Laws were quickly passed to try to stop the spread of the disease. For example, stores in some countries were not allowed to hold sales to stop crowds gathering and spreading the flu even further, and medical certificates were required for travelers. Funerals were kept short to minimize the time people spent together. Just as had been the case during The Black Death, there were not enough coffins or grave diggers to bury all the dead.

7. audio file