Rawan gave a perfect presentation! First of all, she came to class early, she prepared a well-organized and interesting introduction to her subject, Saudi Arabia, and even touched on topics that we had been studying in our class! I think everybody did a great job--everyone paid attention, asked good questions, and we enjoyed a lively discussion afterwards. I have to say this again: our presentations have been great. Keep up the good work!
Next week Fatimah and Rika will make their first presentations, and Vasily has volunteered to do another presentation on Monday.
Today, we went over the homework from Focus points 4 and 5.
We learned that we can use "even if" for unclear present or future situations and "even though" for clear present and past situations.
We can use both for past situations, but there is a difference. "Even though" is used for specific events that happened in the past:
Even though it was hot, he didn't use his air conditioner. (It was hot on one particular day, but he didn't use his air conditioner.)
"Even if" shows general or habitual actions.
Even if it was hot, he didn't use his air conditioner. (Sometimes it was hot, but he still didn't use an air conditioner on those days.)
By the way, we can use "even when" in these cases, too.
We also went over Focus 6, which re-introduced the same grammar, but shows how it can be used to make suggestions or give advice.
Don't enter Proficiency unless you're serious about improving your English!
Even though you'll work hard in Proficiency, you'll definitely increase your vocabulary.
Only a little homework for this weekend! Please do Exercise 12 on pages 294 and 295. We'll check it together in class on Monday before the test.
For those of you who check the blog, here's a little preview of the listening section about globalization.
You'll hear a man talking about his well-traveled friend (someone who traveled a lot) and hear references to things like stir-fry squid (yum!), Cabernet (pronounced kab.er.NAY), a kind of French wine, tai chi (a kind of Chinese exercise, which I'm sure many of you know well)Stan Getz (a jazz saxophone player), Cesaria Evora (a singer) and Ricky Martin (another singer).
The speaker will mention places like little Saigon in Silicon Valley, Idaho, Orange County (a Vietnamese ethnic enclave in California) and a Cuban community in Miami.
One expression that I didn't put in the vocabulary is "to stem a flow," which means to prevent or something from flowing or to slow its movement. In this case, "stem" means "block," although as a noun it usually refers to a tiny stick that a leaf or flower grows from.
Finally, here's our study sheet. Study it carefully and bring your questions to class on Monday! See you then!
Week 8 AM Proficiency
Study Sheet
Grammar Dimensions
Grammar
Dimensions p282
explicit
implicit
hypothetical/hypothesis
Grammar
Dimensions p286
a chore
Grammar
Dimensions p286-7
to mature/mature (adj)
to measure up to
a chaperone/to chaperone
potential
to gripe/a gripe
Grammar
Dimensions p291
tentative
to confront/a confrontation
fierce
to turn back
p292-3
to stay up
a stroll/to stroll
to idle/idle
“the rat race”
Raise The Issues
p146
to breach (a barrier)/ a breach
homogenization/homogeneous /homogenized
to prophesy/a prophecy/a prophet
“seen through a prism”
to register (a fact)
mass migration
a refugee/refuge
would-be…
the melting pot
eclectic
shallowness/shallow
ethnic/ethnicity
an enclave
cosmopolitanism/cosmopolitan
to forge/a forge
to widen
to pool
“Are We Coming Apart…”
folks
to transcend/transcendental
to aggravate/aggravating
to abhor/abhorrent
to assuage
to embrace//an embrace
dashing/to dash/a dash
to whisk/a whisk
tribalism/a tribe/tribal
a fissure
to propel/a propeller/a propellant
anarchy/anarchist
to dwindle/dwindling
a huddle of/to huddle
a high-rise
“biblical…” the
Bible [BIBLIO-book]
desperation/desperate
a digital divide/ a divide
a tirade
ancestral/an ancestor/ancestral
to distract/
estrangement/to estrange/estranged
affluence/affluent
counterclockwise/clockwise
roughly/rough
stirring/to stir
to intuit/intuition/intuitive
to be deprived of/to deprive/deprived
mongrelism/ a mongrel
fusion culture
plugged into
a circuit
to comprise (to contain: The U.S. comprises
50 states)
conscience
all-purpose
Listening
pungent/pungency
buoyant/a buoy
“wouldn't be caught dead”
in touch with
lilting/to lilt
radical (adj) a
radical
nostalgia/nostalgic
vibrant
to thrive/thriving
to lose one’s grip on
the realm of…/a realm
“fixed in stone”
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