[Diary] Mon 13 May, 2024 - ESL

 

(On the last day of the winter semester, Teacher P generously made us wonderful bread.😊❤️) 

 

 

Yesterday was the first day of the spring semester in my ESL class. I started attending the class in the middle of the winter semester and have participated since then. The members were the same as in the previous semester. We talked about our daily lives and had some casual conversations.

 

P, one of the teachers, taught us about grammar. Living in South Korea for more than 30 years means that you have to take numerous English tests, including the Korean versions of the SAT, TOEIC, and TOEFL. As a result, most South Koreans are quite good at grammar, even though our ability to speak English is less proficient. She explained the roles of adjectives, prepositions, adverbs, pronouns, and more. I already knew these topics, but just listened because I didn't want to be rude. Additionally, how she pronounced 'adjective' was interesting to me. It has a different pronunciation from what I knew. So, I was just listening, and at that moment, one person said, "That's dry. Can we talk about something else? Like our daily lives?" Haha. So thanks to her, we switched topics. I was glad that we could move on and leanred the new meaning for 'dry', which means 'dull, uninteresting.'  

 

What stood out in yesterday's class was the variety of usages of the word "knock." It's a very easy word but has diverse meanings and expressions. For example, there's "Don't knock it until you try it," meaning don't disparage something before giving it a chance. "Knock it off!" is a common way to tell someone to stop doing something. Then there's "knock over," which means to strike or collide with someone so as to cause them to fall to the ground. For instance, "He accidentally knocks over a vase."