資深的熱心英文老師！Experienced， Enthusiastic EFL/FFL Teacher Ready to Help

I have been teaching in Taiwan for over 40 years, so I am intimately familiar with the language problems that Taiwanese learners have, including: 有沒有什麼問題我可以幫忙？ 我在台灣教書已經超過40年了，因此對台灣學生常遇到的語言問題非常熟悉，其中包括：

(1) Not Enough Vocabulary: I can help you build your vocabulary in several different ways without resorting to rote memorization字彙不夠（詞不達意）：我會用好幾種方法來擴充你的字彙量，不用死背。另外也可以教你一些應變措施，讓你口若懸河，即使當場缺乏字彙或忘了字，還是一樣可以開口讓外國人完全聽懂你的意思。

(2) Poor Pronunciation and Listening Comprehension: Do you speak too slowly? Do foreigners have trouble understanding you? Do you have trouble understanding them? I can teach you several techniques to overcome these problems. 發音很差，聽力也不好： 你是否講話太慢？ 外國人聽不懂你講的話嗎？ 還是你聽不懂他們呢？我可以教你幾個簡單易行的技巧來克服這些問題。

(3) Not Enough Confidence: I can train you to be confident when speaking to individuals or making presentations 缺乏自信：不管是一對一還是做簡報的時候，我幫你培養信心。

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I am a highly-skilled language teacher involved in teaching and learning various languages for over half a century. 我是訓練有素的語言教師，從事語言教學、語言學習已經有半個多世紀了。

Experience: 經驗

I have taught at several schools, including: 我在幾個學校任教過，其中包括：

(1) The Language Training and Testing Center, NTU Campus, 1976~2003 (25 years) 台大校園的語音訓練測驗中心 (負責全民英檢和托福的單位)

(2) China University of Technology, 2003~2015 (11 years) 中國科技大學

Training 訓練：

(1) I am fully fluent in three languages：English and French [native fluency in both], as well as Chinese) and competent in two others (Spanish and Russian) 三種語言完全流利: 英語和法語 (雙母語)，國語 (高水準)， 西班牙語和俄語 (一般聽說讀寫可以應付)

(2) Two MAs: 雙碩士：

  (A) Chinese linguistics (Taiwan University, 1972~1974), 漢語語言學

  (B) Media-Assisted Language Teaching (Brighton University, 1989~1990), 媒體輔助語言教學

How to Contact Me 聯絡方式：

Email is the best way to contact me for the first time: cute DOT homework AT gmail DOT com

DOT = "."

AT = "@"

Facebook Follies

Follies are crazy things that some people do. You might ask "How can using Facebook be crazy?" This video from Canadian TV will give you some ideas:

[The original link (https://youtu.be/O_n9pPyFhqo) cannot be embedded, so I am using my own link for the time being]


The entire video is well worth watching, but please pay special attention to these six segments:


Thessa’s Party (3:00)
Ray Lam’s Photos (4:23)
Cameron Reilly’s Remarks (7:36)
Paul Chambers’ Tweets (8:40)
The Policeman’s Car (10:27)
Anthony Weiner’s Tweets (11:22)

What have you learned? Please leave comments below.

The Ten Commandments, a Key to Understanding Western People

Although many left wing people in Europe and the US are working hard to destroy Judaism and Christianity, the Ten Commandments remain the basis for what has made the West so successful. If you want to understand how Western people think, you should definitely spend some time learning about the Ten Commandments.

Dennis Prager, a well-known rabbi, has produced a series of videos explaining the Ten Commandments (be sure to click on [CC] to see the words while you watch):

Ten Commandments: Background-1 『十誡』2007、1998年動畫版 Two Cartoon Versions

The Ten Commandments are the moral basis of Western culture. They are so basic that even atheists accept most of these ideas without thinking clearly about where they come from. This 2007 cartoon version of the Bible story is an easy way to start learning about the Ten Commandments:

Rent this movie from a video store to see it with subtitles in your own language. You MUST see this movie! Buzzfeed says so, so they must be right. ；-）

These are some of the important people at the beginning of the story:

Moses	Leader of the Hebrews
Yocheved	Mother of Moses
Miriam	Sister of Moses
Aaron	Brother of Moses
Ramses	Son of Pharaoh
Zipporah	Wife of Moses
Jethro	Zipporah's father

Unfortunately, the YouTube version does not have provide English subtitles (captions). Some of the dialog appears below, followed by a summary of the first twenty-odd minutes.

Ten Commandments: Background 2 『十誡』1956年電影介紹 Movie Version

Many people think that the 1956 Ten Commandments movie is the best version ever made. The spoken English in this version is not so easy to understand (people speak using old-fashioned words from an old translation of the Bible), but the movie is quite beautiful to look at and the acting is excellent. They don't make movies like this anymore! These are clips that show important scenes from the movie:

Pharaoh tried to kill all of the baby boys of the Hebrews, but Yocheved saved her son Moses. She put him in a basket and sent it down the River Nile. Pharaoh's daughter took the basket out of the water and raised Moses as her own son.

As a young man, Moses saw a slavemaster beating a Hebrew. Although he was now a prince of Egypt, Moses knew in his bones that letting the slavemaster do this was very wrong. Moses killed the slavemaster, so Pharaoh sent him far away to die in the desert without food or water.

Many years later, God spoke to Moses from a burning bush. He told Moses to return to Egypt to free his people, the Hebrew slaves.

Moses showed signs that God had sent him, but Pharaoh thought these were simple tricks. Moses then asked Pharaoh to let God's people go, but Pharaoh refused.

God brought Ten Plagues to Egypt, each one worse than the other. He started by turning the waters of the Nile into blood. In the last plague, the firstborn son of each Egyptian family died. Pharaoh finally let the Hebrews go free.

Ten Commandments: Chinese & English 十誡：中英文對照

[Updated 8 October, 2016]

Because the Ten Commandments have been the basis for Western culture for almost 1700 years, students of English should definitely know what they say and what they mean. The Ten Commandments appear in two slightly different versions, once in Exodus and once in Deuteronomy.

因為長達1700年以來西方文化以十誡為基礎，所以學英文不可不知道其內容與含義。

The following English and Chinese text is taken from Deuteronomy (申 命 記) 5:6~5:21 in the NET Bible, a completely new translation that can be downloaded for free:

English: http://netbible.com/content/download
Chinese: https://bible.org/chinese/e/download/pdf

底下的中英文對照十誡摘錄自 NET Bible

『NET Bible全名是New English Translation Bible新英語譯本聖經。縮寫的NET 代表可在互聯網上免費使用並下載(請參WWW.BIBLE.ORG)。以下簡稱為網英，中譯本稱為網中。』：https://bible.org/assets/downloads/chinese/tc_00-preface.pdf

Ten Commandments, 1: I Am the Lord Your God 第一誡：我是你的神

"I am the Lord your God" is the basis for ethical monotheism, the idea that there is only one true God (Greek roots: mono = one, the = God), the God that created this world and that God wants us, his children, to behave ethically (= to not do evil to each other): 單神論與自由息息相關。

Let's have a discussion. After watching the video of the First Commandment, please think carefully about these five questions, provided by the Prager University web page for the First Commandment.