[Easy English Blog] Why do you want to study English?

July 15, 2013 / italkyoutalk

When I meet new students, I always ask them this question.

“Why do you want to study English?”

Over the years I have been teaching, I have heard many interesting answers to this question.

Here are some of the answers, starting with the most common.

“I want to travel”

Many of these students go abroad every year, and they want to be able to communicate in everyday situations.

“I like English”

These students study English as a hobby. They tend to talk a lot in class and enjoy communicating with others.

“I want to watch American movies with no subtitles”

These students study English to enjoy their hobby more .

“I need it for work”

Many of these students work for companies which want to operate internationally. Some have bosses who don’t speak Japanese. Others need to get scores on tests (such as TOEIC) to be promoted.

“I want foreign friends”

These students are often interested in other cultures and are looking for friends from other countries.

“I want to study abroad”

Some of these students want to learn basic English before they go to language school, others need to pass entrance tests to colleges and universities.

“I don’t want to study English”

These students don’t want to study, but they have to, either for work or for school.

“It’s cool!”

These students are often interested in the image of speaking another language.

“I want to speak to my family members”

These students often have family members who have married people from other countries, and they want to communicate with them.

“To keep my brain active”

I taught a class for retired people for a few years. Everyone in the class said this was their reason for studying.

And some less common reasons I have heard:

“My psychiatrist recommended I study”

It seems that some psychiatrists recommend English conversation as a kind of therapy.

“It will make me rich”

This student thinks that if she can speak English well, she can get a higher paying job.

“To get away from my wife”

This man enjoyed spending time outside the home! 🙂

“I want to sell ice cream on Brighton beach”

This student had a very specific goal!

How about you? Why do you want to study English? 🙂

[Easy English Blog] A Mere Trifle

June 14, 2013 / italkyoutalk

Cooking and recipes in English.

A friend bought me a packet of port wine jelly from Australia. In America, jelly is called jello.

I was wondering what to do with it. “It’s very popular in Australia,” my friend said. “People make trifle with it.”

“Ah,” I thought. “Trifle! I haven’t made trifle for years.”

This is what I did to make a trifle.

I made the jelly and put it in the refrigerator to set.

I made a pint (450ml) of custard. I was in a hurry so I used a packet of instant custard. Be careful though. You want the custard to be thick. So use only half the amount of milk that the instructions say.

I bought a sponge cake from the supermarket. I broke it up into pieces. I divided the pieces into three piles. I used one pile to make a layer of sponge cake in a glass bowl and poured some apple juice over it.

I chopped up the jelly and put half of it over the sponge cake.

I poured half the custard over that.

Then I repeated the layers; sponge cake with apple juice, jelly, custard.

I put the last pile of pieces of sponge cake on top. I put it in the refrigerator and forgot about until it was time for dessert. Then I decorated the top with cream and raspberries. Here is a picture. It’s not very pretty is it?

trifle

Trifle is a traditional English dessert. It usually has custard, sponge cake and fruit. Every family has their own recipe. Everyone has a strong opinion about the recipe and they are all different.

Some people soak the sponge cake in sherry. Other people use fruit juice. Many people use jelly in a trifle. My mother never did. She always spread the sponge cake with strawberry jam. The friend who gave me the jelly said, ”Where are the peaches? I always put canned peaches in trifle!”

So maybe a trifle is whatever you want it to be.

Have you ever made a trifle?

*Note: trifle is an interesting word. Look it up! It means something small and unimportant; “a mere trifle”.

If you ever heard two cooks discussing dessert trifle, you might get another idea! Something large and rather important! This is because everyone has their own ideas about how to make a trifle. Modern trifles often have many ingredients so there are many things for cooks to disagree about.

The original trifles in the 17^th century were probably rather simple desserts. Just fruit and custard or fruit and cream. They were also sometimes called fools.

This simple version “a trifle” is still popular in modern English cooking and it is called a fool. But the modern trifle always has cake in it.

(P)

[Easy English Blog] Snow peas

June 4, 2013 / italkyoutalk

Cooking and recipes in English.

snowpeas

A friend gave me a bag of snow peas. He had just picked them from his garden. So I made stir fried beef with snow peas.

I had some beef in the freezer so I defrosted it. I try to catch it before it is completely defrosted. It is easier to cut thin slices if the meat is still half-frozen.

Most recipes don’t have cashew nuts. But I added some because my family likes them.

Recipe (for 4)

400g thinly sliced beef

2 tablespoons (30ml) soy sauce

1 tablespoon (15ml) sherry or mirrin

1 tablespoon (15ml) sugar

2 tablespoons (30ml) of grated ginger

2 cloves of garlic chopped

1 teaspoon (5ml) of cornflour)

2 cups snow peas

½ cup cashew nuts (if you like them)

2 tablespoons of cooking oil (I used peanut oil)

chopped red and green peppers

This was very quick – I put the soy sauce, sherry, sugar and cornflour in a bowl and mixed them together well.

Then I added the garlic, ginger and beef, and stirred until the meat was mixed with the seasonings.

Then, I left it all for a few minutes.

I washed the snow peas and took the leaves off the top. The ones in shops usually have these removed already.

I heated the oil and threw the contents of the bowl into the wok. When the beef looked almost done I added the snow peas and stirred.

I sprinkled the chopped red and green peppers on top, and the meal was ready.

Thought: My peas were very young. If you buy them in the supermarket, they might be older. So you might have to drop them into boiling water for a minute. Drain the peas and run cold water over them. Then shake them dry before you add them.

My friend also gave me a box of freshly picked strawberries so we had them for dessert. You have to love this time of year!

Stir fries are great when the weather gets hotter. They need almost no cooking so there is not too much heat in the kitchen.

Do you have a favourite stir fry combination?

(P)

[Easy English Blog] Warm raindrops

May 28, 2013 / italkyoutalk

Warm raindrops

and cloudy skies

The rainy season

is two weeks early.

[Easy English Blog] A bad cold

May 27, 2013May 26, 2013 / italkyoutalk

I have a bad cold. It started about four days ago.

First, I had a sore throat. Then I started coughing. At first, I thought it was hay fever because there is a lot of pollen in the air at this time of year.

But then I got a runny nose, a fever and a headache. It’s definitely a cold!

When I get a cold, I usually take medicine. The medicine makes me drowsy (sleepy) so I only take it at night. I take two capsules at a time.

I also try to eat healthily The other day, I bought some organic barley grass powder. Barley grass has many vitamins and minerals.

I mixed it with water and vegetable juice. It is not the most delicious thing to drink, but I think it is one of the healthiest!

I also bought many boxes of tissues! I hope I won’t need them all!

What do you do when you get a cold?

[Easy English Blog] A traditional house

May 21, 2013May 21, 2013 / italkyoutalk

Last Sunday, my friend invited me to an old Japanese house.

The house is in the countryside, and we drove for a few hours in the early summer rain through hills and rice fields to get there.

The house is around 300 years old. The owners of the house like the traditional way of life, so it has straw mats on the floor, sliding paper screens on the windows and dark, narrow staircases.

It is very dark inside the house. But I like that. I think it creates a very relaxing atmosphere, and we can imagine life in the house when it was built. I felt that, even though 300 years have passed, in this house very little has changed.

From the upstairs rooms, we can see the rooftops of the neighbouring houses.

It was a nice way to spend a rainy Sunday afternoon. I hope I get the chance to spend a night or two there sometime! 🙂

(H)

[Easy English Blog] Corn fritters

May 15, 2013May 15, 2013 / italkyoutalk

Cooking and Recipes in English

On Saturday the temperature was 27^o, so we had a BBQ.

I made corn fritters. One of my friends said, “Corn fritters! I haven’t eaten them for years!”

How about you? Have you ever eaten corn fritters? They are very easy to make.

I usually make corn fritters when we have a BBQ because I like to eat them with sausages and tomato salsa. They are good with bacon too.

Here is the photograph, my friend took of the fritters.

corn

I asked her, “Why are you taking a photograph?”

She said, “To remind me to make corn fritters sometime soon.”

I don’t know what recipe she uses, but this is how I made them on Saturday night.

I put half a cup (100cc) of flour, one teaspoon of baking powder and a little salt in a bowl.
I mixed it together and then added two eggs and mixed again.
Then I put in a can of whole kernel corn (450g), and a small handful of grated cheese. I like to add a lot of black pepper too.
Then I fried spoonfuls of the mixture in oil and butter. Not too much. Just about a tablespoon of each.

You can make fritters with creamed corn too. Sometime soon I will make some. I’ll tell you which style I think is better.

(P)

[Easy English Blog] Early Summer

May 12, 2013 / italkyoutalk

Early summer has arrived in Japan!

Many people say that the weather is best in mid-May. It is warm (27 degrees today!), the flowers are in bloom, and the humidity is low. We also have many sunny days with deep blue skies and a gentle breeze.

It is a nice time to enjoy gardening, sitting on the beach or hiking before the rainy season brings the long hot and humid days of summer.

[Easy English Blog] The beach in spring

April 28, 2013April 30, 2013 / italkyoutalk

I like going to the beach in Japan in spring. I like it because the beach is empty. There are no other people. It is like having a private beach!

Many people in Japan go to the beach in July and early August. This is the swimming season. But at other times during the year, few people go to the beach.

I went to the beach last week. Here is a photograph of the sea. It looks beautiful, but it is still to cold to go swimming!

(H)

[Easy English Blog] A drive in the countryside

April 23, 2013 / italkyoutalk

I went for a drive in the countryside with a friend today. We both had a day off, so we decided to go out for a few hours.

While we were driving, we saw signpost to two temples. We like visiting temples. They are usually very peaceful, especially during the week, when there are few people around.

In the temple grounds, there were still a few cherry blossoms blooming. In the city where we live, the cherry blossom season has finished.

The petals were falling in the breeze, and they fell to the stone path like snow. It was a very beautiful sight.

My friend was driving, so I could relax and take many pictures. Here is one I took when we stopped at a junction. The bird stayed very still while I took the picture!