Tobay Beach LIVE

TOBAY Beach

     Since I was a little girl, I have been going to TOBAY Beach in the summer. My father took us there every weekend and during his summer vacations. He always said that our beach was one of the best beaches in the world with beautiful white sand and clean water, so he did not want to go on a beach vacation anywhere else. He was a distance swimmer, so he was able to teach us to swim and protect us. When my son was younger, I also took him to TOBAY Beach with his friends, but their mother was afraid of the water and could not swim, so every joint trip was fraught with her anxiety. For a while, I seldom went, but somehow I have found my interest in my favorite beach again and have received a lifetime pass, and even when I do not go, I can watch it on the new beach cam. 

Vocabulary

TOBAY Beach  (noun) -- the Town of Oyster Bay Beach, a private beach for residents of the town

distance swimmer (noun) -- a person who swims for miles in the sea

fraught (with) (adjective + preposition) -- filled with something negative

anxiety (noun) -- a feeling of worry

seldom (adverb) -- not often

cam (noun) -- short for camcorder (a video camera, in this case, one that livestreams or shows live pictures of the beach)

Vocabulary Cloze Exercise: Fill in the blanks with the correct vocabulary word.

Yesterday the children wanted to play in the sand and swim in the waves, so we drove down to ____________________.  I  ____________ swim now, but I love to watch my grandchildren play in the water. My son can swim for miles because he is a _____________________.  When I could not see the children from my chair, I was __________ with ______________, but then I saw them on the beach ________ and stopped worrying. We had a good day at the beach.

Grammar Point:

The paragraph has several verb tenses: present, past, present perfect, and present perfect continuous. These tenses are used to show the different times involved in the paragraph. You can review the tenses with Jennifer's ESL videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWIEjx8bz5Y

The past tense verbs are underlined in the paragraph above. Regular verbs end in -ed in the past tense, but irregular verbs may have a vowel or other change. For example, take becomes took in the past tense. 

For practice, write a 5-sentence paragraph about someplace you visited using the past tense.

Jackie Nenchin Poster Presentation | Molloy College Creative Teaching Da...

 My Family Tree Research

Top photo: My family's home in Ridgewood, Queens, in 1901 (on the corner of Myrtle and Decatur, formerly Smith St.)

Bottom photo: My great-great-grandmother Harriet, my great grandfather Sanford, my great aunt Mildred, my great aunt Harriet, my grandmother Marion, and my great uncle Samuel and their dog, whose name I don't know (1903)

One of my most beloved hobbies is family tree research. I have always been interested in my family's story, especially on my father's mother's side (my paternal grandmother). I have become the family's unofficial historian, and, happily, my cousin's daughter Natalie, who is in her 30s, has also taken genealogy up as a hobby now. While I dabble in it, she documents everything officially. That is no doubt because she is an actual history teacher. Together, we  have been able to trace our family to the 6th century AD in England, Scotland, and France.

Vocabulary

hobby/hobbies (noun) -- what people do in their free time for fun

family tree research (noun) -- study of family history

paternal (adjective) -- belonging to father

official/unofficial (adjective) -- formal/informal

officially (adverb) -- formally

taken up (phrasal verb) -- started to do

genealogy (noun) -- the study and tracing of family history

dabble (verb) -- take part in something in a casual way

trace (verb) -- find or look for along a path

Vocabulary Exercise: Matching

1. taken up                    a. not formally

2.  genealogy                 b. father's

3. trace                          c. began to

4. unofficially                d. look for/find

5.dabble                        e. interests

6. hobbies                     f. research into family history

7. paternal                     g. take part not in a serious way

Grammar Point

The present tense and the present perfect tense are used in the passage. 

The present tense is either the base form of the verb or the base form +-s. Examples are:

I dabble

she documents

The singular pronouns he/she/it are followed by the simple form + -s.

The present perfect tense is the helping verb has/have  is followed by the past participle of the verb.

I have been    I have become

We have been

Grammar Assignment

Write 4-5 sentences about one of your hobbies. Use both the present and the present perfect tenses.

Explore verbs here.

My Hobbies

Although I don't have much spare time, I do have a few hobbies that I enjoy. The first is embroidery, which is using a needle and thread to create pictures and to write names or sayings on cloth. I can also sew clothes, and I have a collection of thimbles that help me when I am sewing.  In pursuit of improving my skills, I even attended the Royal School of Needlework in London, where I learned how to embroider with gold and silver threads. The second is crocheting, which is very relaxing. I make everyday things, such as potholders and handkerchiefs. And the final one is baking, which I do more frequently than the others. My family and friends are very happy with all my hobbies, but especially with my baking. They love to eat my cookies, cupcakes, and cakes. I wish I had more time to work on my hobbies, but I am too busy.

Starting a crocheting project

Crocheted lace trim and embroidered initial K

Sewing the cuff of my blouse

My very first quilting project

My thimbles

Vocabulary
spare time (idiom) -- free time

hobbies (noun) -- interesting and creative things to do when you are not working

embroidery (noun) -- creating pictures, words and so on with a needle and thread

needle (noun) -- a sharp, pointy metal object for sewing

thread (noun) -- a long piece of cotton, nylon, wool, or silk used for sewing
thimble (noun) -- a small metal cap that protects your finger when you sew
in pursuit of (prepositional phrase) -- in order to, for this purpose

Royal School of Needlework (proper noun) -- a special school for learning about embroidery
London (proper noun) -- the capital of Great Britain

crocheting (noun) [crochet-verb] -- making something with a hook and yarn

Our Anju with her crocheted yellow blankie

Vocabulary Exercise: Fill in the blanks with the correct vocabulary word.

1. When sewing or doing ___________, I  need a ___________, __________, and ___________.
2. I like when I am not working. In my _________  _________, I can practice my ____________  for fun and to create new things.
3. When I lived in _____________, I attended the __________  ___________ ___  ___________  to learn about working with gold threads.
4. In __________ of improving my ______________ , I make small cat blankets.

Grammar: Common and Proper Nouns
Some of the  nouns in the entry are common nouns and others are proper nouns. Common nouns are written in lower case letters, whereas proper nouns are in upper case. Write five sentences in which you use both a common noun and a proper noun, Be sure to use the correct capitalization. For example, in the following sentence, you should capitalize the city Paris and the first word of the sentence:  my sister lived in paris for a year. -- My sister lived in Paris for a year.

 
 

Bad Television, Good Television, and the Difference between Them

Tonight I tried to watch the Emmy Awards, which recognizes excellence in television. I turned the show on and watched it for 20 minutes or so. It was such a snooze! There was no host, but there was a voice telling jokes and making comments as a transition among the various presenters and awards. I decided it was better to watch a rerun of a good detective series than this terrible awards program. However, I was still determined to find out if any of the good or great television shows that I love would win an award. So I decided to continue watching detective shows while checking the winners on Buzzfeed, an internet news source. One of the best results was that the award for best limited series went to Chernobyl, an outstanding miniseries based on the nuclear disaster in Chernobyl, Ukraine, in 1986.  The performances, writing, and directing made most compelling viewing. Though the Emmy Awards show was bad, I was glad to see a great television show like  Chernobyl win a much-deserved award.

Chernobyl trailer (click here)

Actors Jared Harris and Stellan Skarsgard   

Vocabulary

Emmy Awards (noun) -- awards for excellence in television

a snooze (noun) -- a boring event/time or person (in  North American slang)

host (noun) --  person who receives or entertains guests 

transition (noun) -- change

detective series (noun) -- a television program about solving crimes

miniseries (noun) -- a television drama or comedy in a few parts or episodes

nuclear disaster (noun) -- a terrible event or tragedy involving atomic energy

Chernobyl, Ukraine -- a city in the country of Ukraine in Eastern Europe

performances -- acting

compelling -- very interesting

Vocabulary Exercise

Crossword Puzzle

Grammar Point:

The passage above uses the past tense of verbs. Some sentences have the irregular past tense of the verb to be  -- was and of  to make -- made, and others have the regular past tense of the verbs with an -ed ending. Write a paragraph of five sentences about your favorite television program or movie.

                                                             

My Fair Lady: Dialects, Phonetics, and an Extreme Linguist

This summer I went to the Broadway musical My Fair Lady. As you may know, it is the story of a Eliza Doolittle, a young woman who speaks in a Cockney dialect but wants to learn how to speak in  a form of standard British English called Received Pronunciation.  A linguist named Henry Higgins finds her on the streets of London and boasts that he could make a fine lady out of her by changing the way she speaks and acts.

Harry Hadden-Paton and Lauren Ambrose, playing Henry Higgins and Eliza Doolittle
[Photo from the Lincoln Center Beaumont Theater https://www.lct.org/shows/my-fair-lady/]

Eliza wants to change her position in life from selling flowers on the street to owning her own flower shop. To do that, she believes that she must learn to speak better. Therefore, she asks Professor Higgins to help her. In the photo, we can see that Professor Higgins is trying to teach Eliza to change her accent. To make a long story short, Eliza succeeds in changing her accent with the professor's grueling exercises and unpleasant bossiness, but it takes her longer to find happiness. A young man named Freddy loves her, and we see her leave with him. Henry Higgins is sad when she leaves, but she returns to him only to say goodbye.

So of all the Broadway shows, I went to see the one about a linguist!

Vocabulary:
Broadway musical (noun) - a show on Broadway in NY that involves singing and dancing
Cockney dialect (noun) - a type of English spoken in London's East End, a poor area
Received Pronunciation (RP) ( noun) -- the type of English that Queen Elizabeth II speaks
linguist (noun) -- a scientist that studies language
boasts (verb) -- brags, talks about himself as if he is very important and can do anything he wants
to make a long story short (idiom) -- to tell something briefly/quickly, summarize
grueling (adjective) --  very difficult, very hard to do
bossiness (noun) -- telling someone what to do

Vocabulary Exercise:
Fill in the blank with the correct vocabulary word.
1. The trip to Manhattan was very difficult or ______________  through the snow and ice. But we had tickets to see a wonderful _________________ with lots of singing and dancing.
2. My teacher is a ______________ She studies types of English such as __________________ and ____________________.
3. There is a man at work who thinks he is great and important. He always  ____________ about how great he is. Other workers dislike his ________________ when he tells them what to do.
4. ________________, I will only tell you a quick summary of the events.


Grammar Point: The verbs in the entry above are mostly  in the third person form in the  present tense. This is formed by adding an -s to the base form of the verb after he/she/it:
want--wants  (Eliza wants)
ask-- asks   (She asks)
succeed-- succeeds   (Eliza succeeds)

Grammar/Writing Exercise: Write a 5-sentence paragraph about a television show that you like. All your sentences should be in the present tense. Be sure to use the third person form where needed.

Queens, Queens Everywhere (and not the county in NY)

Lately there has been a spate of television series about queens. The first one I watched in its entirety was Reign, the highly imaginative and historically inaccurate show about Mary, Queen of Scots, one of my favorite historical figures. If viewers can get past its faults, which are many, they might be able to empathize with the ill-fated teen queen and her even more ill-fated young husband largely because of the endearing performances by Adelaide Kaine (herself a real-life descendant of Mary) and Toby Regbo. The second series I started last year is Victoria on PBS's Masterpiece Theater. This series has outstanding performances and amazingly fine sets, but I am not much interested in her life, so I don't always watch it and am a bit behind in its second season. The third one, which I am binge-watching on Netflix, is about the current queen, Her Royal Highness Queen Elizabeth II, who has been the queen since before I was born. This show is also beautifully done with a stunning performance by Claire  Foy as Elizabeth. Why there are three highly popular series about queens right now is a mystery to me, but I hope to continue enjoying them. God save the Queens!

Vocabulary
spate (noun) -- a large number

imaginative (adj.) -- creative

inaccurate (adj.) -- not right or exact

empathize (verb) -- understand and share feelings

ill-fated (adj.) -- unlucky

endearing (adj.) -- lovable, cute

descendant (noun) -- a person that comes from a certain ancestor

outstanding (adj.) -- excellent

amazingly (adv.) -- surprisingly

binge-watch (verb) --view many episodes of a TV series all at once
stunning (adj.) -- attractive, remarkable



Vocabulary Exercise
Fill in the blanks with the correct vocabulary word.
I am a _________________ of two famous ancestors, King Malcolm III and Queen Margaret of Scotland.

She was an  excellent or _____________ queen. The people, who loved her, found her to be  ____________.  For her _______________ (remarkable) qualities, the Church respects  her as a saint. King Malcolm was ___________ old for a warrior, who was in many wars, but he met his __________ (unlucky)  end when he was killed at the age of 62. Shakespeare, England's most ______________ writer, tells about Malcolm in the play Macbeth, which may be ___________ or not correct about some of the details of Malcolm's life. If Netflix ever makes a show about my ancestors King Malcolm III and Queen Margaret, I will ____________ until I have finished every episode. But for now, I am watching a ____________ of episodes of The Vikings, in which I can ___________ with another of my ancestors, King Alfred of England, who had to fight the violent Vikings to protect his people.



Grammar Point: Adjectives and Adverbs

Adjectives: Adjectives are words that describe nouns, while adverbs can describe verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs.
For example, in the sentence, "The very beautiful English actress Claire Foy plays the role of Queen Elizabeth II splendidly," very and splendidly are adverbs and beautiful is an adjective.

Write three complete sentences about the queens in my entry and their photos. Use at least two adjectives and one adverb from the vocabulary list in each sentence.

Claire Foy as Queen Elizabeth II

Want to watch Victoria? Click on this link.