少人数制で楽しく身につく英会話教室・英会話スクールなら「アミックインターナショナル」

Yes, I had an amazing New Years’ vacation, thank you for asking. Happy New Year to you, too! I went to Hong Kong and Macao, visited Hong Kong Disney, ate a lot of delicious foods (including dim sum and egg tarts), drank a lot of tasty beers, and saw a massive Buddha on top of a hill. I also saw some ruins of an old cathedral in Macao and plenty of beautiful Christmas lights and some very festive Chinese Christmas carolers. Oh, and I got engaged (again) to my number one favorite person and travel buddy. 

But, today’s blog isn’t going to be about any of that fun stuff. No, today is reserved for something far more important: this video I found on The Internet™.

Ho-leeeee cow. I was not ready. After the first couple dozen of sneezes, you can’t help but wonder, “Are these sneezes real?” I mean, this woman sneezes as if a demon is trying to come out of her soul with each breath. The title “Grandma Sneezes Dramatically” is so on point. I counted 38 sneezes (35 with false starts) and 12 wardrobe changes which leads me to believe that these sneezes were all filmed on different days. But still, who is this grandma’s grandson that just so happens to have a camera pointed on her anytime she sneezes? She also looks up at the camera a few times, which could suggest a fake, but could also be her way of saying “why are you always filming me?”. Fakery aside, my favorite sneezes are the ones when she’s in her pantry, because, why is this grandma just chillin’ in her pantry?! I also like that her dog is seemingly unfazed by her loud sternutations. 

What’s your favorite video on The Internet™ currently?

Happy New Year!  

こんにちは、重信校　Hitomiです。

年が明け、新たな気持ちで生活をスタートされたことと思います。

朝活として朝に何か新しいことを取り入れた方はいらっしゃるでしょうか？

英語学習とか！(^▽^)/

英語では朝型、夜型人間のことを、それぞれlark(ヒバリ), owl(フクロウ)と表現するそうです

よ！そして自分がどちらのタイプかは、遺伝が関係しているそうです。でも家庭環境や、社会人

ならお仕事の時間に影響されることも多いですよね。

People can be divided into two types,　‟larks” or ‟owls”. 
‟Larks” means people who are early birds, whereas ‟owls” means people who lead nocturnal lives. Which type you are is determined by heredity. It is sometimes hard to adjust our sleeping rhythms and hours to our life.

ものすごく短く要約するとこんな感じの英語記事を目にしました。

夜型人間のことをフクロウに例えるのはしっくりきますね。朝型は同じ鳥でもなぜ、ヒバリなの

でしょう？ネイティブがこんなことを教えてくれました。

The term ‘lark’ comes from the old English expression ‘Up with the lark’ to describe getting up when the birds (one of them being the lark) start singing first thing in the morning. 

早起き鳥さんの中でもヒバリが一番乗りなのですね。

「早起きは三文の徳」と言います。（日本語の問題になりますが「得」より「徳」が定型のよう

です。）このことわざの英語版は、

The early bird catches the worm.

やはり早起きといえば鳥なのでしょうか。早起きの鳥はwormを食べられる！

ところで皆様は、ヒバリ、フクロウどちらでしょうか？

Are you a lark or an owl? I am a total lark! I usually get up at 4:30 and do many things in the early morning. I read a newspaper, do some cleaning, make breakfast, and study English.I can utilize my time in the early morning.

Early risers are more likely to succeed in the future!  One day I read an article which said this, and I tried to get up earlier. Finally I got up at 3:30! However, after I finished my work at 9:00, I felt really sleepy and almost dozed off while I was driving home. It was so dangerous that I had to stop getting up so early.

However, I still get up at 4:30 and enjoy my time. This year, I was able to see the first sunrise of the year. The early bird catches the worm!

Why don’t you try getting up earlier?

そういうわけで（？）Hitomiは朝派ですが、あまりに早いとアミックからの帰り道の運転が気絶しそうなほど眠いので最近は自制しています。皆さんもそれぞれの生活リズムに合わせたペースで、新年もアミックと一緒に頑張っていきましょう！

December of sophomore year of high school, I remember being in class and seeing several students huddling around my teacher’s computer. The video they described to the rest of us didn’t sound that exciting at the time, but it would go to spark a (arguably tacky) trend that adds even more to the spectacle of Christmas.

The video was of the home of Carson Williams, an electrical engineer from Mason, Ohio (about 25 minutes from where I grew up). Williams had rigged the 16,000 Christmas lights on his house to flash and dance in time with Christmas metal band Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s “Wizards of Winter”, which you could hear if you tuned to a specific radio frequency in your car. The light show became so popular that Williams had to shut it down for the 2005 Christmas season due to the traffic congestion it was creating in his neighborhood. 

The following Christmas season, many others started to post videos of their own elaborate light displays, and Williams was even hired to do the lighting for a beer commercial. The buzz around the idea allowed Williams to start his own holiday lights company, and in the years that followed he was commissioned to do commercial-scale holiday light shows in cities like Denver and Chicago. 

Although the fad seems to be somewhat dying off (at least according to Google Trends), new light show videos still make the rounds every holiday season, often incorporating other pop culture trends. 

Even if these immaculate displays end up fizzling out and going the way of sending a family newsletter or actually singing carols to your neighbors, the decade of the light show will live on for a long time in Christmas lore. 

Around this time, as the end of the year draws near, you can’t help but look back and reflect.

I learn something new about Japanese culture everyday. As the new year is quickly approaching, I’ve said じゃね to learning about Christmas facts and 抗日わto New Year traditions in Japan. Last year, I learned that Japanese people visit their local shrine on New Year’s Day for hatsumode, or the first prayer of the year. People line up to pray starting at 10 P.M. at the Meiji Shrine in Tokyo in preparation for the midnight prayer gong!  This year, I was happy to learn about the Japanese tradition of hatsuhinode, or viewing the first sunrise of the year. In both Shinto and Buddhism tradition, the god of the New Year, Toshigami, arrives with the sunrise on January 1st to grant your New Year’s wish. Tokyo Skytree is very popular sun rise watching destination in Tokyo as well as Goryokaku Tower in Hokkaido Prefecture. While most people in America will be watching the ball drop and then partying ‘til the sun rises, I like the idea of quietly watching the sun rise with a hopeful heart. Maybe my Western traditions will take a backseat to Eastern sensibilities this year and I’ll tone down the partying enough to stay awake past midnight! Although, I’m not sure I can stay awake until 7:00 A.M. regardless of when the partying ends. Although I live in a relatively flat part of Matsuyama, I’m thinking of climbing up the hill to my local shrine to catch the first golden rays of the new year. Who knows? Maybe Toshigami will bless this poor Westerner with a hangover cure and a nap! 

In anticipation of questions from my students about popular American Christmas traditions (and mostly because I don’t actually know), I wanted to scratch my own itch and ask and answer: what is eggnog and why is it so popular in America?

What it is: According to Wiki, eggnog is a rich, white beverage made from milk, cream, sugar, whipped egg whites, and egg yolks. Spices like cinnamon and nutmeg are often added as a topping. Many adults like to also add spirits like rum, brandy, or whisky to kick it up a notch. Some people make it at home, but it can also be found in any supermarket’s dairy section around Christmas time. 

How it became a thing: The history of the word is disputed: some argue the name comes from a 17th century English word for beer (nog); others think it’s a slurring of ‘egg’ and ‘grog‘ (an old word for rum); while even more trace it to 18th-century America.

No matter its etymology, the drink itself was popular among Englands’s lower classes and eventually made its way to the Americas in the 18th century. Although today the drink comes alcohol-free by default (in stores, anyway), in early America the opposite was true and it contained whatever hard alcohol was available, including rum, whiskey, bourbon, and sherry. During the Christmas of 1826, heavy consumption of the drink even led to a literal eggnog riot at the U.S. Military Academy. 

How Americans feel about it: Eggnog is a very polarizing beverage and many Americans have strong and nuanced opinions about it: some think the homemade version is heaven in a glass but despise the processed supermarket versions, while others will happily drink any variety as long as it’s ‘spiked’ with alcohol. Either way, there’s apparently enough of a market for the stuff that soy, coconut, and even tofu-based versions are now available. 

Even if you pass on the drink itself, the beverage’s flavor can be hard to avoid: seeing nog-flavored treats like waffles, ice cream, and cookies isn’t uncommon, making egg nog’s presence around the holidays almost as ubiquitous as cinnamon and peppermint’s.

英語学習法は、有効なものからホントかなと思うようなものまで、ネットを調べればすぐに調べられますね。

覚えてから何年たっても記憶に染み付いている単語を習得した方法や、今までなかなか覚えられなかった単語を最近ある出来事のおかげでやっと身につけた方法など、いくつかご紹介したいと思います。

『Once upon a time』・・・　昔々
「Once upon a time in the middle of winter,・・・・」で始まるSnow White and the Seven Dwarfs（白雪姫と七人のこびと）の絵本がきっかけでした。小学生の頃、祖父母がいつかの海外旅行のお土産でこの絵本を買ってきてくれました。

まだ辞書の引き方も知らなかった私ですが、初めての大きなカラー絵本に、よく分からない外国語が並んでいるクールさに感動し大切に保管しました。ストーリーの最初のラインがこのOnce upon a timeで始まるのですが、中学でやっと辞書の使い方を覚え、いざonce, upon, a, time と一文字ずつ辞書で調べましたが全く意味が取れず最初は分からないと放棄していました。その後、Once upon a timeを熟語として辞書で「昔々」と見つけた時の発見といったら衝撃でした！

こういうストーリーは日本の昔話と同じように「昔々」から始まるんだろうな〜とは薄々気づいていて、それがきちんと辞書に掲載されてあることで、大げさですが、自分の予想と意味とが繋がり、とても嬉しかったのを覚えています。この経験から、Once upon a timeを見るたびに白雪姫を思い出します^ ^

『Sour loser』・・・負けず嫌い

最近子供たちとカードゲームをしていた時のこと。まだゲームが終わっていないのに、一人の子がもう負けると泣き出しゲームを放棄してしまいました。この出来事を、外国人たちに英語で説明しようとしました。「負けず嫌い」という表現を知らなかった私は、「ゲームが終わる前に泣き出してしまって、負けるのが嫌いで・・」と長々と説明していると、ネィティブから一言。She is a sour loser.

Sour「痛い、ヒリヒリする」といった意味は知っていましたが、loserを形容すると負けず嫌いという意味になるとは、目から鱗でした！

『Unconditional love』・・・無条件の愛

このUnconditionalという単語はこれまでに様々な文章に登場していて、辞書で意味を何十回と調べたにも関わらず、記憶の引き出しに入ってくれなかった単語の一つでした。

毎日通勤時に英語のラジオを聞いているのですが、先日ラジオから「・・George W. Bush always said that what he got from his father was “unconditional love,” ・・」と流れたのを耳がキャッチしました。皆さんもご存知の通り、先月第41代米大統領ジョージ・H・W・ブッシュ氏が死去され、そのニュースが流れていました。前後の文章は曖昧にしか聞き取っていませんが、Unconditional loveの箇所は、これまでのうる覚えの蓄積が手伝ってアンテナがキャッチしました！ブッシュ氏が父親から受けた愛というのは、愛は愛でも・・深い、無条件の愛！という推測をしました。

単純に単語だけを覚えようとしても無味乾燥ですぐに忘れてしまいますが、内容を伴った文章中では、前後の文章から自分の知らない（もしくは曖昧に覚えているような）単語でもその意味を推測出来るのだと確信しました。

学ぶことは奥深いですね☆

皆さまも、それぞれの学習方法を試してみてくださいね(*´ω｀)

英会話アミック

Have you ever heard the saying, “You have the same amount of hours in a day as Beyonce”?  Beyonce juggles being a wife and mother, a world-famous musical icon, a brand ambassador, and social activist seemingly without breaking a sweat while the rest of us mere mortals are over here complaining about having to go to work AND schedule a dentist appointment in the same day. Obviously, these days Beyonce has a lot of assistants to help her accomplish all her day to day errands. However, I’m sure when she was just a fledgling pop star she had something quite a few of plebeians lack: discipline and focus. After all, you don’t become one of the world’s best-selling artists of all time by sheer luck.   

I struggle with keeping focused every day. If I have ten minutes to kill, I mindlessly scroll through Instagram instead of doing something a bit more worthwhile.  Enter Dandapani, an Australian Hindu priest, who coaches people on self-development. Dandapani states that people are easily distracted and lose focus because we are training ourself to be easily distracted. Every time our phone buzzes, we race to check our notifications, which makes us a slave to our mobile devices. Dandapani isn’t anti-technology, he just doesn’t believe that we must be connected at all times. If we want better focus, we must train ourselves to be more focused by “keeping our awareness on one thing at a time”.  But how do we practice focusing our awareness? Dandapani recommends giving all your attention to a spouse, friend, or partner while they are speaking. If you start to lose focus, bring your attention back to the speaker! Trust me, it’s easier said than done. Here’s a short video by Dandapani on how to control your focus. Let’s play a game; try not to get distracted for the entirety of this  6 minute video! 

Interesting, right? Do you think you can practice giving someone or something 100% of your attention? Who knows, maybe the next amazing pop star is in you, waiting for you to realize your potential.