So, I saw this on Facebook, and it made me think.

I'm actually not sure if I'm a Millennial or not.
One definition of Millennial is anyone who reached adulthood in the 2000s.  I graduated college in 2000, so by that definition I guess I'm a Millennial.
But on the other hand, anytime birth dates are given for Millennials, they almost never include the late 70s.  The earliest I've heard is 1981 as the start state.  So I guess I missed being a Millennial by 3 years.

But of course we all know these cut-off dates are nonsense anyway.  They're just convenient labels for the media.  There's no substantial difference between someone born in 1978 and someone born in 1981.

But on the other hand, there are definitely generational differences between me and the younger end of the Millennial spectrum.
I work with a lot of people in their early 20s, and occasionally these differences in perspective will pop up.  (Examples are too numerous to mention, so I'll have to save the specifics for another post.)

But I do tend to self-identify with a lot of the negative traits that most (many?) Millennials supposedly have.  I grew up thinking that a career would magically fall into my lap, and I've spent most of my adulthood confused about how to become a professional.
I'm lazy.  I lack direction in life.  I have trouble focusing.  I have poor social skills.

And I have Internet addiction issues.

In Cambodia, I dealt with this by deliberately not installing Internet in my apartment (and I did all my Internet through either Internet Cafes or work computers).
In Vietnam, my apartment came automatically furnished with Internet and cable TV.  And my productivity has dropped off massively.  (This is one reason why I read 41 books in a year when I lived in Cambodia, and 6 books in a year when I lived in Vietnam).

Anyway, about this video:
I'm not sure I agree with every thing he says, but it's thought provoking, and I agree with at least some of it.   (And I appreciate that he goes out of his way not to blame Millennials for being a product of their environment).

I've also been having problems with my adult students (mostly people in their early 20s) being constantly on their phones during class.
The problem has gotten so extreme that in some classes speaking activities have broken down because students have chosen to just text on their phone instead of participate in the activity.
I've compared notes with colleagues, and I'm not the only one who has been having this problem recently.

And also that thing he mentions about how everyone always has their phone out on the table constantly--so true.  All my adult students always have their phones laying out on their desks.

I was thinking might start showing this video at the beginning of term to emphasize to my students why it's inappropriate to have their phones out constantly during class.
And that's another reason I'm posting it here--as a way of bookmarking it for myself so I don't forget it later.

Life Pre-Intermediate 3C Last Days of the Rickshaw p. 38-39

(Supplemental Materials for Specific Textbooks--Life Pre-Intermediate)

Lead-in (docs, pub) --lead-in questions taken from here

Vocabulary Matching cards (drive, docs, pub)--I combined the transport vocabulary from this lesson with reviewing the transport vocabulary from lesson 3A.

Doraemon Backs to the Board: drive, slides, pub (the same vocabulary as on the cards--i.e. also a combination of the transport vocabulary from lesson 3A and 3C).

At what age does the average person obtain a driver's license in your country?

Can you ride a motorcycle?

Do you drive a car often?

Have you ever gotten a parking ticket?

Are there speed limits in your country? If so, what is the average speed limit?

Do you have a bicycle? If so, when did you get it? How much did it cost? How often do you ride it? What color is it?

Do you have a car? If not, does your family have a car?

Do you have a driver's license? If so, when did you get it?

Do you often ride public transportation during rush hour?

Do you often use public transportation?

Do you ride a bicycle more than once a week?

Do you always wear a seat belt when you are riding in a car?

Does your mother have a driver's license?

Have you ever been in a traffic accident?

Have you ever been stopped for speeding? (Have you ever gotten a speeding ticket?)

Have you ever missed your last train or bus home? If so, how did you get home that night?

Have you ever ridden a horse?

Have you every carpooled?

How do you get to school?  How long does it take?

How much is the bus fare in your city?

How do you think countries can reduce congestion on the roads?

How many times have you traveled by airplane?

How much does gasoline cost is your country?

Is parking a problem in your city? (shopping malls, etc)

Taken from: http://iteslj.org/questions/transportation.html

vehicle	machines with engine for transporting people, e.g. car or bus	commuters	people who travel to work every day
rush hour	period in a day when lots of people travel to and from work	traffic jam	long line of vehicles on the road
road work	construction or maintenance on part of a road	petrol station	place to fill your car with petrol
speed limit	the maximum speed you can legally drive	pedestrian	people on foot in a town or city
pick up	to collect someone who is waiting for you	drop off	to take someone or something to a place, usually by car as you travel somewhere else
get off	to leave a bus, train, aircraft, or boat	catch	to get on a bus, train, etc in order to travel somewhere
miss	to arrive too late to get on a bus, train, or aircraft	take	to travel somewhere by using a bus, train, car, etc, or by using a particular road:

2016: In Memoriam

Talk about 2016 being a cursed year started around the time Trump won the election (I think).  But all those deaths the last week of 2016 started to make it seem really eerie.

2016 is now being called "the year of death".
I was talking about this at work, and one of my co-workers mentioned that there's a theory somewhere on the Internet that sort of explains all this in a kind of logical way.  I haven't run across it before (apparently it's out on the Internet somewhere) but I'll try and summarize what my co-worker told me.
Apparently the age of mass media began in the 1960s and 70s.  Television had been around since the 1950s, of course, but apparently the full programming schedule didn't really explode until until the late 1960s.
From about the late 1960s onwards, there were a lot more celebrities in the popular consciousness.  And now that we are 50 years on from the late 1960s, nature is beginning to exact her revenge.
So according to this theory, it's going to be worse every year from here on out.

Anyway, throughout this past year, I've been taking note of it on this blog whenever someone died who I felt was meaningful to me in some way.  It's not a complete list (I missed some people who had been meaningful to me--Harper Lee, for instance), but for what it's worth, it's below.

* Dean Jones here.  (Actually Dean Jones died in September 2015.  But I didn't find out about it until 2016).

* Alan Rickman here.

* Paul Kantner and Toly Anderson here.

* Darwyn Cooke here.

* Muhammad Ali here.

* Anton Yelchin here.

* Elie Weisel here.

* Gene Wilder here.

* Phyllis Schlafly here.

* Tom Hayden here.

* Fidel Castro here.

* George Michael here.

* Carrie Fisher here.

* Richard Adams here.

2016 Movie Awards

(Year End Movie Awards)

1. Is the Man Who is Tall Happy? 3 Stars
2. Zootopia 4 Stars
3. The Jungle Book (2016) 4 Stars
4. Captain America: Civil War 8 Stars
5. X-Men Apocalypse 7 Stars
6. Finding Dory 2 Stars
7. The Legend of Tarzan 3 Stars
8. Star Trek Beyond 8 stars
9. Sausage Party 7 Stars
10. The Hateful Eight 8 Stars
11. All The Way 10 Stars
12. Selma 9 Stars
13. Trumbo (2015) 8 Stars
14. Ant Man 6 Stars
15. Star Wars Rogue One 9 Stars

As always, this is my personal list of what I saw, and doesn't reflect which movies were current this year.  So several of these movies came out 2 or 3 years ago, but are still on this list.  (Sing I saw on New Year's Day, and so it's not eligible for this list.  It'll get recounted in next year's end-of-year movie roundup.)

As for the ratings:
 I make this disclaimer every - year, but I'll say it again here--the ratings are just off-the-cuff, and I often find my opinion changes over time.  For example, in this year's crop I'm already beginning to think I was too generous to X-Men Apocalypse, Star Trek Beyond, Sausage Party, and Rogue One.
But it's a losing battle to try to re-evaluate everything every time my mood shifts, so I'm just going to let the ratings stand as they are. 

Best Movie of the Year:
All The Way 10 out of 10 Stars
A close second is Selma with 9 out of 10 Stars.

I feel a little bit bad about ranking All the Way above Selma, because if I were going by political orthodoxy I would have to go with Selma.  All the Way is a bit too nice to LBJ's legacy.  Selma is a movie that correctly recognizes that the real heroes of the civil rights movement were the people out in the street.

But this list isn't about political orthodoxy.  It's about good movies.  And All the Way was just top-notch story-telling.  It did a great job of dramatizing all those back-room political wheelings and dealings, and I was completely glued to the TV the whole time with fascination.
Selma was also really good, but it didn't match that level of engagement I had with All the Way.

Another close second is The Hateful Eight.  Which I really wanted to give 10 out of 10 Stars to, but just couldn't in the end.
Quentin Tarantino is a very problematic film maker.  He's obviously a genius, and one of the most talented film makers of all time.  But his fascination with pulp-violence is seeming a bit played out by the 8th film.
It seems like a huge waste of talent.  With such huge talent, are these pulpy ultra-violent revenge films all he wants to leave behind as his legacy?  Apparently so.

Worst Movie of the Year
Finding Dory 2 Stars of 10 Stars

This wins by default.  As I said in my review, there's nothing really wrong with this movie, but I'm just not in the target audience.

Addendum: TV Shows
I actually watched a lot more TV than I reviewed on this blog, but since WestWorld was the only show I reviewed on the blog, that's the only link I have for this year.

* Westworld Season 1

Link of the Day
Chomsky warns of the systematic threat Trump would pose, from human rights to the environment

Playlist HERE: 

So this has been making the rounds on twitter.  Several people I follow have been tweeting it.  For example Phil:

Apparently it's now confirmed that Nixon intentionally sabotaged '68 peace talks. https://t.co/K0hNOkhjgd

— Phil Christman (@phil_christman) January 1, 2017

Funny, I thought this was confirmed as official history back in 2008 when the audiotapes were declassified.  Or back in 2013 when the BBC was reporting it as established fact.

But now we've found notes from Nixon's aide.  And the New York Times is reporting it.  So now it has moved from officially confirmed to super-super officially confirmed now I guess.

I don't like to go into conspiracy theory land, but this is not a conspiracy theory.  The historical records confirm it, and the BBC and the New York Times have reported it.

Nixon really really did sabotage the 1968 peace talks.  It's like super official now.

In my private conversations with people, however, I find that most people don't know this fact.

And I'm going to go out on a limb here and predict that this will never make it into high school history curriculums in the United States.

Sing

(Movie Review)

Why I Saw This Movie
I'll be honest, when I heard the premise for this movie, I thought, "That sounds like the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my whole life."
But then I caught a couple reviews of this movie that said it actually wasn't that bad.  (This guy here, for example.)  It wasn't great, the critics said, but it wasn't bad.  It hit all the story beats that a movie like this needed to hit.

So, when the girlfriend wanted to go to a movie on New Year's Day, and this was the only movie playing in English at our local cinema, I said, sure, why not.  (I owed her for sitting through Star Wars Rogue One  with me.)

The Positives
* It's not terrible.  This movie pretty much hits all the story beats it needed to hit for a movie like this.

The Negatives
* Movies like this, which rely so much on pop songs, are always hit and miss.  If you like the pop song that's playing, chances are you'll enjoy the scene.  If you can't stand the song, chances are you won't like the scene.
My own personal average was about 50%.  I suspect that the 50% mark will be true for most people.  Your own personal likes and dislikes will be different from mine, of course, but I suspect most people will only like about 50% of the soundtrack.

* Related to the above point: the trailers for this movie led me to believe that Dream On  by Aerosmith would  feature prominently in this movie, which I was looking forward to, but it turns out this was yet another case of blatant trailer false advertising.  Dream On was nowhere in this movie.  (I have a complicated history with Aerosmith, because I had a couple college- roommates who were huge Aerosmith fans, and the band got a little bit overplayed in our apartment back in my college days.  But Dream On is the one Aerosmith song that I've always loved inspite of all that.)

* Although the plot in this movie was passable, the humor was just awful.  Which is a pity, because half the reason you go to a cartoon movie like this is for the laughs.  But the jokes in this movie were just not funny at all.  In fact it was embarrassing what the screen writers tried to pass off as humor.

* If I'm being perfectly honest, I was never fully in love with the premise.
I dislike movies in which a person's entire self-worth is based upon their ability to perform a certain talent well.
The movie is juggling a lot of characters, but the story-arc for each is incredibly predictable.  They're all able to sing a song well at the end, and thus redeem their value as human beings.
If I were making this movie, I would have had some of them completely fail at singing the song at the end, but then still realize they had value as human beings inspite of their inability to sing well.

* Related to the above point: I thought the subplot in which the gorilla had to earn his father's love by singing well was a terrible message to send to kids.
I mean I understand what they were going for--he proved himself to his father on his own terms instead of following his father's plan--but he still didn't receive his father's love until he had earned it with his singing abilities.
A parent's love should be unconditional, not earned.  This was a terrible message.

Rating :
2 out of 10 stars.  (It's entertaining, despite all it's flaws.  You can sit through it easily.)

Video Review
Video review here and embedded below:




Link of the Day
Noam Chomsky 2017 - Passionate Speech on the Hypocrisy of US Foreign Policy

2016 Book Awards

(Year End Book Awards)

Time for the 3rd annual Year in review of reading.  (see also 2014 and 2015).

The books I've read this year are as follows:

1. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas February 3, 2016
2. Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories Volume 2 by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, April 7,
3. An Arsene Lupin Omnibus by Maurice Leblanc, May 28, 2016
4. Dirty Bertie: An English King Made in France by Stephen Clarke, August 23, 2016
5. I Drink for a Reason by David Cross, August 31, 2016
6. The Lexical Approach by Michael Lewis, December 9, 2016

(As always, I'm omitting all the graded readers from the list.)

...Uh, yeah, Vietnam has not been good for my reading.  For all the reasons I mentioned last year.
Although last year I still managed to get 10 books read before I moved to Vietnam in April.  This year I spent the entire year in Vietnam, and so only managed a measly 6 books.  (5 really.  I Drink for a Reason barely counts).

On the other hand, to be fair to myself, this list is actually a bit more impressive than it looks.

Two of the above books are actually compilation volumes, that include several smaller books within their bindings.  Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories Volume 2 is really 4 books in one.  An Arsene Lupin Omnibus is also 4 books contained within one binding.
So think I could legitimately claim to increase my total number by another 8 books.
That, plus The Count of Monte Cristo  is a massive doorstopper, so that counts for something more, right?

Anyway, with such a paltry list to sort through, the 2016 Book Awards are going to be pretty pathetic.  Most of these categories will win simply by default alone.  But let's go through the motions anyway.

Best Fiction

An Arsene Lupin Omnibus
I read 3 fiction books this year, and I am fond of them all.  (Despite their flaws. The The Count of Monte Cristo was a bit hard to slog through in the middle, but I'm still fond of the story as a whole).  But I think judged purely on enjoyability, I'd have to put An Arsene Lupin Omnibus at the top.  It's not great literature--it's pure pulp fiction.  But it's gloriously pulpy pulp fiction from the golden age of pulp magazines--spies, thieves, murderers, secret agents, trap doors and secret getaways, surprise plot twists, treasure maps, criminal conspiracies, and elaborate death traps.
Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories Volume 2 is a really close second.

No worst for this category.  I was fond of all the fiction I read this year.

Best Non-Fiction

Dirty Bertie: An English King Made in France

It wins by default technically.  This was the only non-fiction I read this year.  (Not counting I Drink for a Reason.)
And yet, despite winning by default, it's not a terrible book.  I nit-picked it a lot in my review, but I also commented:

Flawed though the book is, there are lots of interesting little tidbits of information scattered throughout it.  I suppose that might be enough to give this a cautious recommendation to other history geeks.

Honorable mention in this category goes to: Death Throes of the Republic by Dan Carlin.  I can't really count it as a book because it's not a book--it's a podcast.  And yet, sometimes the line between a podcast and an audiobook gets a little blurred.  And Dan Carlin himself claims that the 13 hour long podcast is much closer to an audio book in terms of style and format.  So I'm giving it an honorable mention here.

Best Book I Read for Professional Development

The Lexical Approach
Also wins by default.  This was the only book I read for professional development in 2016.  (Actually I read it in 2015, but it took me forever to get my review together, so it gets counted in this year's list.)
Despite winning by default, it's actually a pretty good book.
I had a very hard time writing a review of it, but that's because there's so many different strands of thought in this book that it's very hard to sort out everything for a coherent review.
But for the normal reader, who's not particularly bothered about writing book reviews about everything, this book should be quite enjoyable.  It's well-written, it's very readable, and it's extremely opinionated, which can make for some fun reading if you like an author with strong opinions.

Reading List Graveyard for 2016
(Reading List Graveyard is a list of the books I started but gave up on during this year.)
* Empire by Niall Ferguson
A co-worker recommended this book to me, and even lent me his copy, so I decided to give it a try.  I of course knew Niall Ferguson's reputation as a right wing polemicist, but I thought it was good to read books by authors I disagreed with every once and a while as sort of an intellectual exercise, and besides I was interested in the subject matter.
My co-worker also disagreed with Niall Ferguson's politics, but he said the book was interesting enough that it had fascinated him despite it's political tone.
I, however, was not so grabbed by Niall Ferguson's prose. I got a few pages into it, found I wasn't really captured by it, and that I had too many half-read books on my plate already, so I just gave it up.

Link of the Day
Noam Chomsky on Trump and the decline of the American Superpower

Write Your Own IELTS Listening Part 1 Dialogue

(TESOL Worksheets--IELTS Listening Part 1)

Google: docs, pub

If I'm being perfectly honest, I have to admit that my primary purpose in doing this was to fill up time--I had some extra space in the schedule that needed to be filled.
And yet, I do think there's some value in this type of activity.  If the students can put themselves in the shoes of an IELTS test writer, and try themselves to write in the distractors, synonyms and paraphrases, then they'll be better able to imagine what types of tricks the IELTS test may throw at them.
And for whatever it's worth, my students really enjoyed this activity.  I encouraged them to have some fun and get a bit silly with it, and they did.
We ended up having to spread this activity out over two lessons, which was just as well, because it ended up giving me time to photocopy the students' questions between classes.  At the next class, I distributed out there questions to their classmates, they performed their dialogue in front of the class, and the classmates answered the questions.
In my own classroom, I used this to supplement the IELTS Express Upper Intermediate textbook Unit 2 Listening p.18-21.

Write your own Listening Part 1 dialogue:

Traditional Format

Description: Part 1 features 2 speakers talking.  The dialogue is usually transactional--some sort of information is being exchanged between the two speakers, usually for business purposes.

For Example:

A student enrolling in a course

A man buying a new cell-phone

A man booking airplane tickets on the phone

Have Fun

On the real IELTS test, they usually stick to boring conversations like this.  So don’t expect any unusual situations on the real test.

However, for the purposes of this class, feel free to have some fun with this.  You can think of crazy or unusual situations, like an alien trying to buy a bus ticket, or a woman hiring a hitman to kill her husband, or Tarzan trying to enroll in university. Or whatever.  Feel free to get creative.

The Questions

IELTS Listening Part 1 contains ten questions, so write down 10 questions for your classmates to answer on a separate sheet of paper.

Distractors

The IELTS test is fond of using distractors.  Distractors are places where the IELTS tries to trick you into writing down the wrong answer by including several possible answers, only one of which is really the right one.

For example:

A: What’s your name?

B: My name is John.  No, wait… let me think… it’s Mike.  No, I mean Kevin.  Sorry, did I say Kevin?  My name is Tom.  It’s definitely Tom.  I mean Scott.  Scott is my name.

When writing your own dialogue, make sure to include lots of distractors.

Synonyms and Paraphrases

The questions on the IELTS test will usually use different words than the actual recording.  For example:

On the test, the question might read. Question 1: What is his name?

But the recording will say: “My parents called me Tom when I was born.”

The thing your parents call you when you are born is the same as your name, so in this instance the answer to question 1 is “Tom”.

When writing your sample dialogue, make sure you use different words in the dialogue than in the textbook.

Write down ten questions for your dialogue.  You can use any format (short answer, note completion, True/False/Not Given, multiple choice, etc.)

1.
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3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
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10.

Write your dialogue below:

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