ELISA ENGLISH's Blog 英語園地

We didn’t head for the Holidazzle parades in downtown Minneapolis.  Instead, we went to Rice Park in downtown St. Paul yesterday for the annual Christmas tree lighting ceremony.  The tree is humongous, standing at 60 foot tall, decorated with twenty thousand energy-efficient LED lights and holiday décor.  Alongside are the dozens of other glittering trees.  Initially, my husband and I were puzzled by the two wires hanging in the sky near the stage in the center of the park.  We were amazed when we saw the fuse lighted up and the flame travelled from one end along the wires to the other end to light up the Christmas tree.  It was indeed magnificent as the lights were set in a twinkle-frenzy of five minutes per hour. 

Next to Rice Park, outside Landmark Center is Wells Fargo WinterSkate.  Yesterday marked its grand opening.  In addition to the tree-lighting-ceremony and the skating exhibitions, there were dance and music performances as well as fireworks. 

Thanksgiving lunch.

This year’s Thanksgiving, we decided to venture on dining at a fine diner – McCormick & Schmicks at downtown Minneapolis.  I like that restaurant a lot because I like eating seafood.  I work downtown, so I would dine there every now and then.  It has pretty good seafood dishes. 

What is an Outline?

An outline presents a picture of the main ideas, supporting evidence and explanation of any subject.  There are two kinds of outlines: the topic outline (consists of short phrases) and the sentence outline (consists of full sentences).         

In vs. Into

In implies location, position.

“Different From” vs. “Different Than”

No word could ever describe the emotions I experienced when I first set my eyes on Emily Bronte’s novel, “Wuthering Heights”.  I was eleven years old then, introduced to a wealth of English literature by my elementary English teacher.  She was a Dutch descendant, a very interesting lady.  She once told us that the best cheese was cheese filled with worms.  I do like cheese and snack them a lot but I really could not imagine that.  It sounded so gross.  Luckily, it did not ruin my appetite for cheese.

Anyway, back to “Wuthering Heights”.  After thirty-two years, I believe that I am ready to write a review about it and reveal my feelings towards it.

I recently realized what “Black Friday Sales” meant.  It is actually “after Thanksgiving Sales”.  The reason that the day after Thanksgiving is called “Black Friday” is that the retails will break even on that day of the year, and any proceeds after that are considered profits. 

Parents, Poetry and Punch

My son’s school has a “parents, poetry and punch” event yesterday.  I am not able to attend because I work from home on Fridays and have to be in the office from Monday through Thursday.  My husband attended the event instead.  If you have been reading my articles, you know that I cannot praise enough the American educational system.  Others might not agree with me about the American education system.  To be precise, it is the American education system provided in a good school district that makes the difference.  America is nevertheless a country built upon capitalism.  The rich get richer and the good school districts with high property tax provide better and higher quality education.  Anyway, we can’t really complain much.  Even with some inconvenience caused by the heavy involvement required from the parents, it is a good thing.  Parent involvement is key to a child’s development both academically and socially. 

“Would rather” or “had rather” indicates preference, similar to “wish”, used in unreal situation.

1.  To indicate an unreal present:

Some of my readers have asked if I can provide a list of grammar resource.  I don’t really keep track of the grammar sites I visited when trying to validate my points.  You might have noticed that not all grammar sites are good at explaining all grammar rules and sometimes they might contradict one another.

Anyway, since you asked, I decided to spend some time locating some of the resource.  They are randomly listed.  By the way, I do not have time to go through each one of them and point out which ones I believe to be more accurate or more acceptable.  At a glance, they look fine to me.  As I said earlier, there may be contradicting grammar viewpoints from each grammar site.  There are traditional grammarians of earlier times who imposed a Latin-like structure on our language by diktat, and there are modern linguists who prefer discourse analysis.  If you come across some rules that sound questionable, always ask and do more research.