ELISA ENGLISH's Blog 英語園地

Sentence structures:

Simple Sentence

My Rambling of the Day: Spring Cleaning / Got Suntanned!

An Incident that haunts me

This might be an icident that will haunt me for life. Last time, I talked about decisions. We make choices each day and each choice leads to different consequences. When my son was about eight months old, he had to go through circumcision suggested by our pediatrician to prevent future infection. Our decision to not go through circumcision when he was born didn’t spare him from not going through the surgery in the end. Conducting the surgery at an older age is actually riskier no matter how small the surgery is. I am not a great mom. I make mistakes all the time. New to parenthood, I was still very self-absorbed. Even now when I have been a mom for over nine years, I am still the same self-absorbed person. That day before the surgery, inside the waiting room, I set my son on the table. The table was more like a file cabinet, with narrow surface. When my son sat on top of it, he was about where my armpits were. The cabinet was in front of me, so I could see my son right in front of me. Instead of paying attention to what he was doing, I turned my head to the right to talk to my husband, who sat at the chair next to the cabinet. There was a space of about a chair's width between the chair and the cabinet. I didn’t realize that I had set my son too close to the edge of the cabinet. In the blink of an eye, he fell to the ground. He fell from a height of approximately four feet. I was really devasted and went to talk to the nurse right away to ask if he needed to be examined for any head injury. The nurse looked at him and told us that since he didn’t vomit, he should be okay. Gas induction of anesthesia was later performed and he was completely out of consciencious when the surgery went on.

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions.

      Recently we attended the 4th grade Orchestra Orientation and learned that students attending the program will be pulled out of regular classes once a week for about half an hour.  Initially, I thought that this was just another after-school program, but apparently, the instructors worked the regular school hours like any other elementary school teachers.  I wouldn’t object to my son’s attending the program, as I don’t think missing classes for half an hour a week would be a big deal.  However, just in case that he does lag too far behind on a particular subject that he will miss, we would like to find out how far advance we will be notified of the schedule for each week since the schedule fluctuates each time, and if skipping the Orchestra lessons is an option.  This will help us work out a plan with the homeroom teacher ahead of time.  It is comforting to hear that the lesson time will not interfere with any school testing.

What is Parallel Structure?

Parallel structure uses the same pattern of words to show that two or more ideas have the same level of importance as well as to create clear and concise sentences to help the reader quickly process information.  If one element is an adjective, then all elements should be adjectives; if one element is a verb, then all elements should be verbs, and so forth.

“As … as I” vs. “as … as me”

“Than I” vs. “than me”

“As well as I” vs. “as well as me”

My Summer Headache

Summer is approaching and I am getting a headache with where I can place my daughter when she is let out of school with 3 months of free time.  If you have been following my blog, you will probably get a glimpse of my daughter’s personality.  She is something.  She is so adorable, yet extremely hard to deal with.  She complains about boredom all the time.  You would think that kids at her age would be so excited when they hear that they are going on a field trip.  NO.  Not her.  When the school is off and I put her on the off-school care where kids go on a field trip, she gets upset with me.  Field trips are dumb and boring as she loudly proclaimed.  Not all field trips are boring to her, probably the ones that provide no educational values.  The field trips offered by the school are usually good because she learns something from visiting the Art Museum, the Science Museum or the Zoo.  A field trip to see a movie or a ball game offered by the off-school care is probably no fun for her.  Though she keeps telling me that kindergarten is boring, she feels it even worse staying with the after school care with all the free time she gets.  She is so happy that she gets to go to the Chinese after school program three times a week away from the after school care where free play is usually what kids do without any structure. 

Capital Punishment

I believe in capital punishment but only under the following circumstances where heinous crimes are committed such as murders, an attempt to murder, and in cases of rape, assault, torture, mutilation and child molestation that affect the victim’s emotional, physical, or mental health and cripple someone for life.  I believe that death penalty is justifiable only in the worst crimes where it serves as a prevention of the very criminals from walking away to violently harm anyone else again and as a deterrence of any copy cat.