VIP Class Notes (Nicholas)[S]

Homework

Give me your opinion: do you think it is “bad” or “OK” to give someone a fake pill, but tell them that it is a real pill. Because this is a lie, and usually the person is very sick and needs medicine. So is it OK for doctors to lie to their subjects?

Speaking exercise

Original 

If the people think they have been protected they will not feel pain – for example if you give a person a medicine and give another person nothing and told them that the medicine is a painkiller, and then use hammer to hit two people the one had medicine will feel less pain than the one with nothing.

Corrected

If the people think they have been protected they will not feel pain – for example if you give a person a medicine and give another person nothing and tell them that the medicine is a painkiller, and then use a hammer to hit these two people the one that had the medicine will feel less pain than the one who had nothing.

Original

They should do exercise more often and eat healthy foods. They should do exercises for at least one hour each day. When you’re tired you should sleep for a while and make yourself better. If we want to have a healthy mind we should always think about happy things, talking to others more often.

Corrected

They should do exercise more often and eat healthy foods. They should do exercises for at least one hour each day. When you’re tired you should sleep for a while and make yourself better / [recover]. If we want to have a healthy mind we should always think about happy things and talk to others more often. For some people, owning an animal also makes them happy and feel [mentally] healthy.

Vocabulary

mental / mentally / the mind
e.g. My mental health is so important to me! That’s why I always rest and don’t work too hard!
e.g. He was not feeling well mentally. I told him he should take a vacation!

recommend 推荐 = suggest
e.g. If you are visiting SH I recommend you eat the xiaolongbao! It’s delicious and my favorite!
e.g. If you want to study English I recommend talking to an English-speaking person for 2 hours every week.

drug = medicine
e.g. Some drugs are illegal. Some drugs are legal. The legal drugs are given to you by a doctor.

placebo – fake (假) medicine/drug – 安慰剂
e.g. Placebo drugs and real drugs look the same.

study -noun – this is a formal way to test if a drug is good or not good.
e.g. In the doctor’s study (clinical trial), 50% of the people in the study will get the real medicine; the other 50% will get the placebo.

subject – the person in the study taking the medicine
e.g. The doctor will give the subjects medicine (or the placebo medicine) and then see if the subjects get better!

effective vs. affective
effective – adj / noun
affective – verb
effect – noun
affect – verb
e.g The drug affects your health.
e.g. The drug helped me — it was effective! It affected me!

treatment – this is what the doctors give the subjects to make them better
e.g. In the study, the treatment was the painkiller!

duped / duping / to dupe – to fool / trick / 欺骗
e.g. Some of the subject were duped because they took a fake medicine, but still thought they got better!

Placebo Effect – this is when you receive a placebo, but you think it’s real, and when you think it’s real, you think it can make you better — and it does!
e.g. The Placebo Effect tells us that thinking positive (good) thoughts, is good for your health.

“take it seriously” – they don’t think it’s important
e.g. They don’t take school so seriously.

scores / grades / marks
e.g. I am in 6th grade.
e.g. I get really high grades — especially in math, science, and Chinese.

If you don’t know the word say: “I don’t know the exact word, let me give you an example.”

If you are thinking: “Let me think for a moment…”

Grammar

only had = “not a lot / not many”
we only had 85 students in my class
we only had 400 students in the entire school
I was ranked 16th in my class. My average was 98%.
Henry is ranked 10th in his class out of over 500 students.

10th out of 500 students = 10/500 students