VIP Class Notes (Vicki)

Needs more review

Write about your favorite holiday

Christmas is my favorite holiday. In Taiwan, although in Taiwan we don’t have an official vacation for the festival, but in Taiwan we have Constitution Day, which is also on Dec. 25th. The special day often connect with New Year’s Day, so that we could have a short vacation.

At first, I didn’t know the meaning of Christmas, just like many children, I wished I could get one gift from Santa Claus until I started to go to junior high school. My school is a Roman Catholic private school. When Christmas was coming, we had a series of activities, like singing chorales, walking 25km for raising money, playing Christmas drama, making dough figurine…etc. Consequently, I began to like the lovely festival, not only a western commercial festival but a meaningful festival, because the happy junior high experience. This experience widened my horizon and enabled me to learn more about the western culture and also gave me great friendships. I had friendship, greatly to widen my horizon, and many west fancy things.

From Since that time the period, I usually find and attend some special activities in on Christmas. One of the most impressive activity is French Christmas Market. It is said that the market already is 445 years old, you could get see many fancy and cute puppies, hand-make artwork, food…etc. One year, Taipei government held a Christmas Market with French government that I could attend.

Grammar

on the weekends

She is one of the most important artists who are still alive right now 

She might not be around for too long 

pass down her tradition or skill or experience to the children

Vocabulary

lifetime award

nationality

influential

documentary – ji lu pian

reserve – bao cun

architecture – jian zhu

poem – shi

recently – lately

finance – deal with money

asset – money + property

loan – dai kuan

money exchange – huan hui

password – mi ma

biological locks – sheng wu suo

oversharing – posting too much personal information

settings – she ding

show off – xuan yao

mature – cheng shu de

low self-esteem – zi bei

prove – zheng ming

critics – ping lun jia

KOL – key opinion leader (wang hong)

Homework

Read this passage and reflect on it 

Scientists think they have found an answer to the problem of food shortages. One solution could be for us to eat jellyfish. This could also help to protect fish and other sea life that are endangered. Researchers from the University of Queensland in Australia conducted a study of fishing around the world. They discovered that fishing nets caught 92 endangered species of seafood and 11 species of marine life classed as “critically endangered”. The researchers said this was not illegal as the creatures were not protected. Researcher Dr Leslie Robertson said: “Despite national and international commitments to protect threatened species, we actively fish for many of these threatened species.”

The researchers warned we are eating species of fish and other sea life that are on the brink of extinction. They suggested that eating jellyfish could help protect fish that are in danger of disappearing from our seas and oceans. Jellyfish could become a common sight on menus, and we could ask for jellyfish and chips instead of fish and chips. The researchers said jellyfish could be a sustainable alternative at seafood restaurants and fish shops. Dr Robertson said seafood is “not as sustainable as consumers would like to think”. She added: “It is possible to manage our fisheries sustainably and eat species that can survive the fishing pressure. We just have to care about weird-looking squishy things like sea cucumbers.”