F2F Class Notes February 24th (Raph)[2][S]

Vocabulary

Keep up appearances (n): 1- to make things look all right whether they are or not. 2- to hide your personal or financial problems from other people by continuing to live and behave in the same way that you did in the past.
E.g.: They were very unhappily married but kept up appearances for the sake of their children.
E.g.: Simply keeping up appearances was stretching their resources to the limit.

Sugar-coat (v): 1- to make something superficially more attractive or acceptable than it really is.
E.g.: Although he tried to sugar-coat the truth, his boss knew exactly what happened.

Deceive (v): 1- to persuade someone that something false is the truth, or to keep the truth hidden from someone for your own advantage:
E.g.: The company deceived customers by selling old computers as new ones.

Original:

Last December I heard about a tragedy that happened in some rural space in the northern part of China. A female body was found buried in a backyard of a house. The victim was a single mother who lived in this house. The murderer was her 17 years old son. They neighborhood told journalist upfrontly: the son was overprotected by his mother and kept locked in the house for a couple years. His mother turned down all the visit requirements of local social institutions without giving an accurate reason. She just refused to be together with her neighborhood, she even didn’t try use a roundabout way to keep up appearances. Her son was sheltered and clueless. He was so desperate that he wanted to escape. He didn’t want his life to be dysfunctional, so this tragic thing happened.

How to be a parent is a course that takes us decades of years to learn. I think the first topic of this course should be “a child is an independent person, rather than a part of a paren’t life, so let nature take its course, respect your children and let them choose their own lives”.

Edited:

Last December I heard about a tragedy that happened in some rural area in the northern part of China. A female body was found buried in a backyard of a house. The victim was a single mother who lived in the house and the murderer was her 17-year-old son. Their neighbors told journalists upfront: the son was overprotected by his mother and kept locked in the house for a couple years. His mother turned down all the visit attempts from local social institutions, without giving an accurate reason for that. She just refused to be together with her neighbors, not even trying to speak in a roundabout way to keep up appearances. Her son was sheltered from and clueless about the outside world and was so desperate that he wanted to escape. He didn’t want his life to be dysfunctional, so this tragic thing happened.

Learning to be a parent is something that takes decades. I think the first thing we need to understand is that a child is an independent person, rather than an extension of a parent’s life, so we should let nature take its course, respect our children and let them choose their own lives.

Pronunciation

Refused: /rɪˈfjuːz d/

Accurate: /ˈæk.jə.rət/